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I make some of my best decisions after a few drinks. You wouldn't have to look any further than my set of Ronco knives to know that. But I have another example now. A 37" flatscreen LCD! I had a little money to spend from xristmas and I was debating between a dining room table with all the necessary accoutrements or a TV and a Wii. At a post-new-years finish-the-keg party, RyanS■■■ and Daniel collectively convinced me that a TV was the way to go. So at 3 in the morning, we jetted off to Wal-Mart to get one. The first store didn't have the one we wanted so we went to another and stopped at Whataburger on the way. I haven't done that in forever. Their taquitos are as good as ever, so that made me glad. And we got the TV, bungee corded the trunk closed and brought it home and set it up at 4 in the morning. It's a Vizio and it has a really good picture, we just don't have any HD signals to feed to it. But Planet Earth look pretty spectacular.

Then we set off to find a Wii. Turns out, that's impossible. Well, impossible for someone with a life. I could spend my days calling stores, figuring out delivery schedules, and standing there waiting for a Wii to come in. Unfortunately, I am employed. So I call a few stores each weekend and they laugh at me. Just as well though, I accidentally overdrafted my account the other day. Not entirely because I'm broke but also because of an accounting error on my part. Nonetheless, it opened my eyes to the fact that I've been spending rampantly for months and have to stop. So I decided no Wii until I'm debt frii. Realistically with Febrehabruariv right around the corner, I can't imagine that won't be March. And we likely won't find one then either. But if anyone has a Wii they're willing to see at face value, let me know. I might take it off your hands in a little bit.

And finally, Febrehabruariv, the first leap year, I am looking so forward to it. Giving up food this year for the middle two weeks. The surrounding weeks, I'll be weaning off and then slowly acclimating back to food. C■■■■ said he was shipping me the book on how to properly do the Master Cleanse, so I'm looking forward to reading that. I'm going to follow it to the letter, no matter what. If I'm in the hospital for malnourishment, I'll be pushing the IVs away. I'll definitely keep everyone posted on that, because it could either be torture, or another inadvertent success. Either way I can't wait. Peace.

Last night we were watching Planet Earth with RyanS■■■. He's only seen the BBC version narrated by John Hammond, and we've always told him how much better Sigourney Weaver is. I think it was Ice Worlds that we were watching and they were showing a hawk swooping in to kill some ptarmigan. I decided to relate to another episode where Sigourney refers to hawks as the fighter jets of the bird world. Only, I was going to jazz it up by saying, "Hawks are the F-16s of the bird world." Only, I actually said, "Hawks are the F150s of the bird world." I'm such a tard. So we had a good laugh and made lots of comments in our best Sigourney voices like, "With their four wheel drive and extended cabs, hawks truly are the F150s of the bird world."

Maybe my head was a little bit out of it due to the pumpkin pie martinis I attempted to make last night. We had one at the Bacarat Bar in Bellagio and it was so delicious that I asked the waitress what was in it and she said vanilla vodka, goldschlager, and pumpkin pie puree. So I combined all 3 and it was just terrible. So I added more vodka. When that didn't work, I added more pumpkin. When that didn't work, I added milk. By now things were way out of hand. I checked the recipe on the back of the can of pumpkin puree and you're supposed to add evaporated milk and sugar. Derrrr. We totally forgot to sweeten it. Turns out, pumpkin out of a can is pretty disgusting. I always thought you just spooned that into a pie crust and ate it. Someone should invent that. But of course, I was out of sugar, so I made some simple syrup out of brown sugar, ladeled in a few heaping scoops of the resulting liquid and then, the now full pitcher, held a delcious holiday concoction. Unfortunately it was way to thick and filling so we each sipped half a glass and washed the rest down the drain. But now that I know what I did wrong, i think I could make it again much better just by adding sugar from the get go.

In other news, I'm officially writing a cookbook. Not for the inevitable fame and fortune that comes with it, but because I want to be a guest judge on Iron Chef America. And as far as I know, writing a cookbook is the best and fastest way to get there. How hard could it be? If you've known me for a while, you should be able to guess the title. I can't post it here though because I don't want it to get stolen from me.

And finally, today, I think we'll close with a one-liner. My parents got their free slip-resistant covers for their Wii remotes, affectionately known as Wii condoms. But they only got two, so we have two with condoms, two without. Stephen asked me if I needed one with a condom, but I didn't, so I put the strap around my wrist and said, "You know what I always say. If you've got a strap on, you don't need a condom."

Good night everybody!

Well then. As most of you already know, I've been back from Mexico for quite some time now. Just haven't found the motivation to update. You know how it is. Mexico was a blast. Not quite the unmitigated boozefest you might have imagined since we had 5 children under the age of 3 in tow. But it was very relaxing to spend the day by the pool or by the beach indulging in way too much delicious all-included food and the occasional drink. I would highly recommend and all inclusive Mexico package. The only excursion I took outside of the resort aside from a little light shopping was snorkeling out on some reefs about an hour away near Cozumel. It was pretty cool in the shallow water. I was about 4 feet away from a shark that was as tall as me. I don't think he could have killed me but he probably could have eaten my leg before I was able to gouge out his eyes, so that was exhilarating. By the end of the trip though I was feeling quite sea sick and had "maintain" for about 30 minutes until we hit the shore. But I was successful, so that was good. My nieces are all adorable and a trip and I think everyone had as much fun as me ... even if they didn't get the opportunity to take as many naps as I did.

Since I've been back I haven't done much in the way of excitement. But that's all about to change. My birthday weekened extravaganza begins tomorrow after work. Then it's time for Kaboomtown fireworks and I have the rest of the week off to just lounge around and work on my bar. Believe it or not, progress has been made. I got the supports up on the wall and the plywood base cut out and put on the supports. A lot of planning has been done at work to figure out what comes next. Near as I can figure it, I'm going to put the middle "legs" that will encase the trash can in next followed by the wooden lighting encasement for the back. Then it's time to tile and cut trash holes and cutting board holes. Then just staining and trimming everything out to hide the many, many, many mistakes I have made and likely will make before I'm done. If I work on it throughout my time off, there is a good chance that this bitch could be done before the end of summer. And then it's time to have a party to show off the bar.

My birthday party on Friday was canceled because Metro Retro won't be open. After I found out they would be closed, I just kind of said fuck it. I'm going to dinner with my parents and then I'm just gonna hang out at home. If anybody wants to come over and drink beer with me and shower me with gifts, you are all invited to do just that. I'll let you know if plans change, but I'm 99.34% sure they won't. So get shopping because you only have 4 more days left to make your purchases. Thaaaaaanks.

Daniel's Teeny Tini 23rd Birthday Party was a whole lot of fun. We spent the whole day preparing for it. Luckily, I took that Friday off from work. First we had to buy all of the liquor that was on my shopping list. Then we got Airon to come over and mix up four pitchers of what were essentially shots. He was clever enough to make them pink, orange, green, and blue. And we had rows and rows of teeny tini glasses that Airon also acquired for us and I filled them up in rows. I wish I had Daniel's camera to show you all. It was vury pretty. And they were all extremely tastey. T to the A to the STEY girl you tastey. Everybody slurped them down. I had enough in each pitcher to fill up all the glasses twice, so I don't think anybody was left wanting.

There was a great mix of people coming and going all night long. I was exhausted when it was over and I know it was really special for Daniel for everyone to come. He got some really great gifts. Like the autographed pictures of Kylie Minogue that Adam! ordered him. Or the portrait of Kylie Minogue that JennyC■■■ hand crafted out of colored pencils, beads, and flowers. Truly amazing. And Kelly got him a book about cars and a year long prescription to Car and Driver. Ryan S■■■ got him this really great set of bath spa stuff. I can't remember what else he got, but it was all good stuff.

And Katie wore my dress! And looked fantastic. I will definitely grab a picture of that and show it to you all. Biggest accomplishment of my life thus far. Every time I saw her I would yell, "WHO ARE YOU WEARING? WHO ARE YOU WEARING?" over and over again. Good times.

But I guess the most exciting news is that I'M MOOOVING! Daniel and I signed a lease on Friday for a first floor, corner, 3-bedroom apartment in Addison! Circle. Okay, so I'm just moving down the street, but it's still fucking exciting. We are going to have so much room. Guest bedroom, guest bath, family room, living room, dining room, big kitchen, huge master bedroom with a door that opens to the outside. We are moving on May 15th so anybody that would like to help us cart shit over there, it would be most appreciated. Or if anybody has any boxes I can borrow before then, I would also appreciate that.

I think sometime around my birthday (July 6) we are going to have a birthday/house warming/Kaboom Town party. I'll be sure to let you all know when that is. And I hope you all have a great week and keep out of the rain. Laaaaaaaate.

I am on the verge of accomplishing something I have never accomplished before. I am about to finish a garment. Like, I started it, worked on it, and now it is almost done. It's a weird feeling.

When I would watch Project Runway, I was always confused as to how men got involved in women' fashion. I would imagine that people would just gravitate toward designing clothes for themselves and then would branch off from there. But this garment I'm about to finish is a dress for my friend Katie. And now I understand why everyone does women's clothes. They are so much easier than men's. And so much more fun.

I wouldn't tell Katie anything about the dress. All I would tell her is that anything I made, she had to wear. And furthermore, she has to wear it at Daniel's upcoming birthday party. So now I really have to finish it. But since I don't really mind if she finds out, and because I don't think she reads my webpage with any regularity, I thought I'd go ahead and post a sketch of the dress. I totally free handed this from scratch. Not. But I did choose the colors to approximate the fabric that I chose. Part of me hopes it fits her beautifully, but I have to admit there's another part of me that hopes we have to pin it up and let it out and her boob is falling out all night. That would just be funnier. I'm sure we'll snag at least one picture of her at the party and then we can finally compare one of my sketches to the finished product. And that will make for good times.

Speaking of the party, if you aren't on Myspace and didn't get the invitation, but somehow feel you are deserving of attending, just let me know. We should have plenty of room for more friends. I gotta go attach the dress and the bodice now and then I'll be done. Ha, "bodice," listen to me talking like an old pro. Laaaaaaaate.

Since Febrehab is a world-wide phenomenon nowadays, I thought it important to create a marketing department to promote the benefits of good clean living. I personally always see a reduction in my massive girth. Telling you I lost 7lbs is impressive, but it doesn't really tell the story, so this year I took a picture on the first day and the last day. That way you could see a true before and after. I suppose I should just let my new brochure speak for itself. Enjoy!

Not too much to report here. Looks like that Jonny fellow has attacked my website again, so you'll find the comments disabled temporarily for any post that was on the front page at the time. At least this time it doesn't redirect you anywhere. I'll get that cleaned up for your soon, but that's a timely process and I don't feel like doing it right now.

Veganism is going well. Sober and smoke free are not even an issue for me these days. Veganism is challenging at times, but rewarding. I had a dream last night that I ate a whole bag of Cheetos without realizing it. I can't have those in real life because they have cheese in them. A bastardized version of cheese, but a derivative somehow of milk nonetheless. My weight loss is ... well, negative. I've actually gained like a pound. I'm not sure how that's happening since I've removed around 100 grams of saturated fat daily from my diet. I have been using fatty avacados and nuts as a crutch to help me achieve the old familiar feeling of full. But even so, those are "good fats" and I wasn't going hog wild with them or anything. I'm going to try and concentrate my efforts on vegetables. I've slipped a little bit and have been eating a lot of fruit. Which is good for you, don't get me wrong, but vegetables are better. Less sugars. So I can't fathom that I could possibly go a whole month without any weight loss. If I rededicate myself to a majority of raw vegetables and keep active, I'm sure I'll meet my goal. Although at this point, it would be physically impossible to do so by the end of February. So you know what they say...

Hello, Marehabch!

Good morning, boys and girls. Today I greet you from the confines of my very spacious and comfortable bed. And although I am breaking one of the covenants of sleep by doing something other than sleeping or fucking in bed, I'm afraid I have very little choice. You see, it wasn't my internet that was broken, it was my wireless router. And since I know precious little about networking, and am employed somewhere where I basically do nothing but troubleshoot all day every day, I have very little interest in trying to fix it. So for now, I'm just going to plug in in my bedroom. Who knows, maybe if I ignore the problem long enough, it'll go away. Seems to work for everything else. At least Ryan S■■■ gave me his extra 6' cable, so I could quit using the 6" cable that ties my router to the wall.

He gave it me to pay for the lunch that I made him. I think maybe you should all start calling me Sidesho With His Shoes Off. I was watching Ina Garten (Contessa With Her Shoes Off) the other day and she was making roasted tomato basil soup. And I thought to myself, "I could do that. I could fuckin do that." So I printed out the recipe and went to the store. The only edits I had to make were soy margarine instead of butter and vegetable stock instead of chicken broth. Cooking is so much easier than baking because you can make substitutions without it ruining everything. But seriously, folks, this soup was from absolute scratch. I chopped up onions and garlic cloves and sauteed them in margarine and olive oil with a sprinkle of red pepper flakes. Meanwhile my tomatoes cut in half were tossed in olive oil, salt, and pepper and were roasting in the oven. Then I mixed them with a can of whole tomatoes, vegetable stock, a shit ton of fresh basil, and thyme. After that boiled and simmered for 40 minutes, I busted out my brand new immersion blender and went to town. Awesome. I do have to say my tomato basil soup was a smidge better than La Madelines. And now that I'm confident in the recipe, I can totally tweak it to my liking.

Being a vegan is proving more challenging than good, clean living. But it is distracting me a little bit from the pains of withdrawl. Unfortunately, it's also making me gassy. I've never had gas before. It's bizarre. I have to assume that drastically altering my diet is to blame and hopefully it'll calm down once I get situated. Because I'll tell you one thing, I will either starve or explode before I break Febrehabruariii. I committed to this and I'm going to see it through til the end, but at this point, don't expect me to be a vegan again next year.

Best wishes to my fellow Febrehabruariiites, especially Matt C■■■■ who has taken this to the extreme and is ingesting nothing but lemonade for a month. You are truly more hardcore than I, sir. Laaaaaaaaaate.

Whew. Thank g*d that is over! No, I'm not talking about the holidaze; I'm talking about the plague I came through this week. On Xmas night, I went with Ryan S■■■ to have a few beers, came home, went to bed nearly sober. I woke up about an hour later and the onslaught of vomit, et. al., began. It lasted well into the morning where I found myself so dehydrated and so weak I was unable to hold myself up to throw up anymore, so I just kind of rested my head on the toilet seat and then slumped to the ground.

Something similar happened to me once in college and I ended up getting carted out of the dorm on a stretcher and into an ambulance. So I figured that might be a good idea again. But my insurance company has a 24 hour nurse hotline that I'm in the habit of calling before going to the ER, because that shit's expensive. The nurse wasn't too concerned with my symptoms and taught me how to rehydrate myself without enducing more vomit. I wanted to share it with you all. If you throw up, you should wait an hour before you attempt to eat or drink anything. Then after one hour you can begin to drink one ounce of water every 20 minutes. I did that, threw up one more time, tried it again, and it finally worked.

So there I was at 8 in the morning, freezing cold, sweating, shaking, my lips are dry and my stomach is tumbling, holding onto a shot glass filled with tap water watching the clock waiting for the next time that I can start sipping my meager nourishment again. It sucked so bad.

But, 16 hours later, I had progressed to crackers, and 24 hours later, I was basically fine. Still, it was awful. But at least the next time it happens I'll know what to do.

Other than that Xmas was good. Lots of little kids. Five total nieces and nephews this year. It's a far cry from the adult-only Xmases of yesteryear where everything was accompanied by a glass of scotch. But it was fun to convince a toddler that a fat man with a sack of toys climbed down the chimney while she was taking a nap. I've never really gotten to do that.

I got a wine fridge for Xmas. My brother Michael from California got it for me. It holds 28 bottles! I'm trying to figure out the best way to stock it. I might just buy a case of my favorite wine and then fill in the rest a few bottles at a time. But shit, 28 bottles is a lot. So if you want to bring me some wine, feel free, I have plenty of real estate.

In other news, Daniel has been in California for a long time now. He met up with his old baby sitter while he was there (he grew up there). She is now married to the brother of the mom from Mr. Belvedere! I'm not sure how that fact came to light, but it's true. Beeeoooowwwwww Streaks on the china! He said they're going to try to get me an autographed picture from her. I would truly cherish it. He also said they're going to give her my webpage address so she can see my Mr. Belvedere montage. That would rule. So if you're her, then welcome! I'm a huge fan. And we just might live the good life yet!

Since I know you've all been waiting with baited breath (if you've been eating anchovies), I've come to share the results of my experiment. I left a sacrificial beer out over night until it reached room temperature (which, oddly enough, when it's cold outside is around 75, although during the summer hovers closer to 65 ... must be the dew point). Parenthetical interjections aside, I am proud to announce that my digital thermometer plunged from 75 to 32 (as low as the thermometer goes -- d'oh, sorry I'll stop interrupting) in under 2 minutes. And that was with the beer not fully submerged so I could measure it!

I can now rest easy knowing that so long as I leave my largest tupperware container filled with salt water in the freezer, i can always have ice cold beer in under a minute. Whew! One less thing to worry about.

In other news, some fuck head screwed up my webpage the other night. Unfortunately for him, I check my comments about every 2 to 3 minutes. Jonny was his name. Whatever html code he had posted in my comments section automatically redirected me to some website that I had to click to enter. I was too scared to do it, though, because no good comes from that. But you, my faithful viewers, are inevitably braver than I (or on the library computer so who cares?). So I need you to go to http://usuc.us/j.php and tell me what it is. It even fucked up the inner workings of my webpage, so I had to go thru each entry with comments still open, open it in notepad, erase his damage, and then resync everything. It was quite a pain in the ass. Oh, and now, no html allowed in comments any more ('cept bold, italic and links). Fucker.

Also, just for the record, if you are ever redirected off of my website, then just shut down Internet Explorer. I never, under any circumstances, allow you to leave my website. All of my links always open in a new window. Just, y'know, in case this is an identity theft thing.

Whailp, I guess that's all I have to say. Fuck you, Jonny. The rest of you are cool. Peace out.

It's time for another of those very, very rare treats... a drunken SideshoViD.com update! I just spent the most lovely evening with Daniel. We started out with dinner at Antonio's. I fucking love Antonio's. Not only do they know how to make my martini (very, very, very, very, very dirty with just a *splash* of vermouth (I've since given up efforts to define wet or dry)) but they have the best food ever. Mmmm carpaccio.

Anyway, tonight was another night of the continuing Oktoberfest here in Äddison! I accidentally bought too many tickets (Oktoberfest currency) so we had to chug beers the entire time to avoid wasting tickets. When we left I wanted more beer so I told Daniel we could go to the beer store and pick some up. He assured me that midnight was the latest you could buy. But I was SURE it was 1am on a Saturday. I called Ryan S■■■ to confirm this and he told me that it was indeed midnight.

On the way to the car we passed by our Addison! Circle friend, Dave, who told us that it was 11pm. We both knew that there was no way that was true. I was so sure it was 1am that I told Daniel drinks were on me at any bar in town if I was wrong.

Well long story short (which is pointless to say after you've already told the long story) I was right. You can buy beer until 1am on a Saturday in Texas. And that, my friends, is my public service announcement to you. So hurry, you still have five minutes! Later, bitches!

Any of you that have been to my residence in the past seven or so years have probably had the good fortune of witnessing the most beautiful coffee table ever created. It started out as a normal coffee table donated to my dorm room by a friend of my mother. One freshman year later and the facade was horribly damaged and the finish nearly entirely removed by spilt Everclear. I knew something had to be done, so I enlisted the help of my very artistic and talented friend, JennyC■■■, and soon ended up with this...

It's beautiful. It's creative. I love it. HOWever, it does not exactly fit in with the color palatte of my apartment. I had considered the whole space/ocean/mountain/sky theme for my living room, but instead went with tan and red. Considering Ryan S■■■ and I are someday going to open up Tan & Red Designs together, it was a no-brainer. Anyway, the table holds a lot of sentimental value to me because Jenny and I did it together so long ago, so I knew I couldn't get rid of it. I thought maybe I could cut the legs off and use it as a wall hanging, but again, not really in keeping with my concept of "vintage Parisian." What to do? What to do indeed.

I've been using the table in my bedroom ever since the redesign. It sits directly behind the head of my bed and serves to hold my many extra pillows. You never know when you need to switch in the middle of the night to a softer or firmer or more Tempur-pedic pillow. It's a pillow table. A pillow-table? Solution! I present to each of you, the new and improved pillow-top coffee table. I used three blocks of foam to create each section and then covered the whole thing in faux leather vinyl stuff. After I stapled it down, I put a row of brass tacks between each cushion and then a border of brass tacks around the edge. I didn't think it would turn out showcase quality, but I was pleasantly surprised at how well I did. It isn't perfect, but it's perfect for me. I think it looks so cool. So fashion forward. (Sorry, I just got done watching Project Runway.) It was a fun little project, and one that I have a bruised thumb and several bleeding cuts to show for. You know me, my art hurts me so. I had to offer it up for your approval. As always, I'll entertain your comments as long as your comments entertain me.

My trip to Washington, D.C. and New York City is fast approaching. If you'd like to hang out be sure to let me know. I've already gotten word from JonS■■■ and Mr. K■■■■■■. Hopefully, I'll be able to hook up with Topher in NYC. As an added bonus, the Monday after I get home from vacation, I will be jetting off to Seattle! You believe that? So if anybody is in the northwest, also let me know. Mr. Ryan C■■■■■■ has already expressed an interest, but I should have puh-lenty of time up there, so I'd love some company. g*d, I'm such a jetsetter. I think it's bed time. Czech you sluts later!

Kelly went away for a while. When she returned, she brought with her a man named Alexander. Alexander has more money than you or I will ever see in 10 lifetimes. Aside from that little tid-bit, he's a really cool, laid back, generous guy. Him and Kelly get along really well. That said, I've had a few firsts as of late.

First, I broke the Sidesho-Land Speed Record. I'm not sure what it was before, probably about 100mph that one time Allison and I made it from College Station to Dallas in just over 2 hours. The new record is 150mph. Did I mention Alexander used to be a race car driver? He has some really awesome car, but I obviously don't remember what kind it is. The other night Daniel, Matt C■■■■, his friend Sean, and I met up with Kelly and Alexander here in the circle. Afterwards, he took us for a spin down the Tollway. Treating lanes as if they were a mere suggestion, we weaved our way in and around traffic until we hit a top speed of just around 150mph. I was pretty scared, but it was such a rush.

Shortly thereafter, we were invited out to the boat. Yup, I broke the Sidesho-Water Speed Record. Can you believe that I've never been to Lake Lewisville? Or I hadn't, rather. Well, I have now and I must say the next time you get out that way, you simply must do it on a certified yacht. This thing had a little picnic table in the back, and a couch, and a bedroom, and a kitchen, and a bathroom, and it hauled ass too. It was so nice. He let me drive it a little bit even though I didn't know what the fuck I was doing. And when we were sitting out front on top of the boat, he would veer wildly trying to knock us off. I spent the whole day out there sipping on beers, chatting it up with Daniel, Hunter, Lauren, Matt C■■■■, and of course, Kelly and Alexander. It was just a gorgeous day and way too much fun. I'm hoping we do that like every weekend.

I had to get those stories out there because I'm gonna have a different story to tell when I get home in a few hours. Daniel is about to take me down to see the doctor that does the Pillar Procedure. I'm getting that done as well as a turbinate cobilation (?). They're gonna stick foam pillars in my throat and shove a laser up my nose, essentially. Here's a link to that article Ryan S■■■ wrote about me for the Dallas Voice. I don't think I ever shared it with you all. So wish me luck. It probably won't help me sleep, but it couldn't hurt. Ciao bellas.

My blog affects my life immensely. It can manifest in two ways. Either I alter my usual patterns hoping to generate a blog-worthy story, or the things that I've said on my website are read by people who then affect my life. That's why I do shit like ear candling and enrolling in the art institute. The other night, I ran into Ryan S■■■ and he started hitting me because I said he always disagrees with me. Those are just a few examples of a constant whirlwind. SideshoViD.com is never far from my mind.

I tell you this, because I don't want you to think I've left you hanging. 90% of the day, I am writing blogs in my head. And I've written this one again, and again, and again, and again. If I write something happy-go-lucky, it will appear to others that I am flighty and disengaged. If I write something too honest, I'll betray my own self, and won't stand to entertain any of you, which is always one of my goals. I don't know what I'm really trying to say, just basically informing you that I'm going to just try to pick and choose humorous anecdotes from my day and highlight those, but I am, in no way, belittling anything that has happened recently.

I got a new noise machine for my bedroom -- The Sound Soother 50. It was really expensive, but it came with a remote control, I can plug my iPod into it and use it as a speaker, and the sounds are incredibly real. I've been sleeping with "downpour" a lot and I like to nap with "bamboo chimes." Another favorite of mine is "clothes dyer." There are a few questionable ones like "pasture" and "buggy ride," like who the fuck wants to fall asleep to cows mooing. You'd have to be a country-ass bumpkin. "Heartbeat" is also kinda creepy, but I think that's supposed to be good for babies. I just had to get some sort of background noise to block out anything ambient. My brain has started taking sounds it hears while I'm sleeping, creating a terrifying story to explain the sound, and overlaying it on top of my actual sights and sounds as I sleepwalk. Technically, they're not nightmares, since nightmares are types of dreams, dreams only occur during REM, and my brain does not go into REM. Their official name is night terrors. Hahaha. Fucking great.

I've stopped taking Provigil. While the doctor said that it had nothing to do with my heart rate, I found myself with a resting heart rate of 145bpm. Just to put that in perspective, it should be less than 80bpm ... the only reason your heart should beat 145 times per minute is if you have just sprinted a 5k. That was a concern for me so I stopped the Provigil. It's been hard, but I'm feuling my body now with complex carbohydrates and natural fructose to offset the ill effects of ideopathic hypersomnia (aka excessive sleepiness, but ideopathic hypersomnia sounds more medical). A high resting heart rate is known as tachycardia. Fuck me sideways, I knew I was broken-hearted, but I didn't know I had a broken heart.

I'm looking forward to several appointments with doctors in the following weeks. I'm probably going to be having lots of surgeries and procedures to aid me in my breathing, and then we can shift focus to addressing these K-alpha complex waves my brain produces for no reason. Yippee.

I hung out last night with my most sabulous friend, Brett. We had a lot of fun. He said his father still reads my website. He was concerned about me and had wanted to put a comment on my comment-less post a couple back. He also said he had left me a comment once but wouldn't ever tell Brett which one. It took me all of half a second to say, "I bet he was the one who left me that 'Stone Age to the Space Age and still no follow up on what bar was first' comment after Febrehabruarii." He just spoke with him and sure enough, I was right. I know my website way too well. Like I said, I am both it's unforgiving master, and it's unwitting slave.

Next week I am meeting three days with my new personal trainer. We've set up a program for me that should have me around 15% body fat before summer. I'm refocusing my negative, self-destructive energy as of late into a rather obsessive dedication to self-improvement. I've already lost 12 pounds, but that was mostly from an unintentional anorexia, but I was pleased that I didn't rebound at all. I'm viewing eating now, not as an enjoyable social experience, but as a necessity to feul my body. I have been eating SO well for the past few days and I already feel infinitely better. Just wait, people, I'll come out the other end of this better for it. I fucking guarantee.

Have a good week at work, and I'll be trying to find things to talk about throughout the week. Laaaaaaaaaaaate.

I've had this argument many times in my life. Mr. K■■■■■■ and I almost came to blows over it. It has become increasingly prevalent in my life because of the frequency with which my boss errors in his grammar. I am speaking, of course, about the answer to the age old question, "How are you?"

"Well" is an adverb. It modifies a verb, adjective, or other adverb. "Good" is an adjective. It modifies a noun. I think we can all agree on that (although Ryan S■■■ has already begun his rebuttal before even finishing my blog or determining my stance on the subject).

There are two ways to tell someone how you are. You can say, "I am           ," or "I am doing           ." In the first sentence, the blank is modifying the subject "I," which is a pronoun, a type of noun. You would then use an adjective to modify that noun, so the complete correct sentence would be, "I am good." In the second sentence the blank is modifying the word "doing," which is a verb. You would then use an adverb to modify that verb, so the complete correct sentence would be, "I am doing well," or "I am doing drugs."

The reason people become confused on the issue is because it is grammatically correct to say, "I am well." It is a caveat to the rule, specifically created for when you are describing your physical well-being (coincidence?). Without this exception to the rules, your third grade teacher never would have corrected you when you told her, "I don't feel good," as an excuse to get a drink of water and wander the halls. To say, "I don't feel well," would (normally) infer that your sense of feeling is inadequate -- that you either can't sense when your hand is on the stove, or you're a cold hearted bitch when it comes to relationships. However, with this exception, you are clearly describing your state of physical well-being. You don't feel well. There is something medically wrong with you.

If you don't speak in full sentences, and no one does because we don't have time for that shit, then the unnecessary assumed words are, "I am." If you're still with me at this point, you'll then agree that if your boss, friend or bartender asks, "How are you?" you should reply, "Good." Only if a doctor or nurse asks you, "How are you?" should you reply, "Well."

So if you're continuously using, "Well," or, "I'm well," with your friends, family and coworkers in an attempt to sound smart, instead use correct English and actually be smart. Please?

Good.

I arrived in Austin five days ago. I have yet to sleep. Traveling is hard for me because any deviation from my regular sleep habits hurts. My room back home is completely dedicated to sleep with climate control, dark walls and ceiling, fuckin rawkin mattress, expensive sheets, swedish pillows. Hotel rooms just can't offer you all of that. They don't make me sleep or anything, but every little bit helps. When you sleep for 8 minutes a night, inching that up to 10 minutes can really make a huge difference.

This has made me more serious about having surgery. There is a new procedure called the Pillar Procedure. When you have apnea, the soft pallate at the back of your throat relaxes and collapses, cutting off your supply of air. Your brain realizes this and "wakes" you up momentarily to take a breath. The Pillar Procedure involves inserting 3 foam pillars into that soft pallate to make it more rigid and hopefully stop this from happening. It's about a 15 minute procedure and they say you can do it on your lunch break and return to work. If you're not squeamish, you can go to http://restoremedical.com/video.asp and actually watch them fucking do it. It scared the bejesus out of me.

Ryan S■■■ wrote an article about the Pillar Procedure in the Dallas Voice. It featured me and a prominent doctor in the field. Even though Ryan fabricated some stories about me sleep walking to the kitchen and getting a knife, acting out a dream that I wanted cake ??????? which is embarrassing because sleep walking has nothing to do with acting out dreams. But regardless, I emailed that doctor asking him if he would meet with me for free. I know that doctors don't typically do pro bono work, but he mentioned to Ryan that he would like to meet me and I'd basically promise to have surgery if he would do that, so I figured it was worth a shot. What sucks is that it costs $2,000 to get stabbed in the throat. And I'm all but certain that my new insurance company doesn't take sleep medicine seriously.

I have got to try something. I'm sick of people perceiving me as lazy and irresponsible. It's like, fuck, doesn't anyone ever show up to work tired for respectable reasons? Everyone always assumes I am hungover. It sucks. I am seriously only hungover like 1 out of every 3 times I'm accused. If this pillar shit doesn't work, I'm gonna get a g*d damned tracheotomy and bypass this whole problem once and for all.

Sorry if this entry was a bit scattered, there's a Simple Life marathon on the tele and I am thoroughly amused. It's hot.

This month is shaping up to be a bit sparse on the entries. My apologies. But I did want to take a moment to let you all know that I have a third niece! Kelsey Lee F■■■■ was born yesterday. Michael, let me know if I messed that up, I've had a few beers since we last spoke. This is my third sibling to have a daughter once again putting me back in the lead for the most nieces of anyone in my family. I'm really excited. I haven't seen pictures yet, but I'm sure she's just beautiful.

Tonight I went to Ryan S■■■'s holidaze party graciously hosted by Ben et. al. We drank a little, at some delicious food, and exchanged "secret" Santa gifts. I got Ryan a bottle of Grey Goose because honestly, I did some last minute shopping, and you can't go wrong there. Kayne got me a hair crimper harkening back to a conversation months ago where someone posed the question, "If I bought you a crimper, would you crimp your hair?" The answer? Yes.

My hair is now crimped and streaked with blue, orange, and red colored hair spray so I have to take another shower before I go to bed and it's ever so late and work has been ever so hellish even without staying up late, so tomorrow should be interesting. Wish me luck!

I just got my Addison! newsletter in the mail. I really have not been utilizing all that this city! has to offer. Honestly, I just keep eating at the same restaurants! over and over again when there are literally hundreds I have not tried. There's the Water Tower Theater! a stones throw from my apartment and I have yet to see a show. Speaking of theater! they are playing The Santaland Diaries! by David Sedaris! December 7th through the 23rd. Tickets! are $17-30, anybody want to go?

I also hear a lot about this Addison! Gym. Apparently, if you can prove that you live in Addison! (which shouldn't be hard to do since ... I do), there is a one time fee of $10 for a lifetime membership. I was confused as to how this could possibly be profitable for them. But I found out that I already pay for the gym. It's like part of my taxes. I suppose since we don't have schools or anything lame like that, we can afford to allot money to the Recreation Department. So I need to go check that out and see if it's as nice as Lifetime. I pay for my gym, but my company reimburses me the majority of it as part of the employee wellness program, so I guess I could always have two gym memberships. It's just a matter of getting off my lazy ass and signing up.

AllieD's friend Jennifer IMed me today and informed me that Target has outlawed Xmas. In addition, they have started selling bargain-brand vibrators at all of their stores. This is unsubstantiated information from an unknown source, but I'm definitely going to have to research this. Anyone with any information, please let me know.

I've decided in 2006 to repeat my February experiment. I'm sure you'll all recall it from this year. In 2006, though, it will (of course) be called Febrehabruarii. Like you didn't see that coming. I'm thinking that this year will be even more intense than last year. No booze, no cigarettes, no caffeine, no staying up late, no skipping even one workout, no ground beef or fatty food, no spending money frivolously. Come March, I am going to be really, really, ridiculously good looking (and out of debt). Mark my words. Anyone want to take up the Febrehabruarii experiment with me?

I might be getting a new washer and dryer today. I'm buying Miles' old ones from him because mine squeak and it is annoying. Lil Jarrod randomly called me today and we went to lunch with Daniel at J's, yum, and he said he wanted a washer and dryer, so I'm giving mine to him. Does anyone have a truck that we could use? You'd have to drive from Addison! to Den-ton¿ but I'm sure we could find some way to make it worth your while. I don't know how fun it will be to have an extra bed and an extra W/D set all chillin in my living room. I mean I know I'm white trash, but srsly.

I'm going to OKC for Thanksgiving to eat my 140 dollar Heritage turkey with my parents, sister & fam, so I'll be out Wednesday through Saturday. I got another coupon from my company for a free Butterball turkey, though, so I think I'm gonna throw my own Thanksgiving party later. Probably mid-December when Owen is in town. Miles offered to let me throw it over at the Hamptons (his new house -- in the Hamptons of Addison!). So that should be fun. I'll be sure to keep you all posted on that.

This next week is going to suck, especially with this attitude, but it will be a short one so I'm sure I can survive. It's gonna be a big push to remain employed through the end of the year but I'm sure I can do it. And, I think that's all I had to say. Funny, when I sat down, I thought I had nothing to talk about. Carpe diem, friends! HA! HA!

Things just couldn't be peachier than they are right now. I know I promise Raul that I wouldn't talk about sleep anymore, but it's really integral to the story I'm about to tell, so he can continue fucking himself. They think that curing my apnea has given rise to a bigger, more serious problem. Like when my brain is allowed to do whatever it wants in REM, it makes poor decisions about how to spend that time. I'm not sure if or how they fix that (nor do they know exactly what it is yet, we're working together to figure that out) but it does make for good conversation. "Hi, my brain doesn't work."

Last night we had far too many people on the stoop. It really was just a matter of time before the police showed up and told us to go inside, which they did. They acted pretty much the same way we did -- not surprised at all to see us. They rolled down their windows without getting out and were like "Hey guys" and we nodded emphatically and got up and went inside. That's when the Texas Hold'em tournament began. It was 10 dollars to play, which I was kind of upset with since I ALWAYS lose, but whathefuck, I played. I ended up doing very well for myself and winning the pot. Cha-ching! I owe everyone breakfast today, so there go my winnings.

I was reading Miles' website the other day and I was kind of jealous of the sentiments he was expressing. He talked about how lately he's been focusing and rekindling old friendships and fueling new ones. And I pretty much feel the same. My stoop community is really fun and funny and the more the Addison Circle grows, the happier I am. It's definitely rounded out like fer shur.

So the reason my sleep is integral to the story, g*d damn I got off track and here I am doing it again, damned hangover, is because I bought a bed! I was driving home from work, made an evasive maneuver and bought a fucking bed. It's a Simmon's Beautyrest king sized and it will be here at 5 today. It's been soooo long since I've made a several thousand dollar impulse buy. I forgot how alive it makes you feel! Just as soon as it gets here and I get sheets and everything, I'll invite you all to come spend a night in it. Uh oh, I think it's orgie:30!

The reason I'm up now is because they're running a water compressor outside my window, not to be confused with the fucking jack hammer they had going last weekend. Don't worry though, I have definitely called and complained twice now. But I'm real cool about it so hopefully I'll get something free. I think I'm gonna call Miles and Daniel now and see if they're ready for their free breakfast cause once I'm up I'm up (until I nap).

Laaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaate.

This has turned into the weekend from hell. They pulled what they glibly described as "the ol' bait and switch." My "3 day all expenses paid weekend in New York City" has turned into "working 18 hours a day in Queens while commuting from South Jersey all over Labor Day weekend." I'd have to say I rarely if ever get this pissed. It has just been a disaster. My boss and boss's boss and boss's boss's boss aren't happy about how things went down either, so without divulging anything that would get me dooced, they've promised to make it up to me. And I know they will. And while I'm here I'm working hard. I've just never been so slighted before.

It's all thankless too, that's the best part. So just in case any of you were jealous, which I know some of you were, because quite honestly, I'm awesome, this is one of those times when you can lean your lawn chair way back as you bask in the simplicity of your own living room. I'm having no fun at all.

So I won't even get to see New York City, besides what I see from the highways as I traverse my way from Jersey to NYC through toll roads, turn pikes, and bridges. The bridges here have tolls as high as 9 dollars. Insanity. I am making my way pretty well though. Today I was chatting with my sister on the drive home and took a wrong split in the highway and ended up in Williamsburg. With my limited knowledge of the city I was able to make it back to Queens and then start my trip over again. I kinda love the city itself. It's rather sexy. I just wish I could enjoy it.

Enough complaining though. I was supposed to come home the 16th and I just changed my flight to the 9th. They can eat me if they don't like it. I informed my boss that I was coming home early and he encouraged me to do so. It's so nice to have management that really and truly backs you up and is understanding and respectful. That's what's lacking here.

No NYC for me, but yay I'm coming home. I can't wait to be home. In two weeks I go back to the sleep clinic to get my Constant Positive Air Pressure (CPAP) machine calibrated. Another night in the sleep lab, ugh! The last one wasn't as bad as I thought. You know how I said I didn't sleep at all? Well I did. I slept for six and a half hours. I just didn't realize it because I rarely made it out of the first stage of sleep. I only hit REM for 20 minutes, so I basically have been getting about 20 minutes of sleep a night for the past decade. It's nice to know I'm not crazy.

The apnea though. Lordy, lordy! A normal 24 year old probably wakes up during the course of the night about 5 times for any range of reasons. I, on the other hand, again, because I'm awesome, wake up 70 fucking times an HOUR!1!! They classify that as "severe." No shit. And every time I wake up it is because I've stopped breathing. So I stop breathing 70 times per hour. I'll spare you the hassle of pulling up your desktop calculator -- That's roughly every 51 seconds. Not exactly conducive to sleep. But this CPAP stops that from happening, meaning I could hit REM for 8 hours in one night. Holy shit, can you imagine what a difference that would make in my life?!

A few people have separately expressed the same concern. What if my personality changes on account of this? Think about it. How much more easy going are you after you've just pulled an all-nighter? Just kinda lazily making through the day. Miles even commented that when he's really tired he gets loopy and funny. I'm like that all the time. What if when I'm well rested I'm a really serious asshole? Hard to imagine, I know, I know.

Anyway, I gotta go piss and moan a little more to my parents, I just wanted you all to know that I'm miserable, so you could at least feel a little better about your own Labor Day weekend. An ULDE:IYDKYDG this is not. THIS time when I get back I'm not going nowhere, no how. So all those parties I've promised you all, we're gonna have. Unfortunately medical costs have bankrupted me, but I still have enough $$$ to get bombed. So this weekend, Ryan S■■■ specifically, it's on!

I thought I could squeeze a few more aliases out of you, since I was enjoying them so terribly much, but I guess not. If you think of one later, please feel free to share it whenever it comes together.

I couldn't possibly wait to update, though the time that has passed, and the beers that have passed through my urethra since then may convolute the stories. Sorry, was that gross? Anyway, I wanted to let you all know that the Addison Circle is coming together. Premier new members? Namely Miles, Brett S■■■ and Todd (although Todd's application is still under geographical review). Then there was Daniel and Kelly (?). They are my neighbors across the street.

So the story. Brett S■■■ and I have been wanting to hang out ever since I got back from Sweden and just now decided to carpe the diem and giterdone. He came over under the premise that we would drink and watch movies and see what happened. Well, what happened is that Miles and Todd were enjoying the Dallas Wind Symphony (which ended up being a 5 piece brass band) down in the Circle. We joined them for a bit, listened to the Sousa, and then I went to get some liquor and beer. When we were walking into my apartment to enjoy said booze, we got whistled at. Who does that? There were two boys and a girl sitting on the stoop across the street, so Todd yelled at them, "Which one of ya'll whistled." Well it turned out to be Jordan, who came up to say hello and invite us to come across to join their party at Daniel's. Gay neighbor a stone's throw away? Huzzah.

So we went and drank and chatted and then they brought out the Roor. I'm not sure I can adequately describe the Roor. It was the biggest, most intricate bong ever constructed. I swear to g*d, they all but brought out the welding torch to put this thing together. It had like 3 water reservoirs in it. I've never seen anything like it. This coming from the guy who uses a bong as a flower vase -- and nothing but a flower vase -- go figure.

It's not often that SideshoViD.com delves into the seedy underbelly of drug consumption, and it won't be through my own personal experience that we go there, but we do have to talk a bit about Mr. S■■■. As you might expect, Brett S■■■ is SABULOUS. He is both Sandy and gritty. He decided to puff-puff-pass for the first time given the circumstances. The combination of boxed wine, 100% agave tequila, vodka, beer and Mary Jane proved too much for our fearless partier. Miles and I walked him home around midnight and put him in my bed. We could have just left him alone, but instead decided to interview him on video with Miles' digital camera to hilarious results. Can I get a copy of that, btw, Miles?

We rounded out the night just having a grand old time with about 6 of their friends and it must, must occur again. BUT, first I have to go to Cincinnati for 2 weeks following my trip to Austin this weekend. So I will be gone for 3 weekends in a row. Just as the Circle is rounding out! DAMNIT! I am going to find a hotel that definitely has high speed internet access (so I can work from the hotel room, duh) so I will surely be updating you all from the WONderous land of Ohio. I have a feeling it's the Oklahoma of the north. Ugh. But a change of scenery is a change of scenery. It's time to get horizontal. Peace, bitches.

I think I might need to start a Sleep Files of sorts. This will be last installment in that epic saga for a while. I went to the clinic today. They asked a lot of intelligent questions. They said I definitely need to come back and spend a night in their sleep lab. If anybody wants to go with me, we can totally spoon ... though I'm not sure if that's allowed.

The doctor was also kind enough to point out the two physical features I am probably the most self conscious about (although that term is just relative since I'm not really self conscious). He asked me if I'd ever broken my nose and then seemed to think I was lying to him when I said no. He said I have a deviated septum that could be contributing to my problem. He also commented on my overbite and said that my lower mandible being farther back could be pressing my tongue against the back of my throat as I sleep. Both of these could be corrected with very painful surgery, but I know a thing our two about blindingly painful surgeries, so I'd be willing to go along with it if they thought I needed it. That's kind of a last resort and they're not even sure it would come to that until I complete the sleep test. Still, if I did do that, I'd totally have a cosmetic surgeon come along for the ride to make the pain and suffering and rehabilitation worth it.

That sleep test won't be happening until I return from Cincinnati, though, so we can close this chapter for a while. I was quite tired at my appointment today due to breaking the sleep rules last night to go downtown for a couple glasses of wine with JD. Definitely need to make a habit of that.

Today at work, my body builder coworker delivered my 10 POUND BAG of whey protein that I told him I wanted. I am now supplementing my diet. But seriously, 10 pounds is sooo much more than I thought it was. Picture like a bag of dog food, only completely filled with powder. I laughed so hard when I saw it. It's going to last me well past its 2007 expiration date. So I came home from the workout, drank my shake, and then cleaned Tuna's tank. It was way past due. He seems rather pleased that I finally got around to it. I set him next to the laptop while I was in the bathtub scrubbin his rocks. When I came back out he was surfing around Friendster. Did he add you?

Finally, at lunch today somebody made a mention of an alias. All three of us in rapid succession offered up our aliases, mine being Donovan Blankenship. Then that made me think of Joey and Phoebe being Ken Adams and Regina Philange. And naturally that led me to think about how Allison adopted Fionula Flannigan as hers. Having a cool alias is a MUST. So I ask you, dear viewers, to post your pseudonym here on a comment. And with that, I bid you adieu.

My oldest brother, Michael, who lives in Sacramento is expecting a baby. I think I might have told a lot of you that this one was going to be a boy. This information was based on a sonogram in early July that said there was a 95% chance that it would be a boy. Well, turns out that our little Seabiscuit underdog is actually my third niece. How fun is that? I didn't really have my heart set on it being a boy or a girl, so it just cracks me up that the initial guess was wrong.

Speaking of crack, former Dallas Cowboys goalie and outfielder, Michael Irvin, was working out at my gym today. We happen to be there simultaneously on occasion. He works out while two guys stand beside him screaming encouragement. It's pretty ridiculous. They yell things like, "THROW IT UP! THROW IT UP!" and it makes me want to throw it up.

He asked me for my autograph, but I didn't have a pen.

I got my much desired referral to the sleep clinic, but now I have to go to a consultation with the sleep clinic doctors. That is tomorrow morning. I had to fill out a 13 page questionnaire regarding my sleep habits and symptoms. 2 of those pages were supposed to be filled out by someone who has regularly observed you sleeping. It's been a long, long time since I've had someone who regularly observed me sleeping, so I had to call 27. I actually learned a lot about my little problem when I asked him to 'check all that apply' given a list of symptoms. He said that I have severe problems with:
light snoring, loud snoring, choking, pause in breathing, gasping for air, twitching or kicking of legs, sitting up in bed not awake, getting out of bed not awake, becoming very rigid and/or shaking

That's kind of scary. I really didn't realize it was all that bad. People die from this shit. Wouldn't it be totally funny if I suffocated from sleep apnea the day before I went to the sleep clinic. That would make a great blog. If that happens, somebody take up the reins.

How come we spell it c-o-n-v-e-r-s-a-t-i-o-n but abbreviate it 'convo'? Shouldn't it be 'conver'?

One last note. Owen mentioned this to me first a while ago but it was down, now it's back up. Everyone, and I mean everyone, go to http://earth.google.com and download Google Earth IMMEDIATELY. It is the greatest thing that has ever happened to me. Especially download it on your work computer because it is amusing for hours and hours and hours.

There is a new name for my 'new' hair-do. It's called the breeze. Ryan S■■■ and I came up with it because it appears as though an invisible breeze is constantly blowing from the right. I'm a big fan of the breeze and plan to take it to extremes that rival my fox hawk experimentation. Tonight I went to a barbeque at Eddie's house with a bunch of peeps. It was decided that I have to crimp my hair. This guy said he would buy me a crimper if I would go out with my hair crimped. I'm going to see if I can get that started. How fucking funny would that be? Very.

I do need to make an appt to have my hair cut before AllieD's wedding. I'm thinking of going platinum, but I'm not entirely sure. I may let Xristofer have the final say since I'm always so damn happy with the results, but I am kind of tired of the dark. I can hide the fact that my blonde hair has grown out blonde highlights, but it's a little bit more obvious with the dark. All I know is that I want it to be so much longer than it is and I am convinced that it has stopped growing. Patience has never been my #1 virtue.

Had a pretty good weekend. Met lots of new neighbors that could be pretty fun. Drank lots and lots of beer. Watched Mr. and Mrs. Smith with no sound (review to follow). All in all, not too shabby. Tomorrow I go to the doctor to get my apnea fixed. I cannot wait. Plus, I'll leave work early. Hurrah!

Well hello there, everybody. This is Sidesho reporting to you live from Ryan S■■■'s fabulously newly painted apartment ... oh, and also drunk as hail. He was supposed to wake up and drink more with me when I got home but that has proven unpossible. Me fail English?

So tonight I had planned on going out on account that I do not have to work tomorrow. RAWK! But then, lo and behold, I get a call from the callbox of my apartment and it is JennyC■■■ and her mother. They had been at the Kaboom Town hoopla hosted by my gracious landlord and wanted to cool off. Okay, no problem. But then they managed to convince me to join them for the fireworks. More and more, as the years pass, I have found myself less and less interested in the traditional festivities dictacted by every holiday. I couldn't have cared less whether or not I saw fireworks. (Although fireworks do hold a special place in my heart since when I was little my parents used to tell me that the fireworks were in honor of my birthday.) So, I find myself on the top floor of a parking garage watching fireworks. In their defense, it was the best finale I have ever seen in my life. Probably 5 fireworks a second for about 5 minutes. RAD!

After that, we eat at a piss-poor restaurant inside Addison Circle and then I go home. Turns out, every fucking road in Addison is a parking lot. At this point, I've resolved myself to not go out, on account that I cannot leave the parking garage. A few IMs with Ryan S■■■ later, I am on the road bound for downtown Dallas. It was rigoddamndiculous getting to the Tollway, but when I finally did, we were en route to JRs. Keith and Lauren and some girl named Katie that I met for the first time tonight (?) joined us. I managed to get drunk as hail between 12:30 and 2:00am. But that couldn't possibly be enough for me, right? Right?!

So I took Ryan S■■■ home to his beatiful and newly painted apartment and proceeded to drink some more when disaster struck. We are out of cigarettes! Unacceptable when plastered. So he goes to bed and I walk my happy ass to the 24-7 Wally Mart nearby to get some. I talked to my lover Marshall the whole way there. That was fun since I haven't talked to him in 4-eva, and he claims to have blonde hair now. So anyway, I bought some squares, as Joseph would call them, and then walked home to find Ryan - surprise - passed the fuck out and me drinking alone.

So there we are. By my records, I have made zero grammatical mistakes. You're more than welcome to double check that assertion. You'll notice that when I'm drunk I just ramble; I don't skimp on the important stuff. Please don't forget that my birthday is on Wednesday. No one that I know of has made any plans for me, so I think I'm going to take Thursday off of work and go out Wednesday with Andrew. I'll definitely keep you all posted on that. Later sk8ers!

I hope everyone has big plans today for getting sunburnt, eating watermelon, and watching fireworks. Me? I'm sitting in my very air conditioned apartment watching a show about redneks in Oklahoma noodling for fish. This is where they catch gigantic catfish using their hands as bait. It has really made me think about Europe a lot and how I wish I was there. I went to my Swedish chat site thing and started saving off pictures of guys with wicked awesome hair just in case my membership has an expiration date and I can't do this at a later date.

Lately it seems like everything that I'm about is for something in the future. I'm working on this future hair. I can't wait to get my future furniture in my future apartment. In reality, none of it will ever, ever happen given my current spending habits. I am down to like no money whatsoever and since I just paid my rent late (on account of this being a Sunday and tomorrow being a holiday ... FUCK!) I'm going to owe like an additional 100 bucks that I don't have. Frustration.

I spent all day yesterday painting Ryan S■■■'s apartment. We didn't get done but we did do a LOT. It looks totally awesome ... or rather it will, soon. I'll snap a pic of it sometime for all of you to see. Speaking of pictures, I got my Europe pictures back forever ago I just haven't had the patience to post them yet. I'll do that within the next year. Later skaters.

P.S. You all know my birthday is on Wednesday, the 6th, right? K

I just got done wiring up my new programmable thermostat in my apartment. I know it's not like me to do shit ... but I did! I took the old ghetto Johnson Controls (blech) mechanical thing off the wall, like the one we all have. Then I unwired it, removed the baseplate, replaced it with my baseplate, rewired everything, found some batteries for the display, mounted it, programmed it ... we are in business my friends. No longer will I accidentally leave my apartment at a frosty 65 degrees while I'm away at work.

Speaking of Frosty, I got my pictures back from Cameron F■■■ a while ago. I didn't really make a hoopla about it or really show them to many people. It's not that I didn't like them, quite the opposite, in fact. I like them a great deal. I just don't care what anybody else's opinion on them is. But, I have gotten lots of requests recently, so to satiate the insane lust for all things Sidesho, I've decided to post you one picture here to look at. I know, it's sex. You don't have to tell me.

Dear Justin, Thank you for my belt. I have never felt like more of a rockstar than this weekend when I got to wear it out and hang out with you at the same time. Dear everyone else, this belt was revolutionary. It's blue LEDs that scroll messages across your crotch. Mine said "JUSTIN GAVE ME THIS!" "THIS IS SO TRASHY!!1!" "BUY ME A DRINK" "BLING! BLING!" and then had some scrolling hearts. But the best message was my phone number. I got a lot of laughs for it, but only two phone calls the whole night. All in all it was a major hit, and while I'm not gonna Sean-W■■■■ the thing, I think I won't retire it as diligently as I often do with kickass articles of clothing. We shall see.

Dear Allison, I'm sorry that I'm not coming to see you next month. I know we had joked about which one of us would flake out first, but I just wanted you to know that my delaying of the trip is entirely financial. I had really been looking forward to seeing you. In fact, I can proove it. I was so stoked about getting to hang out with you, that I devised a little gift-of-sorts. For the past 3 months I did not shave my upper lip. I kept my chin trimmed and the sides of my face shorn into something I dubbed the "three-tier beard," but the stache just grew and grew. You see, I thought it would be really funny if after having not seen me since January, I stepped off the airplane to greet you with the biggest, bushiest, best mustache I have ever grown in my life. It was heart wrenching to finally shave it off, but I just couldn't keep it going until February. So, dear Allison ... enjoy:

And now we run into the age-old blogging problem of having nothing to say. I don't often fall victim to the inspiration hiatus that kills so many virgin blogs (and burns.tk) but lately I have. Not that the actual excitement level of my life has changed per se, i'm just not expending as much energy trying to jazz it up. I kept waiting for something obviously bloggable to happen, but when that never came to be, I decided to give you one of these apologetic posts.

I have a new friend. He hates me. He's a long time Sidesho-viewer whose distaste for the Sidesho began with an innocuous LJ comment where I determined his use of the word "ironic" needed a little dictionary.com help. It was innocent enough, I thought. Anyway, long story short, he IMed me to tell me that he hated me, I naturally invited him out for a beer, and now we're friends. Yay!

It's pretty much a sure thing now that I won't be going to Australia in July. My debt, coupled with the higher-than-anticipated costs of airfare, have motivated me to follow Delilah's advice and postpone the trek until February. Plus, February is Gay Pride Month on that kooky island. That's something you don't want to go through life without experiencing. I am still sorely disappointed that I'm not going, though, y'know? Say lah vee.

Perhaps this next week will be a non-stop roller coaster ride of thrills, chills and nunchuck skillz. Peace out, skillets.

Is it weird that after I get done tanning, the smell eminating from my skin makes me hungry? Somebody back me up on this one.

I got carded on the way home buying cigarettes at the discount tobacco store, and then the old Indian man went on like a 5 minute explanation of how I have a baby face and that means that I am a good person inside because a good person's features never change. I was like, "Thanks, Vishnu, can I have my smokes now?"

So I've decided to push back my Australia trip to July 7th through the 15th. That means that I will be here on July 4th and my birthday July 6th. Tomorrow is Justin's birthday, HAPPY BIRTHDAY JUSTIN. Hurry up and come to Dallas and bring me my belt. I saw a chick in a bar wearing one, and I simply must be the first to have one in my social circle or else the novelty will wear off.

This Saturday Ryan and Todd are coming over from Arlington to play drinking games with me. Thommi might come up. Lesbie Ann might come. I'm going to invite Will and Lindsay too to make it a royal college reunion. Ryan S■■■ is bringing Robert and I'm going to see if Lil Jarrod wants to come. Party at the 735 square feet of fun! Damnit, now I have to clean. Anyway, if you want to come, let me know.

I almost forgot, today at work I switched my keyboard to Dvorak. I'll let you all know how that works out for me.

Nothing else to report. My days blend into each other as I drudge through the monotony of a job well done. Czech you skillets later.

So I wake in the morning and I step outside and I take a deep breath and I get real high and I scream from the top of my lungs, "What's goin' on?" g*d, remember what a kickass song that was? Well, I'm not blonde anymore ... not entirely anyway. The whole perimeter of my hairline is dark brown and then the top is a more muted blonde with some of the dark weaved in. I absolutely love it. I went to see Xristopher on a whim and told him to surprise me. It's nice to have someone that you can say that to and know that the surprise will be good. I always walk out of Pompeo looking like a rawkstar. And I went out that night, naturally, and got a million compliments from friends and strangers, so that always makes it worth while.

I worked from home all last week. I know you all think that means that I didn't work, but you're wrong. I got a lot done. But I did massage my schedule just a bit. You see, Cameron F■■■ ended up extending his stay through Thursday. We went bowling one night ... I've got to start bowling more. I sucked it up at the bowling alley. Kevin, you would be ashamed of me. I could NOT get a strike, I kept getting 9. So after the game was over and there were like 3 minutes left on our lane, I would attempt a strike, fail, and then Cameron F■■■ would go for the spare. All this as fast as we possibly could, allowing me another 4 or 5 attempts at a strike, none of which were successful. How depressing.

To clarify this next portion, you would have to know that Cameron F■■■ is a photographer out in L.A. He does really nice work, too. You can check out some of his folio at www.cameronf■■■.com. Pretty cool, huh? So when I got an email from him asking if I would like to do a photoshoot I was understandably excited and flattered. But my hair! It was an overgrown tangled mess. So I called Xristopher and made an appointment to have it fixed. We went out to the strip that night and had a b-last. The next day I went and picked up Cameron F■■■ and we came back to my apartment. We sat and chatted for a while while he enjoyed his last Sonic burger (a delicacy that is apparently unavailable in L.A.). Then we picked out an outfit and got to shooting. I never in a million years thought I would be a model-of-sorts in an hours-long photoshoot. Definitely a selfesteem boost. I haven't seen any of the pictures yet, but I already feel beautiful.

The rest of the day we hung out with Hag and Junior and then said our fare-thee-wells to Cameron F■■■. I was sad to see him go. It's so rare that you hit it off so well with someone so instantly. It reminded me of hanging out with Chris A■■■■ in Berlin. Maybe there's not anything wrong with me like I was beginning to assume. Maybe I'm just in the wrong city. Cameron F■■■ is moving to Copenhagen for a few months and I am so jealous. He'll be a 15 minute train ride from where I was staying in Malmo. I still wish I was there. But my life is here, for the time being, and the next few years.

So there you have it, that's what I've been up to. My question to you is: When is the last time you did something you've never done before? If you can't think of one, then it's time to get crazy with the Cheeze Wiz. Laaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaate.

My brother went to some flea market in Humble and found a vendor with a bunch of belt buckles. When he saw this one, he thought of me and bought it for me. Luckily I still have my old cowboy belt to slap it onto and I wore it out on Friday. I called Stephen to tell him I was pimpin' the van buckle but that I couldn't tuck my shirt in or else I'd look stupid. He said, "Then just tell your friends about it when you see them and show them." The first thing I did when I got to Ryan S■■■'s apartment was lift up my shirt and say, "Did you see my belt buckle?" and when he started laughing, I followed it up with, "Idn't that wild? You ever seen anything like dat?" Wouldn't you know, I ended up saying that to everyone I saw on Friday ... and Saturday. Idn't that funny how alcohol can bring out the obnoxious catch phrases that are living inside you, dying to get out? Idn't that wild? I just wanted Steve to know that I do like the belt buckle and I definitely did make sure everyone saw it.

The other thing I wanted to show you was my new Beethoven bust. When we were in Wisconsin we went to my grandmother's old house and were invited to loot anything we wanted. This had been on her piano for many, many, many years. I just knew it would look awesome on my shelves in my living room. I think I was right. It adds just a touch of class. This morning I got a productivity bug (also known as a hangover) and decided to touch up the red paint in my living room that I originally put on the wall months ago. Now all the edges are cleeeeaaaan. I still have to do my entire bedroom, but I just never got around to it. I will probably do that in the coming days. Well, that's enough for the picture pages. Hope you enjoyed your visit to my apartment (and my crotch).

Shazzam! What a weekend to remember. Gotta love Memorial Day three-day weekends. Friday night I met up with Scott over at Sullivan's, a swanky jazz club down the street from me. I had a Knockout Martini that was delicious. Then some band started playing and I really wasn't feelin' it so I ducked out early. Fridays are not big party days for me anymore since I'm usually ready for bed by about 8:00. Xristopher, my stylist of TLC fame, was there too. When a girl walked by with a belt on that was scrolling words, he made some derisive comment about it to which I replied, "Yay! I'm getting one of them for my birthday!" They are so trashy/rad. Incidentally, Ryan S■■■ said the Neil Diamond concert was sold out within 20 minutes of the tickets going on sale, so Justin, it looks like you're in the lead for best gift ever now.

I woke up on Saturday around 7:30 in the a.m. because I am an old man. Instead of just laying around I decided to clean my apartment finally. Like, really clean it. I started in the far back corner of my closet and worked my way all the way around to the kitchen. It felt so nice to finally have a clean place, and it ended up being a really great idea because I was going to have company later.

After a midday nap, I went down to Ryan S■■■'s apartment where I purchased some citrus vodka and pineapple juice. I was recreating the Sullivan's Knockout Martini, which cost me (actually, Scott. Thanks!) 9 bucks apiece but were now a fraction of that. Naturally, I drank them like they were going out of style and had a good slur goin on by the time we arrived at the party downtown. Pretty-hair KYLE from College Station was there. He was disappointed by the lack of his name in caps and bold on my website. I try to oblige. Much socializing, much drinks, much cigarettes, much good times. Ryan H■■■■■■ showed up with his friend Cameron F■■■, from L.A. I ended up hanging out with them for the remainder of the night. Around 3 (total estimation) we left the party. Cameron F■■■ had never had a Whataburger taquito, and you know me, the unofficial Ambassador of Whataburger, so I got us all something to eat. We went back to my apartment and spent a while eating and sharing amusing movies on the internet. w00t!

The resulting hangover from such a wonderful night was fearsome. I couldn't move until about 4 in the afternoon. Despite sleeping all day I was still exhausted when Ryan S■■■ picked me up (since my car was still at his apartment) and took me to get some sushi and then meet the boys out at The Ginger Man. We had a couple beers there, everyone putting it on my tab unbeknownst to me. So when we eventually went to JRs and then S4, I had free drinks aplenty. For the first time ... well, ever ... I went outside of my apartment without first flat ironing my hair into total submission. I decided to try beach hair. Beach hair is when you look like you've just spent the day at the beach and the way you achieve it is to spray your hair with salt water. I'm not sure I was thrilled with the results, but it was something new, and that's always refreshing. Eddie gave me the best compliment of the night when he said, "Seriously, you look completely different every single time I see you." That is so one of the nicest things you can say to me.

On a side note, here's a tidbit of Sidesho-etiquette: Don't tell me where I bought my clothes. I know where I bought them. I bought them. Of course I know where I was when this transaction took place. When you say, "Hey, you got that shirt at Guess," what I actually hear is, "Hey, your shirt is generic." It's things like this that cause me to fly to foreign countries and spend multiple hundreds of dollars on a shirt only to ensure that no one will know where I got it or g*d forbid be wearing the same thing. Btw, I shop almost exclusively at Guess, so you're not impressing anybody with your retail knowledge. This is a totally hypothetical situation though, nothing about last night spurred this rant.

These weekend blogs are so hard to title since there is rarely a central theme to them. When that happens, I wait until I'm done typing it to see if anything jumps out at me. Since that didn't happen here, I'll use the old adage: When in doubt, just choose something totally random. Laaaaaaaaaaaaaaaate.

I was just talking to Allistralian and I remembered a story I totally forgot to tell you all. I was sitting in a hotel room in Oshkosh, WI watching TV with my mom, my brother-in-law Bryan, and sister-in-law Krouton. There was nothing particularly good on (except the old school Saturday Night Live hosted by Pee Wee Hermann with musical guest some-crappy-zydeco-band) so we were flipping. As my mom breezed by TLC, I saw the logo for Sheer Dallas and made her stop.

As I explained the premise of the show, they announced that the stylists were going to pair up for a big hair contest. It was a radio announcement I knew all too well, since I was in Pompeo, the salon, when it happened. I mentioned that this was where I got my hair done, although I refused to tell my mother just how much my haircut had actually cost. About halfway through the show, I said, "Hey, there's Xristopher, my stylist!" And a few seconds later ... you guessed it! ... BAM, a full head shot of yours truly. I was on TLC for 3 glorious seconds, sitting in a chair with a head full of foil. It was one of the proudest moments of my life. If anybody else happened to witness the blessed event, do be sure to let me know.

Next order of business, I went and saw Star Wars III: Revenge of the Sith tonight. I was gonna put it on my movie reviews, but I thought it was deserving of blog status. This movie was so badass. If you're a Star Wars fan at all, you're going to love it. If not, you'll still probably love it. There were so many badass elements to it, but my favorite was at the end. Before you whine and bitch, we all know what happens at the end, so I'm not ruining the movie. That'd be like me telling you the Titanic sinks. But when Darth Vader walks into the ship with the Emperor, they made it look exactly like Episode IV. They didn't revamp it at all. All the computers had ridiculously large, square LEDs that serve no purpose and all the dudes in there were wearing the old skool military uniforms. Love it. Go see it and let me know what you think.

To tie it all together, I think on my next haircut, scheduled for sometime in late June, I might go towards the dark side.

BUM BUM BUM BUMBA DUM BUMBA DUM

Taste of Addison might be more appropriately titled if it were called "Rednek White Trash Bash Carnie Festival Early 90s Rock Fair." Rest assured, dear readers, I will not be attending RWTBCFE9RF next year. No way no how. However, I would be remiss to not mention the silver lining on my clouded demeanor, Miss Lindsay S■■■. She pretty much forced me against my will to have a good time. We had some laughs at my unknowingly evil glances at fat people with cottage cheese butts in tube tops and hot pants. She fed me beers that we snuck in with her big purse. *Clink!* And she didn't make me sit in the grass ... puhlease, I was wearing BRAND NEW jeans.

Other highlight of the evening? Mister Will P■■■■■■ was in attendance. I made him hug me when he got there and he said I had "a whole lot of hair going on" and that I had "bulked up." We like Will. Will also bought me beers TWO AT A TIME. We really like Will. After I was good and toasted, we ran over to Duke's in Addison where I tried to make it up to my two patrons with an open tab and a few pitchers of beers. Deelish. What a way to spend an evening.

In other news, I had spent the earlier part of the evening having the most fabulous shopping date with our dear friend Ryan S■■■. We went to the West Village where we visited the new Octane store and I just had to get some new jeans that I could not afford. My Sevens that I bought with Leslie a little over a year ago and then proceeded to wear every single day of my life are almost at the end of theirs. The minute hole in the crotch grows bigger every day. The real reason for telling this story? Ryan S■■■ told me what he's planning on getting me for my birthday and I just CANNOT keep it in any longer. He's going to take me to see NEIL DIAMOND IN CONCERT! AAAAAAHHHH! That is the best fucking present anyone has ever given me! I bet none of you can top that! Omega omega omega SWEEEEEEEEEEET CAROLINE! BA DUH DUH DUH! I can not wait. The concert's not til later this summer and hopefully it won't be when I'm in Australia. But fucking Neil Diamond?! Can you imagine?! I love you Ryan S■■■!

The only present I can think of that's better than that is this belt I saw in the Post Oak Mall (it's a great shopping place). It's from that ghetto belt buckle store where they can carve you one that says BLING or something. But these ones are little screens that scroll words across it. I wanted one soo bad but I was too embarassed to buy one. I told Justin M■■■ to get me one for my birthday but he didn't sound like he was actually going to, so check with him to make sure before you buy me one. I don't want two in the same color. I also tried to buy myself a programmable thermostat for my apartment on eBay today. I bid with 6 hours left and then had to go to work and I lost. But there were like a 100 of them on there, so I'm gonna go bid on some more. I work in the damn controls industry, I don't need to be manually setting the temperature in my own apartment. Gosh!

And that ugly fucking maid never called me back neither.

Well, I thought that Backstreet joke was funny, anyway.

A new goal of mine: just once, just once, I would like to sleep through an entire night. I had talked to Edward S■■■■■ about this, since he has first hand knowledge of my sleep apnea and a medical degree, and he referred me to some websites where I could find a sleep clinic. They had their 10 good sleep habits, and I've decided to adhere to them come hell or high water for a while and see if it can help me without a doctor's visit. And the gooooood habits ARE! --

1. Maintain a Regular Sleep Schedule. It will be helpful for you to maintain a regular bedtime and arise time on both weekdays and weekends. Failure to do so, for example, by frequently staying up late can reset your internal biological clock to a later bedtime, leading to a circadian rhythm disorder called "delayed sleep phase syndrome." Also, it’s especially important to avoid "sleeping in" in the morning after a night of poor sleep. Instead, you should arise at the same time every morning, on both weekdays and weekends, regardless of how poor the prior night’s sleep has been. Although this can be difficult to initiate at first, it can, after a few weeks, help normalize your sleep-wake rhythm, and increase your sleep efficiency. (Guilty)

2. Get Enough Daylight. Lack of sufficient daily exposure to sunlight is often partially responsible for people’s difficulty in sleeping at night (daylight is a powerful regulator of the circadian cycle). It’s beneficial for you to spend at least 30 minutes per day outside, in natural sunlight, preferably during the first hour or two in the morning. If you’re unable to do so, try for a minimum of 30 minutes per day in strong artificial light. (Guilty)

3. Avoid Post-Lunch Caffeine. Most people know that that the intake of caffeine and similar stimulants in the afternoon and evening can interfere with falling asleep and remaining asleep at night. Most clinicians therefore advise avoiding caffeinated coffee, tea, and carbonated beverages for the rest of the day after lunch, as well as caffeine-like substances found in chocolate, cocoa, and in some weight-control aids, pain relievers, diuretics, and cold and allergy remedies. Some individuals are highly sensitive to caffeine and should stop use entirely. (Guilty)

4. Avoid Daytime Napping. With some exceptions (for example, in some cases of insomnia in the elderly), daytime napping solves only a short-term problem of fatigue, and it can contribute to the long-term development of insomnia at night, by disrupting normal sleep-wake rhythms, as noted earlier. In most cases, you should eliminate napping. (Guilty)

5. Make Your Bedroom Quiet and Comfortable. Insomniacs often overlook the fact that their bed and bedroom may not be as quiet or comfortable as they could be to promote restful sleep. It’s wise to assess for any disruptive lights, sounds, temperatures, or touch sensations and adopt whatever measures are necessary to reduce or eliminate these discomforts (for example, using eyeshades, earplugs, a low-volume background sound, or a new mattress or pillow). A bedroom temperature of 65° F is recommended for good sleep. (Guilty)

6. Avoid Alcohol Within Two Hours of Bedtime. Aside from the risk of developing alcoholism, it’s not productive to use alcohol as a sleeping aid, despite the popular notion that an evening "nightcap" promotes sleep. Research has shown that although one to two drinks within two hours of bedtime may assist with falling asleep, it tends to disrupt subsequent sleep by increasing later wakefulness. Also, alcohol intake prior to bedtime tends to relax the muscles of the throat and to suppress awakening mechanisms, thereby making snoring and sleep apnea episodes more likely, sometimes to the point of being life-threatening. (Guilty) (Guilty) (Guilty) (Guilty)

7. Avoid Smoking Nicotine Products Within Two Hours of Bedtime. Aside from the health risks associated with smoking, it‘s not productive to smoke up until bedtime. Like caffeine, nicotine is a central nervous system stimulant, and evening smoking tends to increase heart rate and blood pressure as well as stimulate brain activity in ways that are incompatible with sleep. Also, nicotine withdrawal symptoms during the night can contribute to wakefulness. People who stop smoking are likely to sleep better after 10 days of abstinence. (Guilty) (Guilty) (Guilty) (Guilty)

8. Avoid Large Meals Within Two Hours of Bedtime. Although a light snack before bed can be beneficial, consuming large meals in the late evening is not recommended. It can be sleep-incompatible to assign your gastro-intestinal tract the task of digesting a large meal at night, and it can increase the risk of heartburn during the night. (Guilty)

9. Avoid Exercise Within Two Hours of Bedtime. As part of the circadian cycle, core body temperature begins to decrease in the late evening, and this assists with falling asleep and remaining asleep later. Engaging in vigorous exercise within two hours of bedtime can be counter-productive because it tends to raise core body temperature and activate the nervous system. In the interest of improving sleep, the best time to exercise is in the late afternoon. (Guilty)

10. Wind Down Before Bedtime. Insomniacs commonly complain of physical tension and mental alertness when they should be sleeping. In the interest of physical relaxation and mental calm, it’s wise for you to wind down for one to two hours before bed by engaging in an enjoyable, relaxing activity. During this wind-down period, you should avoid working, studying, talking on the telephone, arguing, watching exciting television shows, reading exciting books, and so forth. (Guilty)

So as you can see there is definite room for improvement. Last night I put the thermostat down to 65 degrees and it made a world of difference. Fuck the electrical bill, that was heavenly. Also, I didn't drink, smoke, or workout less than two hours before bed and I went to bed at a reasonable hour. I also turned my clock away from my bed so I can't read the time. That was the biggest improvement. I really think this could make a big difference. The hard part will be sticking to my resolution, like tonight when we celebrate (mourn?) Sean leaving Dallas for Boise, Idaho-no-youdaho. Til then!

After a delightfully delectable breakfast catered by room service, it was time for me to board a plane bound for London Heathrow. It was a rather uneventful affair on British Airways, an airline that far outdoes American Airlines. It was when I got to Heathrow that I realized what I was about to do. All around me were two categories of people.

First there were the guys with kickass haircuts, all choppy looking, with great ensembles of shirts, jackets, pants, and shoes that I could never hope to pull off. Their wives, sisters, and friendgirls all had short chic haircuts and styles that would be considered outlandish even in our gay clubs. They were all fit and trim and hottt.

Next to them were morbidly obese fucks in tracksuits with bald spots and moustaches. Their good x-tian wives were wearing vests with puffpaint to accompany their 80s-framed glasses and horrifically permed hair and thunder thighs. In short ... Americans are ugly. Ugly Americans. They are so easy to spot and after 3 weeks of being surrounded by skinny trendy people, I was overcome with grief about returning to a society where these people were the norm.

But here I am. I made it back fine and I desperately need to unpack, or do something other than lie on the couch and watch the History Channel. I did leave the couch on Friday night because JonS■■■ was in town for the night so we hit the bars. Duh, I always have a fucking blast with JonS■■■, he is so one of my favorite people ever. We kept on having "just one more drink" and then I was teaching everyone how to dance like Germans on the all but empty dance floor. Tomorrow, I have to return to work and I'm pretty sure I'll cry.

Does anybody know anything about this ONE Campaign? You have seen those commercials with Brad Pitt, Bono, Ellen Degeneres, Tom Hanks, Jamie Foxx, Justin Timberlake and a slew of other A-list celebrities all saying one or two words. Generally I agree that poverty and hunger should go away but their website is littered with the compound hyphenated word "faith-based" in the same sentences as "government" and this is what makes me nervous. Any info from smarter, more informed people would be appreciated.

I am going to officially change the spelling of my name from Deighvyd to Dävid. Not only does it look cooler but it would be grammatically correct here. They have all kinds of vowels that we don't have: ä, ö, ü, å, ø. We have all the vowel sounds, but our vowels can completely change their pronunciation based on the letters before and after them. Theirs are always the same, which is why they needed a few extras. The only one I've figured out is the å which actually has a long 'O' sound. If I get lucky later, I may be showin' my å face. å! å! å!

I spent a lot of money today on plane tickets. I'm really leaving Malmö next Friday and heading right for Paris. Then to Berlin. Then back to Copenhagen. I am so nervously excited. It's still a ways away though and I've gotten a lot of great advice on how to travel. It should be really sexcellent to get around a little bit. Although I spent a lot, it was a lot less than I thought I was going to have to spend. My ticket from Berlin to Copenhagen was €16, which is under 20 bucks. Score! I am flying on the Southwest Airlines of Europe. Should be interesting. I gotta find hotels now. Money, money, money. Speaking of, I FINALLY heard some ABBA at the hockey game last night. I had assumed it would be the only music they played here and was sorely disappointed to find out I was wrong.

I'm about to head out to a Biljard hall now with Keith and Paul, and the little douchebag that it is here with us. I'll have to tell you all about the douchebag later, he's a blog unto himself. He is the dark cloud on the this silver lining of a vacation. Anyway, so I gotta run, just wanted to fill you in on a couple more things. Läääääääääääääääte.

I have accumulated about a month's worth of blogs every day that I have been here. If I don't dispense some of this gold, I am just going to burst! First, some observations about Sweden:

The Swedes are not an unfriendly people by any means, but they are very ... unengaging, shall we say? If you pass by somebody on the street, they will avert their eyes to avoid eye contact. We view that as somewhat rude, and therein lies the cultural difference. The way we pass by a complete stranger and say, "How ya durrin?" would be viewed by a Swede as insulting because it was completely insincere. You don't really care how that person is doing, nor do you even pause to listen for an answer. So it makes sense, but it sure is hard to get used to.

Everyone here is bilingual at least. Everyone speaks English, perfectly ... and Americanly. They all speak Swedish to me initially, which I take as a compliment because it means I have long, beautiful blonde hair, but as soon as I reply in English, they don't even blink, they just switch over. Last night a bum rambled something incoherent to me in Swedish and I said, "Sorry, I don't speak Swedish," and chuckled to myself for being clever. He immediately replied, "Do you have any crowns?" I was impressed. Today a drunk-ass gypsy Arab with a tallboy on the bus was rambling something and then started yelling, "My g*d is my g*d," to which somebody from the back of the bus replied, "There is no g*d." Fuckin A.

Today I noted to Joakim, who was showing us around (incidentally, Joakim is a common name) that there were no Swedish flags flying. In the US we have one American flag for every city block. He told me that flying the Swedish flag is interpreted as you being a racist. Everyone is supposed to be equal in Sweden to the point that you're not allowed to be proud of anything, in his words. I guess it would be akin to flying the Confederate flag in the US, except that actually literally 100% means you are a racist. But still, same reaction.

So Sweden is a socialist country, which is where the attitude that everyone should be completely equal comes from. They have a tax rate of something like 50%, which is unfathomable to us. But, healthcare is all free, higher education is all free, everything like that is free. If you want to go to college, you just sign up. The other thing that high tax rate does is even out everyone's income. The more you make, the more you get taxed, so everyone is pretty much on par. Unless you're extremely wealthy, then you probably net the same income as the waiters (who btw, make real wages, so tipping is extremely rare -- also hard habit to break).

Everyone looks and dresses like a rockstar. If any one of these guys would come to America, they could get laid on demand for the rest of their lives. I wonder if they know that. They probably have grown up thinking they were rather average. The styles over here are incredible. If I could dress like a Swede I would be oh so popular. First things first, I gotta get some brightly colored shoes. They also have cool jackets, although, if I wore mine more than 3 weeks out of the year, I might get a cool one too.

I haven't slept since I got here. For whatever reason, I go to bed around 10 and wake up at 1am every night and then stare at the ceiling until morning. It's starting to take it's toll. I've tried drinking myself to sleep; I might try sobering myself to sleep tonight. One way or another I have got to get some rest or I'm going to die.

I have about 8 million more stories to tell you, but these were the first that came to mind. Just one more thing to share, though, as the cardinals in the vatican meet to elect a new pope. I really feel like the office of the pope is such a huge responsibility spanning so many countries, cultures, and people. How can one man hold such a title? Maybe they should consider having a group act as pope this time. They could pull one person from each walk of life, a whole mixture of beliefs and backgrounds. And they could call it pope-pourri.

What a long, strange trip it's been. Okay, maybe just long. I got to Sweden with very little trouble. I am in my hotel room now around 7:30pm after having been up since Saturday morning. I am so tired, but I have had a lot of fun today. I am traveling with my coworker, Keith, just to get that out of the way. I'm sure a lot of my stories will involve him. We had breakfast in Zurich which consisted of a liter of Heinekin each and a handful of cigarettes. Gots to expense that shit!

The 10 hour flight was quite trying, but I made it though with a little bit of sleep. It didn't help that when I did fall asleep, I dreamt that we had already arrived. Then I woke up and realized there were 7 more hours to go. We hung out in Zurich for about 3 hours and then took a 2 hour flight to Copenhagen. I slept all the way through that flight. Then we rode a train into Malmo, Sweden. We decided to walk from the train station to our hotel which ended up being quite a ways. I immediately dropped my shit and went walking around. I found a place to buy a flat iron tomorrow. Mine won't work here, and my voltage converter won't work with it either. It is a necessity. Gots to expense that shit!

Let me tell you one thing about Sweden. If I were to rank the 100 hottest guys I'd ever seen in my life, on TV, in movies, and in person ... all 100 of those spots would be occupied by someone I saw in Malmo today. Everyone here is beautiful -- blond hair, blue eyes, tall, just gorgeous. I am a little bit overstimulated. And the women are pretty slammin' as well. Being in Malmo makes me say, "Miami who?" I have already decided that I want to live here. Everyone speak fluent English, even the teenagers working at Subway, which is where we ate dinner. They all start of speaking Swedish to me, which I take as a compliment because they I'm Swedish, but as soon as I order in English they switch effortlessly. It's incredible. This place is so Americanized, yet so different. I need to make some more observations before I assert that.

I took a few pictures today but I am seriously falling asleep on the keyboard so I might post some tomorrow. So far so good though! This place kicks so much ass.

UPDATE: I totally forgot to mention. I met John McKay from the news in the airport in Zurich. He was on his way to Roma to cover JP Deuce's funeral. I know so many celebs. And in other news, NOW MY HAIRDRYER DIED. God damnit, first the Pizzope, now my blow dryer. Why have you turned your back on us, oh lord?

In 12 hours I will board a plane bound for Zurich, catch a connection to Copenhagen, and then catch a train to Malmo, Sweden. There is supposedly internet access in the rooms and I will have my work computer with me, so I should be able to keep this site updated. I will also be available via email, my personal one is probably best (SideshoViD@sideshovid.com) but if it's very important, you can use my work address, which is Myfirstname [dot] Mylastname @ TheCompanyIWorkFor.com. Fill in the blanks, please don't send email to that exact address. Sweden is 7 hours in the future compared to the states, so factor that in.

Wish me here. Here goes nothin.

I got my hair did today. It looks incredible. I am so excited. I will take a picture of it soon for all of you loyal Sidesho-viewers. It was by far the most expensive haircut I have ever gotten, and it was by far worth every penny. Money just can't buy the sheer extasy that I get from a killer haircut. I got it done by Xristopher at Pompeo ... he's the new Hannah.

While I was there, they were filming a reality TV show that is based around the salon, the stylists, and exacerbates emphasizes how shallow and pretentious Dallas is. A show about how shallow and pretentious Dallas is ... on the day I'm there having my hair highlighted. Fantastic. They interviewed Xristopher WHILE he was doing my hair, and asked him to please turn me more toward the camera. So I think I'm totally going to be on this new reality TV show on TLC. I forget what they were calling it, it's something like Chic Dallas or something stupid. How funnoying.

I just invented a new word. Did you notice?

Tonight is Brent and Levi's housewarming party. Last night Ryan S■■■ and I drank SO much straight vodka while dancing in our pj's to Neil Diamond that it would make you sick. I know it made me sick. So my body is really crying to stay home, but my liver says to go out ... and you should always listen to your liver. So much iron. I'm off! Czech you skillets on the flip side.

I can only assume I did not win the HGTV Dream Home. Alas. To console myself, I decided to beautify my own little space just a little bit. As you all know, I've been collecting wine bottles for some time now with this grand idea in my little head about how I would arrange them fabulously atop my kitchen cabinets. Today, I got the last two bottles I needed, and the gumption to git'erdone.

What do you think? Say nice things about it. And by "nice things" I don't mean "bitchy things followed by less-than-threes." I spent my entire afternoon and evening putting together my new decorations. I must say thank you, thank you, thank you to Ryan S■■■ for helping me buy those little pewter-inlayed shelves with my Pier 1 gift certificate he got me for x-mas. It just wouldn't have pulled together with out it.

Since I had my camera out, I took a quick pic of Tuna's new tank that I told you all about. It's just a little bit more sophistocated, a little bit more Tuna's taste. He was always a little bit patronized by the rainbow castle, so I could see his sigh of relief when I inserted this shroom-tastic rock. Literally. Little sigh bubbles. Then we high-fived.

I watched a really long special tonight on Prader-Willi Syndrome. It's this biological disorder where your brain will never tell you that you are full. In fact, you are in a state of constant starvation, not only mentally, but your body acts accordingly. It would be like if you were stuck on an island for 2 weeks starving and then someone walked by with a steak. You'd do anything to get that steak. That's how these people are every minute of every day. Can you imagine? This dude was like 400 lbs and he JUST got done eating and said that he was doing everything he could to not immediately eat again.

I don't know why I felt inclined to share that. I just thought it was fascinating. I rounded out the evening watching MRIs of people doing the dirrty on Discovery, and everything you never cared to know about booze on the History Channel. Best St. Patricia's Day EVER!1!!!

So I ended up going out and getting hammered tonight. I share this with you only to inform you that the update of my webpage got severely interrupted by said drinking. I won't have a chance to fix it just yet because I am going to Oklahoma City to meet my new niece as soon as I wake up tomorrow (afternoon).

Everything still works even if it looks jacked. I promise to fix it as soon as I am back/sober. Thank you for your understanding. This is the shortest post ever.

Last night was such a hoot. I tell ya. It was the official opening of the spring party season hosted by Brian and Jarrod. As double duty, Jarrod was also celebrating a birthday, so happy birthday to him! I began the evening by attending a party in Addison Circle that I had been "invited" to via a myspace.com bulletin board message from some guy named Dan Paul. It's so unlike me, but it was an art showing/party and it was right here. So I went and checked it out. Lindsay accompanied me. There was some cool shit there. One guy had a painting of Ziggy Stardust that was unreal. If it hadn't have been 650 dollars I would have bought it. I still might.

From there I went to the birthday party downtown. We drank, we laughed, we went to the bars. We drank more. I was just a shade light of shitcanned by the end of the night. I had a little bit of trouble walking but not too much. Ryan and I bought hotdogs from a street vendor who took credit cards. Have you ever heard of such a thing? Cheese and rice. Except he didn't have any rice.

This morning we eventually woke up. I felt/looked terrible. But we went to brunch with Adam. They have free mimosas with brunch. Shut up, I drank like 12. A good buzz sure took the edge off my hangover. I most definitely came home and went to bed.

Are you sitting down? It's been a while since I've said this, but ... some very exciting things are happening at SideshoViD.com and it's about fucking time. Expect an all new design sometime within the next week.

And lastly, have any of you ever been to The Perry Bible Fellowship's website? Click there to read some of the most hilarious comics you couldn't possibly imagine. This guy is my own personal cheese and rice. There is one cartoon (that was too wide for me to post here without messing up my columns) where the kid is wearing a shirt that says "UNICORN POWER." I was jealous of it, so I got on eBay to find myself my own unicorn shirt. That's what this picture is. It should be shipping tomorrow and I am way, way too excited.

Hope you all had a fab weekend. Take 'er easy, and if she's easy, take 'er twice. Laaaaaaate.

I went out again last night despite vowing that I never would. Once again, I was rather annoyed by the drunk people and left early. You don't have to be drunk to have fun in a club, but I firmly believe you need a couple drinks just to take the edge off of what is an overwhelmingly obnoxious situation. I mean, look at it objectively. It's dimly lit except for a few neon and strobe lights, the music is so loud that conversation is virtually impossible, and people are packed in and stumbling over each other. You're going to want to have a few beers if you're going to last the whole night.

The thought had occured to me after Febrehabruary that I might invent Marehabch and Aprehabil. By the time I hit May, I would have no choice but to resume drinking until Septemberehab, and that's just not clever. Even though Febrehabruary was a great success and one of the best months of my life (I'll have a final tally for you when it's truly over) I don't feel the need to repeat it immediately. This could become a yearly ritual for me, though. If I've learned anything from a month of sobriety, and I like to think that I haven't, it's that drinking isn't bad or wrong, but moderation is key. In this spirit, I bought myself a nice bottle of wine to drink on Tuesday. I'm fucking retarded.

I don't think I ever announced this, but I am incorporating wine bottles into the decoration of my kitchen. If any of you drink wine often, or just happen to have an occasional bottle lying around, save it for me because I could use about 20 empty bottles, and that will take me DAYS to accumulate. Thanks.

Well, I think its just about time for me to go cook a dry chicken breast while living vicariously through Contessa With Her Shoes Off. Then I'll drink a few gallons of water so I can sweat it out in yoga. I am so v. busy and important. Check you skillets later.

Tonight a friend of mine was having her birthday party at Republic, a bar in Uptown. I almost didn't go, but at the last minute, sitting around my apartment, I jumped in the shower (despite that being SO dangerous) and got to the party around midnight. I have some stories that might be slightly embarassing, so to protect the innocent, we'll just call my friend "Amanda" (because that's her name). It was the first time I've been to a bar since we began this experiment. The temptation to drink was high, but not insurmountable. I eventually had to get a double tonic and tonic with a twist of lime so I'd have something to do with my hands.

Amanda was making me a tad uncomfortable. I have a few observations about drunk people that I will henceforth dispense for your reading pleasure. Drunk people may intend to whisper, but in fact are quite audible. One of her friends made a comment about some guy being gay, and Amanda said to me, "That's the pot callin' the kettle black!" The guy then turned to ME and says, "What is that supposed to mean?" I was like what the hell, I didn't say anything. So I played it dumb answering each of his questions with a question. He eventually got distracted. Some of my other favorite "whispered" messagers were, "That guy has a whooooole lot of facial structure going on," and, "That girl's entire bra is hanging out!" Each of them resulted in me getting a dirty look.

Another thing I noticed is that drunk people all stand too close and are all close talkers. I was doing all I could to do the stance where you put all your weight on your back foot and portrude your other leg out creating a boundary they cannot penetrate. Then you lean way back to get a couple more inches of clearance. Of course, this exacerbates the first problem of saying things too loudly.

Drunk people also like to drag you into uncomfortable situations. Amanda was there with a guy she's been dating for like 8 months. When she went to the restroom, he told me about how their mutual office was having a couples night out, and when Amanda got the email about it she replied saying she was single. He wanted me to explain what she was doing. Now, I've known this girl for the majority of my life but I've probably talked to her a total of 4 times in the past 6 years. Hardly credentials for decyphering her relationship for her "boyfriend." Very uncomfortable.

I had a nice time though and I wish her the best on her second 23rd birthday. Tomorrow I might go out to the gay bars. I miss my friends. First, I'm hoping to do some serious shopping in preparation of Sweden. I need to be around to give my new roommate his key sometime tomorrow. Oh, did I forget to mention that I have a roommate now? Laaaaaaate.

I decided to take another day off work. My sleep sched was all wonky from sleeping all day Monday and I wasn't feeling quite 100% although I am much, much better. Plus, when you douche out the work stall, people don't really want you to return too soon. I left the alarm off in anticipation of sleeping in as late as I wanted on a week day -- a rare treat.

OR IS IT, SEAN? At the ripe old hour of 10:00am, I get a rude awakening from Sean W■■■■ who is stranded on the side of the street with a flat tire. Wouldn't have been an issue if his spare wasn't already on his car. Sigh. Ever the helpful friend, I got out of bed, slapped on some clothes and picked him up. First, we had to go pick up his paycheck. I got to see Ryan S■■■ and see where he works. It is the most fabulous warehouse I have ever seen. Then we went and cashed said paycheck in order to pay for the tow truck. Okay, all of this is leading somewhere; bear with me. While we waited for the tow truck, we sat and discussed hair. Duh.

Sean said something to the effect of, "Blah blah blah bah bah got my hair relaxed blah bah blab blah." Hark?! I thought only women of African descent got their hair relaxed. This was an option for me? I got on the horn with my friend Chad who works at Toni & Guy and booked myself an appointment for the afternoon. A hair procedure I have never done before? You know, just when you think the world is going to end because you woke up at 10, jesus swoops in and shows you that everything happens for a reason.

This is the greatest invention of all time. I haven't been this excited about my hair since I discovered the flat iron. It smelled pretty bad, but it didn't burn at all. Apparently this is a new product more tailored toward fair-haired members of society so it isn't as harsh. I don't like to think of it as relaxing my hair, thats too harsh, I like to think I chillaxed it. When I step out of the shower now, it already looks like I've spent 30 minutes flat ironing. It's incredible. I've been using your product for a day now, and I'm still excited.

Is it ironic that something called "straightening" has made me even gayer?

I hung out with my mother all night because I had to file my taxes with my dad. Let's just say my tax refund is about 3X what I was expecting. Whoo hoo PAR-TAY! Instead of my cardio workout, I sat around eating cheesecake and ice cream with my mother. She doesn't like the idea of me trying to lose weight, but I think that's because her loving-mother-vision penetrates my multiple layers of viscous whale fat. Alas, it was a good time. I guess I'll go to work tomorrow in hopes that I can keep from upchucking during the day. g*d, that's so unbecoming. Later, skids.

Bonsoir, mes amis! Wie geht es ihnen? Jag hoppa det du er all gör brunn. This past week I bought CDs for French, German and Swedish so I could get a head start on learning all the languages I'll need during my European adventure. I already speak German, and Swedish is (from what I know thus far) a lot like it. So really, I'm just trying to pick up some basic French phrases to get a hotel room and a menu. Good times, good times. You don't want to ride in the car with me though. It's totally annoying. But I should be quadri-lingual by April.

This weekend I went to a party at Adam's house up in Denton. Good christ, Denton is far away. It was a pretty big milestone for me because it was the first time I've subjected myself to some good old fashioned binge drinking that I know and love so much without partaking. They were all downing cheap beers and chain smoking and I wanted to participate sooo bad, but I resisted. And not only did I stay clean, but I had a really good time hanging out and getting to know people I'd never met before. Maybe I do still have social skills, and I just never let myself realize it.

This is off topic, but I have to ask. What the hell is up with fat, old men in the gym locker rooms? It's like they refuse to put some fucking clothes on. I guess their wives won't let them walk around naked at home so they do it at the gym? It is so weird. If you're a fat old man who reads my webpage and walks around naked in locker rooms, please fill me in cause you're all making me nauseous.

Speaking of the gym, if things continue to go as well as they have with Febrehabruary, I plan on partying March 1st and then going right back to my sober ways. I am saving so much money and losing so much weight. I could never have fathomed that it would go this well.

Ryan S■■■ sent me an article about people being fired from their jobs based on what they say in their blogs. It kind of put the fear of g*d in me. My webpage is laden with material that should rightfully lead to my termination. I think I'm going to go through and hide some of the entries for the time being while I figure this out. In the meantime, I'm going to refrain from discussing work explicitly and avoid mentioning any projects I'm working on by name if I do. Hope it doesn't leave you all wanting.

Now, I am still drenched in sweat from yoga, so it is time to showah. Peace, you have-nots.

I found out today that my trip to Sweden is a definite. I have to buy a plane ticket by the end of the week departing on April 2nd. I'm way too excited. But see, the thing is, I figured as long as I'm in the neighborhood, there is no sense in not seeing some of Europe. How often do you get to fly across the pond for free, right? So instead of returning to the USofA on April 16th after two weeks of new product testing, I'll be returning sometime around April 21st. That'll give me 5 days to gallivant around Germany and France.

I've never been a big sight seer, as anyone who has ever vacationed with me will know. So my only two goals, in reality, are to eat sausage and saurkraut with mustard in Germany washed down with a nice tall Weissbier, and to have a croissant and a glass of red wine in France. I hope they serve Messina Hof.

The reason I need everyone's advice is to ask what else I should do while I'm there. Keep in mind that if I want to SEE something, I will google it. I am looking for things to DO. This could also affect how long I decide to stay. I'm still trying to get ahold of my friends in Germany which would be awesome. But that would mean I am going to Munich again when I'd really like to see Berlin.

I dunno. Maybe afterwards I'll go to Bed, Bath & Beyond, I dunno if I'll have time.

Huzzah! I made it through my first Friday night without so much as a sip of my intoxicating lover, ethanol. I can tell you one thing: It was not easy. First, I left work early to go play pool with my coworkers for Trey's birthday. We played 10-ball, which was new to me, but a really fun game. I lost $7. Apparently you're not allowed to gamble in these pool halls, so when we got busted, we had to quickly cover by saying that we were all exchanging money to pay for beer. We were obviously not paying for beer. But they were all drinking it. The sweet aroma wafting through the air, mixing and intertwining with the acrid smell of freshly burnt tobacco. "Just get a beer!" they would say. And I declined. I stayed for about an hour, but after my few glasses of water, I had to get out of there.

Onto a dinner date thing with my new friend Adam. He was dreadfully late, but kept consistent communication all night. I always tell people, I don't care if you're late or have to cancel if you just fucking call and let me know. That is really the key. So I awarded him points for that. Cheddars (not my choice) was packed. Apparently this is a big Friday night destination for fat, straight people. Since it was so crowded, we opted for two empty seats ... at the bar. Neither of us were hungry so we chit-chatted and split the spinach dip. I had about 26 glasses of water while Adam enjoyed three margaritas on the rocks "with a little stank on em." He also inhaled about a half a pack of cigarettes. "Just get a margarita. I won't tell anyone," he insisted. And I declined. He had made plans to go out that night, and Ryan S■■■ and I were supposed to have a movie night so we parted ways early.

Ryan and I went to the new Wal-Mart Neighborhood store here and got some Moolenium Crunch ice cream (the best) and a couple of magazines to read. We endulged in our Friday night pleasures and watched my copy of the Phantom. (Shhhh, don't tell the federal government.) Ryan didn't like it. I did, but I slept through it. Earlier that evening Ryan asked if I wanted something to drink. My choices were orange juice, water or wine. Wine? Ryan's Febreviewary has different rules than my Febrehabruary. In his month, he has only to avoid buying alcohol in an effort to save money. So previously owned wine is well within the rules. And I ... I declined.

Omega, I just realized. Alcohol is, like, my own personal jesus christ. All before the cock crowed, I denied it three times.

Hehe, I said "cock"

Day 1 of sobriety gone and done. How easy could this be? Since my rehabilitation experiment opening day fell on a workout cardio day, I decided to hit it extra hard. I rode the stationary bike for 15 minutes as a warm up and then did that fucking elliptical machine for a solid hour. Holy crap, my knees are all swollen up and I sweat my ass off. The last time I had my heart beat at 160 bpm for over an hour was ... well ... I can't even make a sex joke there because that would be false.

Although my progress will all be relative to today, I do want to share with you all some of my achievements as of late. Not only did I double my cardio time, but I doubled the amount that I bench press. Also, instead of gaining 5 lbs every week like I had been for the past few weeks, this time, I lost 2 lbs. Kick ass. But today is ground zero. This is what all progress will be measured against. I'm really hoping that 28 days from now will be this huge success story. Something akin to Celebrity Fit Club.

Ryan S■■■ has decided to join me in my quest for Febrehabruary. (That's rehab in February, for any of you who haven't put that together yet.) Except Ryan has put his own spin on it. By not drinking, he is attempting to see as many movies as he can in an experiment he has dubbed "Febreviewary." G*d, I have clever friends. JonS■■■ has recently moved back to Dallas (thank jebus, Houston is the armpit of the world) and is intrigued by Febrehabruary. He's decided to join my quest. He doesn't have a witty name for his yet, though. I've decided that as added incentive, any of my readers who don't drink for the 28 days of February (those who normally would drink ... and those who aren't dirty liars AND alcoholics) are invited to go out with me on March 1st. All drinks are me! Yippee!

Maybe I shouldn't think about drinking this early on.

Dear all you bitches who said I would get fired,
I got a raise today.
Har dee har fucking har.
Love,
Sidesho

In fact, my year-end review said that I was doing "outstanding," had "exceeded all expectations," and had "received praise from co-workers both in and out of [my] department." It's kind of hard to argue with that. And that's in print, bold-faced, and in my permanent record. So to everyone who scoffed at me going in late 6 months in a row, everyone who turned their nose up at my mid-day naps, anyone who thought noon was too early to call it a day, and the nay-sayers who thought skipping a day was grounds for immediate termination, I say sit on it. I'm doing an outstanding job. Besides, you can't hold it against me that I'm as much as three times more productive than the average human.

The only thing my boss said he was worried about, concerning yours truly, is that I would be quitting relatively soon. He said I have too much education and potential for this job to hold me longer than 4 years. He doesn't know I was planning on quitting Tuesday. But, he does make a good point. I am terribly bored with work. But you just can't deny how sweet it is to land yet another job where I do what I want, and the allure of making that into a career.

Oh goodness, look at me going on and on about myself. How dreadful. You all KNOW how I hate to toot my own horn.

My workouts are going well even though Mr. K■■■■■■ has fallen "ill" and I've been flying solo every day this week. Except this time I'm being literal; I have gone every day this week. Even though I am still morbidly obese, at least my arms are muscular enough to lift my fat ass off the ground. Hopefully Febrehabruary will take care of that. (I changed the name from Frehabruary to Febrehabruary. While they both look fine in print, the latter is definitely easier to speak aloud.)

Did you notice my grammatically correct usage of the semi-colon in the paragraph above? My grammar book (Eats, Shoots & Leaves) is positively fascinating. I am learning so much from it. And its fuuunnnnny.

Allison left for Australia yesterday. I hope she likes lederhosen and wienerschnitzel, ja. JKJK. I'm not much for sloven goodbyes, but I did get her a picture frame that said "Best Friends" along the top and then "Sydney July 2005" along the bottom. When I saw it on the shelf, I thought it was so appropriate and definitely freaky that they were mass producing them. JKJK again! I had it engraved. That's my new thing. You're nobody unless you get an engraved gift from me. Except for Ryan S■■■ who got a kickass DVD stand. That was from the heart. Anyway, back to Allison. She'll be gone for a year but I'll see her this summer, so that's not too bad. I wish her the best ... shrimp on the barbie.

I bought a big bottle of pomegranite juice. It's called Pom. Much like every other juice ever produced, it claims to be really good for you. I'll tell you one thing: it's fucking delicious. If you are just joining us and aren't familiar with the fruit, search my site for it. I have a great explanation somewhere in the past. The only downside of the juice is that it was 10 bucks for something the size of a cranberry cocktail. That's too expensive to have it on my permanent online shopping list, but a definite treat now and again.

I think I'll end on that note because I'm rambling a tad. I miss you all and apologize for my continued unpluggedness. We'll all get through this soon enough. Peace out, my little have nots. I love you all.

I spent the better part of today in the bowels of the ■■■ Airport. I wish you all could have heard my inner monologue as I walked around the caverns. I am flabbergasted that my life's path has led me to this. I have to go back tomorrow and possibly Wednesday. If this goes on beyond Wednesday, I will be looking for a new job. It is completely ridiculous to send me to places like this. They seem to assume I have some massive background experience with hands-on work, probably because everyone else I work with has at least 15 years of experience as building engineers and shit. I program. I like computers. The most voltage I ever saw in college was 5 volts. Now they're handing me a hard hat, a screw driver, and shoving me into 480 volt transformers and expecting me to know what to do.

How many times do I have to fucking repeat this, people? Electrical engineers ARE NOT ELECTRICIANS.

Some of it was kind of neat, I have to admit. I would love to see a show about the HVAC system on the Discovery Channel. They have one central plant that handles the cooling for the entire airport. You can't imagine how big these chillers are. Chillers make cold water and then pump it around to cool down the air that blows into the offices and terminals and stuff. There were at least 4 of them, maybe more, and each one was about as big as an airplane. Then there are cooling towers that use evaporation to cool down water. Each one of these was a round tower about the diameter of a basketball court length-wise. They had huge fans blowing air through the water, and we walked down to the sump, which was a little more like Niagara Falls than an air conditioner. At least in my experience ... which is NONE.

I'm not looking forward to tomorrow but I'm trying to keep a positive attitude. I'm not shaving today or tomorrow and I dropped by Target to get a shirt for work tomorrow. Hopefully I'll at least mildly look the part. My boss always pulls me aside when we're on site and explains the most BASIC concepts of HVAC to me in front of everyone else on the site. I don't think he's consciously trying to destroy any credibility I might have, but if he were, this is how he would do it. I know I've only worked there six months, but come on, I have managed to retain the slightest bit of information in that time.

If any of you know of any positions open in your offices ... jobs where you don't have to put your physical well being on the line ... please let me know about them. Sorry to be a downer, but this kind of shit just really rubs me the wrong way. Hopefully this will all be over soon and I can get back to sleeping at my desk. Ugh.

First things, first. Happy Birthday Ryan S■■■! So yay. We spent last night celebrating said birthday, which may be why I didn't wake up until 2pm today. Just a hunch. Ryan said that all he wanted was beer, pizza, and a few friends. So Sean, being the clever little devil that he is, organized a dinner down at the State and Allen Lounge consisting of discounted pizzas, domestics, and a whole slew of friends. It was a really nice time. After that we went to JRs for a smidge and then to S4.

When we went into S4, half of the No-Fun Room (aka the Non-Smoking Room) was all corded off with bouncers guarding the entrances. I thought maybe some big movie star like Richard Gere or Tom Cruise might be there. Turns out it was the cast of Bravo's new spin-off makeover show, Queer Girl for the Straight Lesbian. Mmmk, not only does this show not live up to its predecessor, but it takes dumpy nasty girls and has a lesbian give them fashion tips. It's just not good, sorry Bravo. And the cherry on top? It's been on the air for all of two weeks. I hardly think they needed to rope off an area for the 'stars.' If somebody hadn't pointed them out and had they not been sectioned off, I would have NEVER recognized them, and I've seen every episode.

That being said, we were standing in a group as they paraded into their "VIP" section, and I stood and watched each one walk by. That is, until the one I like walked by, so I stuck my hand out and introduced myself to him. I don't remember his name. Don't care. But he did say it was nice to meet me. You can see here in the artist's depiction of the scene what happened. I'm such a celebrity magnet its, like, not even funny.

The reason I am online is because I brought my work computer home for the weekend. I'm probably going to get in trouble for chatting and checking email and stuff on it. Then again, who am I kidding, I could burn down a building and get a slap on the wrist. This week I have to go out to ■■■ ■■■■■■ for a few days to install some controllers I programmed. I despise wearing a hard hat, but at least on this job site I get a bright orange vest as well. Ugh. The things I do for money. Speaking of money, I wonder if I have any left... Later skanks.

I apologize for my recent absence from the internet, but I assure you, I have been completely powerless. That is to say that my power cord still does not fit in my computer. For some reason, when I got home from work today (at 3:30 -- RAWK) the charge light was on and I was fully charged. I haven't even touched the thing all weekend, so that was weird, but welcome. I'm going to have to take the ol' porn player to Best Buy and have them ship it off to their service department. Hopefully they can fix it and hopefully its under warranty.

I finally went to a yoga school yesterday. I found this Addison Yoga place right by my apartment. They do hot yoga. Hot yoga is just like regular yoga, but its hot. Like really hot. They keep the room at about 100 degrees the entire time. I sweat my ass off. But I really, really liked it. It's only 15 bucks per class, or 12 if you buy a pass. I will probably do this at least once a weekend. I've already drummed up some interest from Lil Jarrod to join me. I think everyone should be doing this, it was so choice.

Today marks the first day of my 5-a-week workout schedule. I'd been going at least 4 times a week, sometimes more, up until the holidays and then I totally fell off. But my friend Greg from New York, he's kind of weird, and he signed up at my gym. So now I have a workout buddy. We both made it perfectly clear that we didn't want to work out together, though. We just want to carpool to the gym in order to motivate each other to stick with it. This is gonna be so great. The next time I show myself in public, I'm gonna be so hot. And by 'hot' I mean that my biceps are gonna be as big as my beer gut.

I'm not sure when I'll be able to address you all again. Thanks for your patience while we struggle through this predicament together. I am gonna send my computer off on Saturday so if I happen to wake up fully charged, I'll update before I let it go. Otherwise, I'll just have to scrounge around and see whose computer I can use. I really wanted to be able to keep you all up to date on my Frehabruary experiment. (I just now came up with that name, I kinda like it.) It's coming up so fast. I can't wait. Oh, and all my expenses got sorted out including the rat bastards at the Velvet Hookah. The owner called and apologized and offered me free drinks. Anyone wanna go?

Oh, and Raul, you should call me since you're impossible to get a hold of. I am still fully expecting you to come up the last weekend in January for my alcoholic swansong. The rest of you, refrain from calling, I get so annoyed when my phone rings. Thaaaaanks.

I am contacting you all from the year two thousand and fabulous five ... oooohhhh. Rang in the thang with a bang, and then a hang ... over. Pacey McSipperson came up to hang out with me. I apologize for the code names, but his massive web of lies has engulfed me. We went out to the Velvet Hookah Thursday with Allison and Noah, and Kieffer showed up. Disaster! The service was the worst I've ever experienced, the drinks were so weak we had to send them back to have them put liquor in them, and my tab was 100 fucking dollars. If I spend 100 dollars at a bar, I expect to at least catch a buzz. I will have to be more weary of the help the next time I go. Owen's friend Joanna's friend Aaron has always been a good bartender, and he's more fun to look at.

After all that nonsense we went out to the bars and got drunk. I accidentally didn't make it to work at all on Friday, which is an unprecedented first for me (at this particular job). I hope no one noticed. I might have to sacrifice a vacation day if they did. That or be fired, whichever. Friday was New Years, so Debbie Downer and I went shopping for new outfits. We both got the coolest shirts from Source Paris in the West Village. Everyone go shop there. Their clothes are incredible. Adam was stalking us the entire time.

Went out with the crew, much of the DS Crew was out as well. Hit up Station 4, henceforth to be referred to as S4. There was much revelry to be had, although at midnight I didn't get a kiss. Instead I got a dirty look from Glarin' Thomas right before he ditched me. So now I'm walking around the club by myself looking for my friends. I found them though and all was well in 2005. Next night, much of the same. Went to S4, got ditched by Shady McDitcherson and entertained myself until Glarin' Sean called me over to Round Up. I met a bunch of A&M people so that was fun.

Enough narrative though. To sum it up, I've spent an exorbitant amount of money and drank an unhealthy level of beer, vodka and wine. I also painted two walls in my living area red like my kitchen. I love it. But you have to wait to see it until I finish painting the rest of it tan. It'll look much better then. Get excited!

Last bit of news, I went to this website because they had an advertisement on myspace. It's too fun. Everyone go to Neighborhoodies.com and buy me something. Then we'll see whose hoodie or tshirt fits my personality the best and that person will win. If you need my shipping address let me know.

I hope everyone had a vurry murry Xmas. I know I did ... and I don't even believe in jebus! My preggers sister and her hubby and my brother, his wife and baby daughter all came to town. My other brother in California couldn't make it this year. It was a blast opening presents, especially watching Kaylyn open hers. I got some pretty good booty, and since everyone else is doing booty posts right now, I wanted my own booty post. (I think it's stupid to call it booty.)

I wanted to make it easy for you all to skim and see what I got so I made this kickass picture of my stuff. What you see here is:

1. trashcan for my bathroom
2. proper wine opener
3. silly bottles of peppers for my kitchen
4. wine from the Sierra Foothills
5. three sizes of cookie sheets and a pizza sheet
6. space heater WITH remote control ha!
7. little wooden rubber band powered airplane?

All that and a bag of chips. And by "bag of chips" I mean a "fat check from my parents that will pay for half of a plane ticket to Australia and cements the fact that I am really going." So exciting. The greatest gift was my family going to church without hassling me, guilt tripping me, or even inviting me. I was overwhelmed by that gesture.

I'm not sure what's on the slate for New Years but I'm pretty sure I am going to run around Dallas with Ryan S■■■. If anybody would like to join hit me up before then. Ugh, I have to work this week. That's going to suck. Czech you sluts later.

You all know how much I hate the rain. And you all know how much I hate the cold. The bastard child of their unholy union is infinitely worse. I fucking hate the snow. I woke up this morning to the sound of sleet against my window, thought, "Fuck that," to myself, and rolled over and went back to sleep. Needless to say, I was about an hour late to work. Then I checked weather.com and saw this massive wall of ice sweeping across the nation, thought, "Fuck that," to myself, and went home.

I was there for all of an hour, most of which I spent learning Chinese from Yue. She found the greatest Chinese restaurant, she claims, but they have separate menus for those who speak their language and for those of us with white skin. I want the good shit, not the white person menu, so I made her teach me how to say, "I can understand you," so I can get some respect when they start talking shit about me in Chinese.

Wa ke yi ming bai ni, bitch.

This little picture collage I made for you are pictures from my bedroom window. So that's not my building, but the building across the street. I have always said, I have the BEST fucking view from my apartment ... if you like water towers. That picture on the far left is of my building, all the little awnings have snow on them. Awwww.

So I spent the day napping, working out, cooking myself food. Just a little Solstice gift from yours truly to yours truly. Now I have off from work until Monday. Thursday the new club, Station 4, opens downtown, then its time to open presents, celebrate the supposed birth of my supposed lord and saviour, jebus h. christ. After that, I should be around to update you all. Have a wonderful holiday, whichever religion, or lack thereof, you prescribe to! Peace on earth, and good will toward me!

Could Ryan S■■■'s Holidaze Party been any better? Absolutely not. His apartment decorations were so cute, they even had me in a festive X-mas mood. Either that or my new red scarf from the Gap. And by the way your mom says hi.

We did a Secret Santa exchange. I drew Lil' Jarrod for my recipient. I got him a double chambered flask with his name engraved on the front. I think he liked it. Ha. Sean W■■■■ got me several pairs of argyle socks. He learned during our trip to College Station that argyle socks are one of my favorite things about life. And these are nice socks. I'm not being facetious or anything. The first time I put a pair on I thought o myself, "Damn, these are nice socks." He also got me a T-shirt espousing the virtues of the Cavalier - The Champagne of Cars! I rounded out the evening drinking a whole bunch of wine and just a few sips of the candy cane martinis. Thanks for another fabulous party Ryan!

You've all seen the List-Eater, right? The chick who cut in line to pull tickets for the Cotton Bowl and when she was challenged with the list of people who had been camping out for 4 days, she ate the list. When I heard about it, I chuckled. But then Brianne up in Chicago sent me the video. It was then that I realized I know the List-Eater! She's Michael W■■■'s fiance. He is in my major and we used to work together back when I was doing that NASA thing a few summers ago. That made it absolutely hilarious. [Click here] for the official List-Eater video. I sent it to everyone in my office today and they all thoroughly enjoyed it.

And our final piece of news. I signed up for Netflix! It was spur of the moment. I saw a commercial for it and logged on and signed up. I now have 86 movies in my queue and I rated over 400 movies. I didn't really think I could have possibly seen that many movies since every movie I've seen I've seen about 4,000 times. Go figure. I should be adding a lot to that list soon as I'm going to make a habit of watching a movie every night instead of whatever crap happens to be on TV. As soon as I start getting my movies shipped to me, I may start reviewing them on my website. We shall see.

Alright sluts, I'm gonna go veg out for a while longer. Hope you all have a fantastic weekend.

What a week. What a weekend. What a time to be alive! This weekend I made the trek to College Station once again to celebrate Thanksgiving as well as Allison's graduation and bon voyage as she prepares to move to Australia. On the way down, I called Brandon to see how he was doing and he convinced me to swing through Austin and pick him up. That was a fuck load of driving in one weekend (with the traffic jams, I was in the car for 12.5 total hours this weekend). But, it was worth it to get to hang out with Brandon.

We arrived in CS on Friday around 10 and got ready to go out to Halo. Good times, good times. I had a completely empty stomach so I was trying to take it easy, which eventually didn't happen, but I did behave for an uncharacteristically long time. The next day we joined Allison as soon as the hangovers subsided and went to buy last minute supplies and a keg. I dropped even more money this weekend. Shit. Finances are in a dire situation. Dire meaning that I can't buy new jeans tomorrow if I want everyone to have a X-mas present, not dire I can't pay the rent. Even so, my lifestyle is compromised.

The party was a raging success, if I don't mind saying. We did a Trash Can Grab. This was new to me. We had a trash can full of ice and water and everyone brought a little something to throw into the trash can. Then you had to reach into the black abyss and drink whatever random alcohol you pulled out. At first, I thought our alcohol supply, which involved a plethora of wine from dinner, a keg, and the trashcan, was overkill, but we ended up drinking all of it. Thank you, thank you, thank you to Allison for being a most wonderful host, and thanks again to Dustin and Trey for putting me up for the weekend.

In other news HAPPY 20th BIRTHDAY, #27!!!!1! Our little David27 is growing up, chronologically at least. This past Saturday, Dec. 11 was his 20th birthday. He's not a teenager any more. Congrats on surviving two decades. Mwah!

This week I have a Secret Santa party at Ryan S■■■'s and a ■■■■■ ■■■■■ office party with Ryan S■■■. Then I'm not doing anything. Nor am I ever going out of town again. If you ever want to see me again you'll have to come to Addison.

I hope I don't piss any one off with this next comment, but I can't help but think about everyone taking finals right now... and how stressed out they must be, and how tired, and overworked, and sick of it, and just wanting to be done. And then I kick back, stretch out, open another beer, and sigh audibly. It is so nice to not be in school. I can't believe it's been six months since graduation. Time sure flies when you're skipping work. Peace out, sluts!

As many of you, undoubtedly already knew, when I described the plans for Thommi's 21st Birthday as, "nothing too ornate or elaborate," I was being completely perfidious, hoping Thommi would read it and be further thrown off of the fact that I was planning a surprise party. The true story goes a little something like this:

When Thommi and Dan were here last weekend, Thommi said something along the lines of, "I've always wanted a surprise party." And I replied, "Yeah well it isn't gonna fucking happen, so you can forget that. Besides, who would we invite? You don't have any friends." Okay, at the time, I was just being mean, not calculating, but the more I thought about it, the more I thought I might able to pull it off. I only had 5 days, though, so I made some quick decisions about when and where it would be and started making phone calls. You all know how torturous it is for me to talk on my phone, so I was really proud of myself for maintaining my cool as I called old friend after old friend and told them to get ready to par-tay. An e-vite naturally sealed the deal. The party was on Saturday night and I told everyone to get there at 8:00 knowing that everyone would be fashionably late. I had hoped to trick them all into being there before 10:00 when I was bringing Thommi over.

Sean W■■■■ accompanied me on my vacation. What a fun road trip partner! He's going back next week for Thanksgiving as well. Hurrah! So it was Sean, Dan, Thommi and me getting ready for a fake night out on the town while my gracious and ever so wonderful hosts, Dustin and Trey, held down the fort. Trey, Sean and I had spent the afternoon running around town buying a keg, some liquor, and about 20 bucks worth of streamers, flags and balloons from the Dollar Store. The apartment was decked out ... and all in pink. I'm sure the guy that rang us up at the store thought we were throwing a party for an 8 year old girl. Well ... kinda.

So Sean and I took Thommi and Dan out for a nice birthday dinner, all the while doing everything we could to stall our little engagement. We didn't want to raise suspicions by making dinner too late, but we knew that 4 hours to kill was going to be a lot. By the time dinner was over and we made it back to Thommi's apartment we had two full hours to kill. I'm so glad Sean was there to help. First we laid around and pretended to be nonchalant about the whole affair. As Thommi was getting impatient, we started out on our plan to eat up as much time as possible doing hair. I did mine first and then Thommi's. Then Sean went. He must have spent about 45 minutes in the bathroom fixing his hair. Hilarious. Then I did Dan's hair as well ... anything to kill more time. At one point, I literally walked in slow motion.

My phone is blowing up all evening -- very uncharacteristic. But I'm answering every inquiry with terse responses to not raise suspicion. Still the whole thing is fishy. Around 10:00 Trey texts me to tell me that only 10 guests have arrived so far of the 27 who RSPV'ed. g*d damnit! We dragged our feet some more until Thommi was getting visibly annoyed and I received another text saying that 17 people had arrived. That was enough. On our way we went.

The whole thing was planned down to a T. When we got close, I called Trey and asked him what the gate code was, which was actually just code for, "Hey, we're close." He got everyone organized, and when we arrived at the door, I knocked Hullabaloo and took a step back. As soon as the door opened, Thommi looked inside to see a mass of gaudy decorations and a throng of people and took three steps backward. In my favorite quote of the evening, I grabbed his shoulders, gave him a hearty push, and yelled,

"GET IN THERE, YOU ASSHOLE!"

Haha! Surprise! He had no clue. It was so great. A few more people came and went as the night dragged on, but I was very grateful to everyone that showed and helped us empty the keg, the vodka, the wine, and the bottle of Johnny Walker Black that AllieD and Jamey brought me as a gift (having read my Thanksgiving post where I said that's what I was most thankful for. It pays to blog!). Needless to say I got shitcanned, everyone had a blast, we went to Halo for all of 10 minutes after they'd stopped serving, and got a couple waters from Aaron. WINK!

All in all I'd say it was a rousing success. I was more than pleased with the results considering Ryan S■■■ didn't help me plan it one bit. This next weekend is Thanksgiving, ya'll, we're gonna do it up Gill 'n Al style. So get ready for your e-vite to that shit. And one last thing:

PICTURES!

Dan, Sean, Thommi and I as we enter the party. This was after I pushed him through the door. Some people likened his reaction to that of the plastic keg cups, but you can see here, the photographic evidence of a fleeting smile. Good ol' Glarin' Thomas.

Sean, Dan, Thommi, me, Luke and Rob pose for a group shot. Check out those kickass decorations in the back. Those represent a lot of standing on stools. I'm sporting the Surprise Hawk, a hair-do I invented just for the occasion.

Whew let's see if I can name everyone here. From left to right as best I can: Dan, Sean, Jason, Dustin, Bob, Phillip, Luke, Me, Noah, Rob, Allison, Thommi, AllieD, Jamey and Owen. This isn't everyone who eventually came, and doesn't include Trey behind the camera, but I think it's a really cute shot. Oh yeah, we also bought some princess crowns, in case you're wondering whats on some of the heads.

Sean and I pose for a quick Team Dallas picture. Sean entertained himself by making snide remarks about the lack of concierge and valet services throughout town. He'd do JUST fine in College Station.

Bob, me and Dustin pose for a quick one. We had such cute keg cups even. I'm not entirely sure what Bob is doing here, nor do I seem to mind.

And finally, the princesses of the ball, Thommi and Dan. I think they both had a really good time and were genuinely surprised, which is what it was all about. The other thing its all about is my hair there in the background. RAWK!

Oh, joy! It's my favorite holy day once again! The day our lord and saviour, the turkey, willingly gave his life so we might enjoy eternal dressings. "Take this drumstick and eat it, for this is my body, gobble, gobble." The day Christopher Columbus killed all the Native Americans. He killed them all, great and small, so he could put their heads up on his wall. It was the day Chris Columbus killed all the Indians.

Now that we're finished with the history of Thanksgiving, I want to take a moment to discuss with all of you, the meaning of Thanksgiving. It's like I always say, "Tis better to thanksgive than to thanksreceive." Let's all try to keep that in mind this year. And I know, I know, the food is a big part of it. Who doesn't like to sit down at a table with a 24 pound roasted bird carcass, mashed potatoes made with heavy cream and butter and garlic, green bean casserole made with soup from the can (because any attempt to gourmet that up and no one will eat it), mac n cheese made from scratch, cranberry sauce nobody will touch but it has to be on the table anyway, french bread to sop up the leftover gravy made from stock, candied yams and pumpkin pies and AHHHHH I'm overstimulated. But with all of this, I still must contest that Thanksgiving is not just about the food.

It's about the booze.

The red wines, the white wines, the boxed wines in between. The smooth burn of a single malt scotch as it gives your stomach a welcome hug. The brandy soaked peaches. The cases upon cases of beer in the fridge "just in case" even though you know no one's leaving til they're gone. And this year, I made red roosters, a thing I saw Emeril do. Cranberry juice and orange juice concentrate and a whole lot of vodka, into a large pan and into the freezer. I kicked it up a notch by using raspberry vodka. I hope everybody likes it. BAM!

I am going to have a very H■■■■■■ Thanksgiving this year by spending it with my dear friend Allison and her parents (Krazy K and Big D) and the rest of her family. Should be a riot. I'm so excited I can barely sit still. I hope all of you have the most wonderful holiday with friends and family (because they're a part of the day too). Take a moment to think about this: for what are you most grateful this year? I know mine -- Johnny Walker Black.

Happy Thanksgiving to all and to all a good buzz!

Heard this little tid bit on NPR on the drive home tonight: "I never went to high school, but I did go to school high." NPR fucking rawks my hawk.

Speaking of hawks, I sported the Dinner-Party Hawk tonight -- a hairstyle I invented just for tonight. Ryan S■■■ had everyone over for Brisquette Française avec les Pommes de Terres et Épi de Maïs. For those of you too lazy to go translate at dictionary.com (guilty), that means hamburgers and freedom fries. Let me tell you ... they were delicious. Originally, Ryan's George Foreman was kaput, so the burgers were raw, but once Jason Hillman went and got his George Foreman ... well, with Ryan at the grill ... the burgers were raw. But they were fucking good and that is all that matters. g*d, don't let me get e.coli. The freedom fries were the hit of the party, despite them being overdone. And by 'overdone', I mean 'done.'

Such a fun night. It reaffirmed why it is that I'm here at a time when I so desperately needed a reminder. However, after drinking a few bottles of wine and some decadent beer, I have decided that I'm not going to drink anymore. I'm not going to drink any less, but I'm also not going to drink any more.

I am resolving myself to have more weeknights like this. This is what life is about. Life isn't about air conditioning digital controls. Give me a break. In fact, no, I'm not going to work until 10 tomorrow. Fuck that shit. Good night, kids, take inspiration from my defiance. Mwah!

I fucking love Halloween. This year was another holiday in the win column. Ryan S■■■ and I spent the day together, and despite original plans to not dress up, we decided to get something last minute. We had lunch and coffee at Buli, this kickass place down in the gayborhood where they serve your food in a vintage lunch box and employ hotties to serve it to you. While down there we started brainstorming costume ideas. I can't think of any of our failed ideas, but we finally settled on just wearing some sort of sports uniform. For us, that's really a costume and not a cop out since neither of us have played a sport in a decade.

We narrowed our decision to Slutty Soccer Players and found some bright pink soccer jerseys and iron on letters. Since every party we were going to was full of queers, it was no problem that our team name was Flamers, I was number 69, and he was number 8.5. Let me just tell you, we looked really authentic. We even had a small soccer ball and ran a few drills in the bar. There was much drinking to be done, so around 9 when Myke from San Marcos (who now lives in Lewisville) and his friend Ryan from Tech showed up we hit the first party. They were both dressed as Slutty Jungle Boys. Too much fun. And I mean too much fun.

I've spent the entire day in bed and it has been absolutely fabulous. I just woke up from an accidental nap and I'm feelin fantastic.

I have a favor to ask you all. I have been getting repeated phone calls from someone in the Los Angeles area. They called all the time despite that I never answered. It was annoying when they never left a message, so I finally decided to answer. It's always some different person who only speaks Spanish, and they are frantically looking for Maria. I've explained repeatedly that Maria esta no aqui, but they can't get that fucking idea through their head. So in retaliation, I've decided to release their phone number to the public.

I think it would be funny if all of my girl Sidesho-viewers (like biological girls) called this number and pretended to be the long, lost Maria -- especially if you speak Spanish. Guys can call too, and ask for David over and over again or something. Leave me a comment letting me know how it goes. 'Preciate it.

Beltline is the road here in Addison/Carrollton that I live/work on. Every day I drive its length once in the morning and once in the evening ... okay ... afternoon. I am the most well tempered driver that I know, but frankly, dear viewers, the way people drive on Beltline is starting to get to me. The way I see it, there are only three kinds of drivers on this road.

Unconcerned With The Speed Limit
This person does not care what the speed limit is on the road, they are not in a hurry. Despite the 40 mph speed limit, they choose to go anywhere from 30 to 20 mph, even when no cars are in front of them. I'd say this is the majority of Beltline drivers. I admire their lackadaisical approach to the passage of time, but when you're already 40 minutes late to work, they can be a bit frustrating.

In The Wrong Lane
Despite their best efforts, these drivers simply cannot get into the correct lane. If they're turning right, they stay in the left lane as long as possible. This requires them to make evasive maneuvers to get into the lane they need to be in, often decreasing their speed well below that of Unconcerned With The Speed Limit to get behind them. I don't have to tell you that this only complicates the problem.

Wife In Labor
Whenever someone is being a jackass, going too fast, and swerving between lanes, I always try to be understanding. I generally assume that their wife is in the passenger seat going into labor and they need to get to the hospital (or sometimes the mall or movie theater) as fast as possible. Residents of Addison must be fuckin like rabbits because there are tons of people driving around with wives in labor. It's not exactly easy for them with our other two personality types, but somehow they dangerously manage.

So this is my plea to anyone who drives on Beltline. Go the fucking speed limit and stay in the lane you need to be in and we can all get where we're going faster. While I was stuck in traffic, I was composing this blog in my head, so you'll have to bear with it's length. I was only going to talk about drivers until I heard a radio ad for free booze tonight. I got so excited. Until they went "BOO! There's one free!" Fuck me, they meant free 'boo's. Give me a break. Don't joke about free booze.

Then that reminded me of when those bible thumping dumb fucks in the dorm would post signs that said, "FREE BEER! Now that we've got your attention, come to bible study." It's just not cool. The bible, I mean.

Then that reminded me of when we had a couch burning at the dorm. Somebody found a loveseat and innocuously stored it outside the dorm during the day. Then around midnight Operation Hot Pocket torched that shit. The next day Allison and I hung up signs on all the doors that said, "Has anybody seen my couch? It was a brown loveseat. I left it outside the dorm last night." It was hilarious. Then that reminded me of when Allison and I hung signs in the MSC on the doors of the locked bathrooms that said, "Door not working properly. Push HARD!!!" That was even funnier.

Today on my way into work, I found two dollar bills laying on the ground. Chalk it up to good luck, I thought to myself. Not an hour after sitting down at my desk, a guy came by and gave me a check for 20 bucks to buy a Thanksgiving turkey -- a gift from the company. Score! Like an hour later, I find out that I got a bonus check for the third quarter. Big score! I was feeling so lucky that I bought like 5 scratch off tickets trying to capitalize on my newfound diety status. I lost on all of them. Oh well, I still came out ahead.

And that concludes my predetermined blog material. Thanks for reading, you have nots!

Holy crap. I had no idea this was going to take so long to prepare. I sure do hope you all find this as humorous as I did when I was making it. The beard is gone. It was a fun little experiment, but one that I don't expect to repeat any time soon. Of course, when you shave a beard off, you can't just shave it. You've gotta style it. Pictured below is a beautiful array of facial hair stylings. Go ahead, rate them on a scale of 1 to Pure Sex.

I got my hair cut tonight by my friend Chad. It is a lot shorter than it is in all of these pics. I would take a picture of it, but after sizing and photoshopping all of these silly pictures I just wasn't in the mood. Besides, that's more incentive for you all to come see me in person anyway. I also owe you some pictures of the apartment, but you might have to wait until I paint before I'm comfortable letting you all see where the magic happens.

This weekend is Halloween, and I'm not dressing up. I just don't have a costume. I might find something last minute. One of the best things you can do for a Halloween costume is take any ordinary noun and add the word 'slutty' in front of it. For instance, you can be a slutty fireman, a slutty cat, or be like Allison and go as a slutty Jolly Green Giant. Ho, ho, ho. Who would have thought we could use that tag line two years in a row? But if you want to know the truth, I'm just planning on going downtown, doing a little people watching and a whole lot of drinking. I was out last night when I got a late night call from my mother. Concerned that she would call me late at night, I snuck outside to a quiet nook to answer. No worries. She was just calling to let me know that my dad bought a banjo! What the fuck?! My parents must really be missing me.

And finally, because I know you all want it bad ... sexy 'stache pics! Woohoo! (My brother is probably the only one that can possibly confirm this, but don't you think I look like Uncle Al?)

mar·riage [mrj] n.

• The legal union of a man and woman as husband and wife.
• The state of being married; wedlock.
• A common-law marriage.
• A union between two persons having the customary but usually not the legal force of marriage: a same-sex marriage.
• A wedding.

Not sure what brought this particular entry to fruition, but it's something I've been thinking about lately. If you want to define marriage, don't go reading bibles, and certainly don't go listening to Bushito as he scratches the back of the KKKnights of Columbus. No, my friends, you have to go no further than our own beloved dictionary.com.

Marriage is a long standing religious farce, but in modern times has taken on a legally binding aspect. This is what gay marriage is about. Nobody gives a fuck if g*d smiles upon them as the father of the groom walks her down the aisle. There are issues dealing with wills, custody, hospital visitation, healthcare benefits. To take a sweeping stance that one entire group of people should be denied an entire set of rights and privileges that you enjoy based on the way they were born ... is bigotry.

We do not live in a theocracy, no matter what Jorge thinks. One of the founding principles of this country is the separation of church and state, and to insinuate that they should be melded is frankly un-American ... and a detriment to our troops. But what if we did live in this X-tian Garden of Eden where the Satanic gays were not allowed to be citizens. Wouldn't it be perfect?

So to this end, I say go ahead and ban gay marriage. Hurrah! But in all fairness, in our new X-tian Eden, divorce is also against the law. Sorry that you got knocked up at the age of 19 by your quarterback boyfriend who now does drywall for his old man's construction company and hits you. Unfortunately, extra-marital sexual relations are illegal, so you had to get married before you started to show. Also, you can never, ever divorce him. Sure, you could have possibly aborted the baby in the first trimester, but that's also illegal. Not that you would have had to deal with that had condoms not been outlawed. Conversely, since the real purpose of marriage is indeed procreation, any married couple who desires no children, or physically cannot bear child, will be annulled. All of this only pertains to X-tians anyway, people of other religions are not permitted to marry under their customs, since this country was founded with the purpose of forcing religion on people. And hell, while we're at it, let's just say that only whites can get married. I think we'll all be more comfortable that way. After all, this country was founded originally by white people ... and jesus was white.

There, I feel better now that we got that all ironed out, don't you? Now let's go drink some beer. And don't forget to vote on November 2nd, or P. Diddy will be angry.

Big news, kids. I am officially an independently functioning member of society. This little bird has flexed his wings and gone out on his own. Granted, everything in my apartment was donated by my parents, but we'll ignore that fact from here on out. I will show you pictures of my apartment as soon as it is in a presentable condition. I moved in on Sunday instead of Saturday because it was raining too hard. Not to say it didn't rain all day Sunday, but we got it done. There's still a few things back in Plano that I need to go get, but there's no rush there.

In other news, I haven't had a haircut in many, many months, nor have I shaved in many, many weeks. Yes, I have a beard ... and this time, her name isn't Allison. Pa-zzzing! I'm not really sure how I feel about the look, but I'm going with it. I had originally dedicated myself to no haircuts before 2005, but that may have changed. Marc and I went over to his friend Chad's apartment last night. Chad and his friendgirl work at Toni and Guy and were watching videos about how to give fucking badass haircuts. I can maybe get a really badass free haircut. That's what I'm planning on doing. I mean like woah, badass haircut.

On the horizon is lots of tidying up around the apartment. I might have a housewarming get together sometime in late November. Nobody from College Station will attend, so none of you are invited. Unless you want to come, then you are. Something more anecdotal to follow. Peace out.

Fine. I'll post. If I had a nickel for every time Ryan H■■■■ had left me a comment complaining about the frequency of my blogs ... well, I'd have like 30 cents, which really isn't a lot of money. I doubt I'd even make the hypothetical benefactor pay me that 30 cents, but still, to illustrate my point, that is a lot of times to make those comments. I haven't posted lately, but I have had some awesome ideas for new posts. I've since forgotten them all, but believe me, they would have been hilarious.

Today was supposed to be my moving day, but time conflicts have pushed that back until tomorrow. I am still going to take some of my stuff over there today but the furniture doesn't go until tomorrow. Which means you fuckers don't get to see it until at least tomorrow. But knowing me, it'll be more like next week.

My co-, Trey, is going to take care of moving me. I don't think I ever explained this on here. We have had a pool table in our garage for a long time. I think the last time it was used was like 5 years ago. Trey plays pool 6 nights out of the week in various leagues, tournaments, and pool halls. He has always wanted a pool table but couldn't ever afford one. The only thing we use our pool table for is to play ping pong on top of it like once a year. So I told my dad I would buy him a really nice, brand new ping pong table in exchange for that ratty old pool table we don't even use. I will, in turn, give that to Trey who will then enlist the help of his son and friends, all of the people who would use his new pool table. And in the end, I get more man power, with no time restrictions, for less money. It's what you call a win/win/win/win situation.

At my hotel room, my friend came over and asked to use the phone. I said "Certainly." He said "Do I need to dial 9?" I say "Yeah. Especially if it's in the number. You can try four and five back to back real quick." I bought a doughnut and they gave me a receipt for the doughtnut... I don't need a receipt for the doughnut. I give you money and you give me the doughnut, end of transaction. We don't need to bring ink and paper into this. I can't imagine a scenario that I would have to prove that I bought a doughnut. To some skeptical friend, Don't even act like I didn't buy a doughnut, I've got the documentation right here... It's in my file at home. ...Under "D". I saw a human pyramid once. It was totally unnecessary. This shirt is dry clean only. Which means... It's dirty.

Those are all Mitch Hedberg quotes, you can read more by clicking his name. I saw him and Stephen Lynch last weekend in Austin. Three words: hi-larious. I liked Mitch a lot better, but that is not to say that Stephen Lynch wasn't brilliant in his lyrics and guitar stylings. That paragraph above is pretty much how the show went. Mitch comes on stage drunk, stumbles a little, leans forward over the table where his sheets of paper with jokes written on them are, his hair falls forward over his face and he proceeds to read on after the other. I think we saw his face once. It's like he went to a school for how to become a comedian and then did the exact opposite. I'm always impressed when comedians with long stand-up acts can tie it all together, or use recurring jokes. Mitch did none of this. Didn't even try. I have a lot of respect for that. It was probably 2 of the 50 funniest hours of my life. Didn't get to go out because Stinky Pants got too drunk, but did manage to drink a whole lot (just not at breakfast).

I'm trying to figure out what I'm going to do today besides move. I might go see Scott Mechlowicz's new movie, Mean Creek. I'm pretty sure it's out. And he's so dreamy. My internet will be up and running Monday in the apartment, so don't expect another post before then. But do keep checking back hourly just in case I post from home. Hey Ryan, happy now, fucker?

I just got back from the gym. My heart is still pounding. I am really attacking this workout thing with renewed vigor. I have started swimming again and that feels so good. I swim until I can't breathe and then as punishment for being weak, I swim some more. It's just annoying that every time I go under my cigarette keeps going out. But seriously folks, I swam for about an hour tonight, dried off, donned my workout gear and headed upstairs to run on a treadmill. I'm going to have to find an alternative to this because it is tearing up my knees, but damned if jogging isn't the easiest way to maintain my 180 heartbeats per minute. The ol' vision got a little spotty tonight, but I pushed through it.

As I'm doing this, I can't help but be reminded of the episode of Full House where Deej thinks she's fat and has a swim party to go. So she starts giving away her lunches and Steph catches her and forces her to eat. But really she feeds her sandwich to Comet when she thinks Steph isn't looking. But she did see, only she didn't want to betray the trust of her sister when she made her pinky swear she wouldn't tell anybody. But really she should have because later on at the gym, Deej pushed herself too hard on the cardio equipment and had a black out.

I think we can all learn a lesson from this episode: It is inexcusable to be over weight, and if you are ... just stop eating!

Although, if the writers had had sufficient foresight, they would have made baby Michelle the one with the eating disorder.

Disaster! Co-worker Yue found my webpage. I deleted a few choice entries now that my url is on the office server somewhere deep in the cache. Will have to remain more cognizant of what I write (why do I keep stealing Ryan S■■■'s subjectless sentence style? V. not me).

I'm going to Austin tomorrow to see Stephen Lynch and Mitch Hedberg with the lovely Miss Lesbie Ann, Justin M■■■ (the one who introduced me to Howie Day in that very city), and hopefully my Brandon, who has yet to get off of work. The show is Saturday night, but I'm gonna go stay with Leslie for an extra day to get some partying out of the way.

Next week ... the move!

Do you ever just have too much to say? So much so that you don't feel like writing it down. That's what happened to me this past weekend. I decided to just sit on my stories for a while, so details that once seemed monumental are now rather trivial. It will make my blog shorter, and the stories more compact.

First things first. My brothers Stephen and Michael, from Houston and Sacramento, respectively, both visited. Their wives came as well. Stephen brought Kaylyn around so Michael could meet her, to avoid having to introduce himself to her on her 13th birthday. I just loved this picture. I assure you, she was well nutured and attended to all weekend, but this picture is so something my fam would do. 'Ahh, just prop her up, she'll be alright.' It was cute though. It was really good to see everyone that came to dinner on Friday night. I supplied the dessert -- peach cobbler from Marshall's BBQ. Oh man, is it ever good. I made everyone try it, even if they didn't want to. I also passed around my shock lighter. That was some good entertainment there. By the end of the night, we had 11 people around the table holding hands, while Stephen and I grabbed the lighter simultaneously. Everyone around the circle felt the shock. It was hilarious.

That night I went out to the bars, but wasn't really having much fun. Ryan S■■■ and I decided to just go back to his place and go to sleep. When we got there, however, I coerced him into having one drink before bed. Which turned into two ... then three ... then we lost count. Much squeezy vodka was ingested despite Ryan's attempt to fall asleep. We watched Romy and Michele's High School Reunion, our favorite movie. Since the last time I saw it, I learned all the state capitals. So when they're at the reunion and Toby Dumbfuck asks them to name all the capitals and the Frinkazoid starts off with 'Albuquerque' I KNEW that was NOT the capital of New Mexico, because everyone knows that's Santa Fe. So we called everyone we knew to tell them that and even convinced Jason and Levi to come have a drink with us. We were beyond wasted, but obviously so much fun.

Saturday night I went out with Lil Jarrod. We had a blast. He is one of my new favs ... too funny. It was so damn crowded because this weekend was Pride. You could barely move and getting a drink was an impossibility. Ryan S■■■ got fed up with the crowds and left unannounced, so our plan to stay at his place overnight was soon liquidated. Bob and his brother and friends were in the bars too. Too good to see him! We had fun all night long and then set about trying to decide where to go. Even though I had like three Long Islands and about six beers, I was feeling adventurous so we turned toward Plano. But I can't go home because my parents set a big wake-up-the-neighborhood alarm when they go to bed. So we eventually ended up in Lewisville at Lil Jarrod's apartment. I slept on his couch and hope I didn't scare his sister in the morning. I don't think I did though because she was quite lovely and it was nice to meet her.

From there we went back downtown to the Pride Parade. I'm sorry, but I love Pride. I don't care how many people are too cool for school. It is my favorite holy day, second only to Thanksgiving. I fought for beads as best I could, and even caught some, a feat not to be overlooked. I got some sun -- so hot, saw tons of people I knew, hung out with Lil Jarrod and Marc, got to go to Hamburger Mary's for the first time and meet some new people. All in all it was a wonderful day. I was sunburned and exhausted when I got home, and since then I have been in the most inane training class at work. It is downright painful. But, persevere I will.

This weekend I am going to College Station with Ryan H■■■■. We are going to watch some ring dunkings. I'm not positive who it was but I wanna say Daniel. So I won't have my car but I will have my phone so call me and meet up with. Alright, sluts, I'm out of here. I gotta go work out because I'm morbidly obese. Peace!

Last night was another party on the roof of the Block in Uptown. All of my go-to guys had other engagements for the evening so I thought I might be forced to show up to the party alone. I would have called someone there and had them meet me downstairs to maintain the appearance that I have friends, but still, I didn't want to put up with that. Lil Jarrod to the rescue! He IMed me asking if I was going to the party and I invited him to go with me. He had his friend Lil Josh with him, so they drove over to my house and then we carpooled to the party.

This is a picture of Lil Jarrod and me at Brian's party a couple weeks ago. He was drinking champagne from the bottle and I was trying to teach him not to by demonstrating how trashy it looked. But then he started fighting back just as Ryan S■■■, unofficial photographer of every social event in the city, popped up. I love this picture and wanted to share with you. The party last night was pretty off the heezy. There were probably about 300 people there and the guy hired bartenders and everything. Although, I would have to say that it took twice as many people as ULDE:IYDKYDG to have half the fun. I'm not biased or anything, though. The cops came to the party or something because Brian insisted we all go downstairs to another apartment to hide. I'm not really sure what that was all about, but we had a grand time down in Brandon's apartment. Laughed a lot there. I passed around Lil Jarrod's phone number and had everyone on the porch texting him with lewd messages while he sat on the couch 5 feet away. It was really funny ... for me. I had such a good time with Lil Jarrod ... it was the first time we'd hung out together mutually sober for any period of time. Will have to do it again post haste.

I got to see Kyle from College Station last night. He was at the party. That was fun. He might be moving to Dallas. That would be awesome. He's also avidly following my pi progress, which is always fun. I also got to meet Myke with a 'y'. I think I'll change the spelling of my name from David to Deighvyd. Myke was cool. He doesn't button his shirt and he doesn't care. Also got a chance to talk to Miles who has his own website. You can click his name there if you want to see it. It's no SideshoViD.com but I respect anybody with their own domain. Also talked to Kevin last night, but that's a story of it's own uhhHUH-HUH-HU-HUHUHUUH.

Lil Jarrod confirmed my suspicions last night that my blogs are becoming obnoxiously long. Maybe I should update more often so I don't have so damn much to say. I'm sure all of you just skim, which would explain why I never get any comments. Oh well.

BIG NEWS!!!1!!! I got an apartment! I move in October 9th. Pictures, floor plans, details, etc coming soon.

The party on Friday night was a rousing success. We estimated around 150 guests all told, which exceeded even my optimistic predictions. There were a few bumps in the planning process, but nothing that couldn't be overcome. I left work early (duh) and headed over to Ryan S■■■'s apartment. We decided to go to one of those always christmas stores to buy lights to string around the roof of Ryan's building since there is like no light up there. We made it to the store and bought 4 strands of light, though in retrospect we probably could have used even more. Oh well, we can always get more before the next party. Brandon was on his way to Dallas with his parents for a wedding and I was supposed to go to Northpark Mall to pick him up since he was going to be dropped off there. But as soon as we got back into my car, I turned the key and heard nothing. No click, no groan, no squeak ... nothing. My car was dead.

Being the easily exciteable person I am (yeah, right) we called AAA and ordered a tow truck and then called Sean W■■■■ to come pick us up. Thank you, Sean! We also made arrangements for Brandon's parents to just drop him off in the parking lot we were stranded in. After a quick jaunt to the corner convenient store for Powerade and cigarettes we sat and waited. Brandon's parents came. His dad, being a super nice guy, popped the trunk and diagnosed the problem as a dead battery. His mom, being a horrendous bitch, called me stupid. They thankfully left and we waited for Sean and the tow truck. Sean arrived and took Ryan home. Brandon and I waited for the tow truck. This fat black guy with all gold teeth comes roaring through the parking lot not even slowing down for speed bumps. But he ended up being one of the nicest guys I've ever met. He concurred with the battery diagnosis, towed me to an Auto Zone, went into the store with me while I bought a battery, and then put it in there for me. We were back in business.

Once we got back to Ryan's we lugged the two kegs up four flights of stairs, got those tapped and iced down, strung lights around and sat and waited for the guests. There were only about 8 or so people there around 9:00 when the party was scheduled to begin and I casually remarked to Ryan, "Did we put the cups out yet?" To which he replied, "What cups?" Ahhh! Two kegs and no cups ... that's like having a carton of cigarettes and no lighter. David S■■■■■■ saved the day by stopping and getting cups on his way. Then the party started picking up.

Certainly by midnight things were in full swing. I dedicated myself that night to introducing myself to everyone I could and making sure that everyone I was in a circle with knew each other. There were so many friends there I could hardly mention them all, but Allison did show up with her crew. I was excited to see K■■■. I also got to meet Christine's co-googleworker, Lindsey, who has been a loyal Sidesho-Viewer since she first overheard Christine's laughter. It's always nice to meet a viewer, though sometimes it can be creepy, she was very classy about the whole thing.

The only thing that marred the night whatsoever was one group of guests. They mistook our evite to a swank uptown soiree as an invitation to drink two bottles of vodka, show up to the party trashed beyond good taste, be exceedingly rude to my friends and guests, vomit in Ryan's kitchen sink, disrupt the party in a desperate attempt for attention, unplug our decorative christmas lights, become irrational and violent towards their host, ignore several polite requests to remove themselves, and try to ruin the party for everyone by dialing 911 to report underage drinking. I guess next time we should be more specific about the nature of the party. As this person was pressing "send" on his cell phone to alert the authorities that we were having a good time without him, Ryan did the only logical thing he could. He grabbed his cell phone and threw it from the roof of the building to the streets below. I can't say I condone his actions, but it sure did seem appropriate at the time.

The second keg floated around 1:30am and while I drank a little while longer off of a hidden stash of emergency liquor, the party pretty much dissapated when the beer was gone. I spent the night on the best palette ever made by man on Ryan's floor with Brandon and the next day the three of us cleaned up a pretty good mess. I would say that this party was one of the best I've been to, even though you all know how much I despise tooting my own horn. Really, I wasn't to blame for the success. Ryan set up all the party plans and made sure everything was on schedule. And the rooftop of the Heights was the perfect sized party venue and the weather could not have been more agreeable. Will have to have another rooftop party post haste.

In other news, if any of you are still with me, my brother and sister are in town for Labour Day. Stephen brought the baby with him, but I've barely gotten to see her. They're at his wife's family's house right now. I went to go work out today while the family went to church (sue me) and when I was done I decided to get lunch at the gym. They have a really nice little deli counter there. I stood there trying to decide what I wanted and just as I was about to order this big black guy butts in front of me and yells, "GIMME ONE OF THOSE TURKEY PANINIS I LIKE THOSE TURKEY PANINIS." And I'm about to make some snotty comment about how I was about to order, but he's so big that I decided to let it slide ... lucky for him. Well then some random dude walks in and goes, "Michael, how's the competition on the basketball court today?" and it was then that I realized I had just been cut in front of by Michael Irvin. So now that I know he works out at my gym, if anybody needs crack, I totally have the hookup.

Thanks to all of you who showed up to ULDE, my pity to those who couldn't make it. Until next time, take it easy ... and if it's easy, take it twice. Peace out, sluts.

I have had so many things to tell you all, but I have, regretably, been far too lazy to put them down in text. I've had a couple grand epiphanies. First, I met my new friend RyanC. He lives in Deep Ellum, an area of town I am completely unfamiliar with. When I told my mother that I was going to Deep Ellum she told me I was going to get shot. But then again, she tells me that about just about everywhere I go so I thought nothing of it. Well, after finally finding RyanC's loft, I parked and we walked to Angry Dog for dinner. On the way, we passed by an agitated truck full of African-American gentlemen angrily throwing their fists in the air and screaming, "Black Power!" I just knew that was a good sign that they would instantly take a liking to me. When they saw RyanC and I, they started yelling, "Fuck the white man. Fuck the facist caucasions. Fuck you, you fucking white devil, you caucasion homosexual facist!" Which, I naturally took offense to, as I am a practicing facist.

But they drove off without incident and we enjoyed a wonderful meal and then drove down to the New Amsterdam Coffeehaus. This is my new favorite bar in all of Dallas. It was all dimly lit with like 40 chandaliers and its all goth inside. I love it. The best part of it is that whatever you order, it comes in a glass specifically designed for that drink, usually provided by the vendor. Proper glassware is so important. RyanC introduced me to what may very well be my new favorite fancy beer -- Moudite. If you ever get a chance to try it, jumponit. My epiphany from this endeavor was that I am wasting my time here in Dallas spending every weekend at JRs, Roundup and TMC. I'm not saying I'll never go there again, but I am going to make a conscious effort to find the good here, so that if someone ever happens to visit me, I can show them the true hot spots.

Last night was Brian's birthday/housewarming party. It was tres chic. Ryan S■■■ and I went shopping during the day and I got a kickass new outfit. But since I wore it to Brian's party, now I need another new outfit for ULDE:IYDKYDG. I looked good though, when, not if, I do say so myself. Brian claimed his party was the social event of the century, naturally making ULDE:IYDKYDG the social event of the millennium. I shouldn't be too sassy about it though, since Brian has graciously offered us all of his alcoholic left overs to reuse at our party. So it looks like there will be some liquor there, folks. My friend Marc and his friend Filipe joined us at the party. Marc is multi-lingual and uses it to his advantage. Whenever he wanted to say something private to Filipe, he spoke in French, when he wanted to tell me something, he used German. And then when he introduced himself to Chris Jones, he used English, which floored Chris. He was unimpressed with foreign languages, but blown away that he could also speak our native tongue. It was funny.

After the party everyone went over the Minc. But I got a text message from RyanC saying that he was at New Amsterdam CoffeeHaus again, which is like 3 doors down from Minc, so I went there instead. Good times, good times. Had a couple beers there to supplement my already healthy BAC. Ryan S■■■ drove home, naturally.

I had to go to my physical assessment today. Oh yes, kids, I joined a gym finally. I think Burns summed up what I expect to be the general reaction when he responded to my workout away message.

BURNSofive: what are you doing there? is it happy hour?

That should save you all from having to make your sassy comments. At the gym they measured my weight, my body fat, my arm strength, my endurance, and all this shit. It was kinda cool. The computer says that I have the body of a 21 year old and gave me suggestions on how to get down to the body of an 18 year old. Of course, if I knew a surefire way to get to the body of an 18 year old, I wouldn't be here typing this for all of you. Zzzzzing! But I cannot tell you how good it felt to work out again. I think this is really going to make my life better. Even though I was sweating Moudite the entire time, I walked out there thinking to myself, "Damn, I am a healthnut," as I lit my cigarette.

One final note, I seem to have just contracted a computer virus that is putting up away messages for me, so don't click any links on my away messages. Thanks and gig this!

This weekend I made yet another trip to beautiful College Station, Texas. There were good and bad things about my little vacation. Instead of dividing them into two categories I thought I would alternate between one good thing and then one bad thing to keep things all evened out. Starting with the good, naturally.

I got to leave work at 2:30 on Thursday because I had finished everything for the week, which means I got to take a Friday off for free! When I got to College Station, Marshall didn't want to go out and refused to even attempt to have fun. But AllieD was rarin' to go so we got all sloshed and had a rip roaring good time. The next morning I was completely hungover. So Allison and I went to see Napoleon Dynamite and it was really funny. That night I was ready to go crazy at the bar but got completely stood up by Marshall. Allison came to the rescue after I stopped by a party of hers and took her out to Halo. It was completely dead there. 27 showed up. I rounded out the evening back at the party fairly bored and not drunk enough. The next day I got see meet up and go out to lunch with Tommy. I was supposed to go see his new loft downtown when he got off work at 5, but despite knowing that he was home he refused to answer the phone and let me up and I haven't talked to him since. But he lives next door to a bar, so I spent that time drinking beer and talking to the hippies at Revolutions. I wanted to make a shirt like the one that Napoleon wore in the movie, but I ultimately couldn't find the right supplies. So I went back to Marshall's and took a nap. He never called me after he got off work, despite the fact that I put gas in his car that had been sitting empty on the side of the road for a couple of days. I had plans of my own, though, since Brian (Allison's fab friend) and his roommate James were having a party. I was still pretty hungover from my previous days' binging so I really couldn't drink a lot. And the highlight of the weekend, Chris came to the party.

End the pattern. Did everyone notice it alternated good and bad? (I color coded it after the fact.) I didn't even have to try, because the good and bad was chronological it turns out. But yeah, seeing Chris was really good. I miss that kid so much. It's a lot easier to forget that when I haven't seen him in 6 months, but seeing him again brings that all back. It was a good time though. Maybe I'll see him again in 7 years when he graduates from grad school. Raul and Rob accompanied us to the party. That's always a good time. Brian and James have the coolest friends. It was an excellent party. Other highlights included seeing Justin M■■■ and Charlie at Halo, 27s friend being delightfully nice, and Texas Toothpicks. Other lowlights included not seeing Stino, 27s other friend being dreadfully rude, and Marshall leaving for "lunch" while I was still in bed on Sunday and then never ever coming home. I don't think I'll be going back to College Station for a while ... not without reason.

Tonight I went swimming. It felt so good. I realized I haven't been out of breath or felt my muscles burn in months! I felt just like Michael Phelps. Oh great, now everyone googling for pics of the speedo-clad Phelps are going to end up here. It probably won't help that I'm about to say gold medal Athens 2004 Olympics. (After typing this, I've decided to make tricking googlers into coming to my site a permanent feature on my site.)

Last business to discuss. September 3rd: ULDE:IYDKYDG. Ryan S■■■, Brent W■■■■, and I are throwing a party to celebrate a day of Labor Pains. That stands for Uptown Labor Day Extravaganza: If You Don't Know, You Don't Go. If you would like to come, leave a comment, and IM or an email giving me your email address and I'll make sure you get on the e-vite list. And with all the e-vite list theft going on around town, you'll probably be invited to several subsequent Dallas parties as well. I'm expecting some College Station folk to attend. Also, October 2nd: Stephen Lynch and Mitch Hedberg, the two funniest men alive, performing together at the Paramount in Austin. I'm buying tickets this Saturday so if you would like to go, let me know. Tickets are $35.

I hope you all have an alternatingly good and bad time this week. And remember ... if you don't know .. you don't go!

There is nothing like Neil Diamond to make rush hour traffic an absolute joy. I am in the best mood now. I was jammin out on the way home from work to my new two disc set. I bought it because I was wearing my Neil Diamond concert T this weekend and got many comments on it, which made me start thinking about how I wanted to hear his music. One guy, as we were walking into Jason's apartment complex, accused me of not even knowing who Neil Diamond was, so I launched into a few drunken verses of Forever In Blue Jeans, Kentucky Woman, and Love on the Rocks, to name a few. Sure showed him. HA!

I bought the CD at the Borders in the West Village. Silly me, I never even knew the West Village existed, and Ryan S■■■ lives so close to there, and I used to work like right there. They have some of the best stores I've seen since I left Miami. I wanted to buy a whole bunch of stuff, but decided to save a little bit of money instead of blowing it all on clubbing clothes. I did buy one shirt for 40 bucks, though, because it's totally hot and it was half off. Half off, but I got a whole shirt. It's awesome. I can't wait to sport it this weekend when I'm in College Station, make all you bitches jealous.

Yes, that's right, this is probably your final reminder. I'll be pullin' into CS on Thursday night, depending on what time I can feasibly slip out of work on Thursday. Since I'm skipping Friday, it might not be such a hot idea to leave at noon again like I did last time. I can't wait to see everyone, but there are some things on my agenda. I have to hang out with Christopher before he trucks back off to Yale. I'll be spending as much time with him as I can. I have to go out with AllieD before she trucks off to Austin for the weekend. We have much to discuss ... and by 'discuss' I mean 'drink.' I have a party to go to with Brian and James, Allison's new crew. That's on Saturday night. Anyone and everyone can go with me if you'd like, I put myself down for 20 guests. I also need to see Tommy's new apartment ... now that I know he hasn't been ignoring me for the past few weeks. He hasn't even had internet, so someone else is on all of his accounts. If it's a Sidesho-Viewer, what you're doing isn't very nice and I think you should stop. It made me think Tommy hated me, as preposterous as that sounds.

I went apartment shopping this weekend with Ryan S■■■. I really want to live in Addison Circle, but they were at like a 98% lease rate when I went. That means that there are no good apartments left, and the ones that are left, they have absolutely no incentive to cut me any specials on. I was pretty gung ho about moving out but now my spirit has been crushed. I gave the lady my email address and told her to give me a heads up on any upcoming vacancies. I know I could go live somewhere else, but you know me. Once I decide I want something, I just can't settle for something else. Instant gratification, people, it's what makes the world go 'round. Rest assured, though, loyal viewers, I am fully intending to move out of my parents' house, perhaps in the near future, as my rent budget may swell.

Work goes on. Life goes on. Beers go down. Not much else to say. I love you all, and look forward to seeing everyone in CS this weekend. MWAH!

When I got home today, my heart skipped a beat. I walked into my room to find my beloved Tuna floating on top of the water. I don't talk about Tuna very much on my blog (he's my fish, for any newcomers) but I sure do love him. He is the most expressive fish I've ever met in my life. People think i'm being facetious when I talk about Tuna being mad at me, but it is so true. Usually when I get home, he sees me walk in the door and swims to the top to wait for me to come say hi to him. But if I happen to forget to feed him for one night, when I come in the next day, he'll swim down behind the faux plants and ignore me. He is so moody but he's the fucking coolest fish ever and I love him. So I come in to find him on top of the water, and I freeeeeeeak, but he doesn't look dead. So I inspect and find that he's pinned above the water on top of one of the plant's leaves, so I pushed him off. He is quite upset by it, and I wish I knew how long he'd been there. Whenever he gets really upset, his purple and black scales turn a pale white, and he's like all white now. Just a second ago he tried to jump out of the tank he's in. I have a suicidal fish just like Amelie.

I joke but if he were really to die, I would be more distraught than you would probably find rational over a pet betta. Hopefully it won't come to that for a few more years. Maybe I should get him some guppy friends. I just don't know.

Last night I had the opportunity to go out to dinner with Sean W. and Tom the Australian. We went out to On the Border and introduced Tom the Australian to margaritas. He approved, naturally. Then we watched Ellen Degeneres' stand up called Here and Now. Can't remember if I mentioned this stand up routine already, but I rented it randomly one day and proceeded to watch it like 3 times a night until it was due and then I bought it and kept on watching it. Even though I've seen it about 50 times, we laughed our asses off. It was so much funnier watching it with other people around to laugh with you. And Tom the Australian hadn't seen it yet so he had some fresh laughter to contribute. It was a really great time. Of course, I was out until about midnight, a new latest record.

So today I spent the day getting pi out to 250 digits, getting all the states and capitals down, taking a look at the square root of 2, and getting started on the presidents in order. I also got scared that some of this might be a waste of my time and brain capacity so I prepared an excel sheet to help me memorize all 120 or so phone numbers in my cell phone. As I was going through the list, many, many of you got deleted, but the rest of you will soon be backlogged in my brain for eternity. It's so good that they're paying me to stay busy. Ha! The beers and jaeger shots are telling me to go to sleep now, so I'll see you have nots later.

Another party with Ryan S■■■ & Co. in the bag. I always have way too much fun when I hang out with them. They are like the silver lining on the dark cloud that I call my life. Ryan invited me to this party in his neighborhood and said I should show up at his place early at 8:45. So around 9:00 I joined up with Ryan, Brent, David S., Waleed, Sean W., and Tom the Australian. Tom talked funny. But, I took a liking to him instantly ... I'd like to say it was because he was nice and laughed at my jokes and was friendly and engaging ... but, it was because of the accent. I had one beer there while I shifted into my 'stand-up routine guy' mode of story telling and then we went to the party.

It was over in The Block, the same place the party was where David S. threw bananas over the balcony onto people's cars. There was a nice crowd there, the host, Jason, was celebrating a birthday. He has a really nice apartment with a stellar view. I indulged a bit on the free alcohol, but mostly just chit chatted with friends and strangers. Mr. K■■■■■■ showed up to end his quite impressive Sidesho-less streak. He claims that he's never at his computer when I message him, but I'm gonna have to call shenanigans.

From there it was off to Minc. There was a big sign up by the front door that you could sign. We (Ryan, David, Robert and I) discussed it over lunch this afternoon. Apparently the sign was for some girl's graduation. I wrote, "Hang out with your wang out!" and David S. wrote, "Happy Birthday!" Too funny. Especially since we had no idea what it was or who it was for. I ran into a bit of trouble at Minc because Tom the Australian said that he only liked to drink shots. So in an effort to show off the size of my ... wallet, I bought some shots. So by the time we left Minc, this guy was in a state. Roundup was pretty fun, I don't remember all of the details. I think I danced a bit with Tom the Australian but was too slovenly drunk to keep my balance. I bought some random girl a beer. I saw Eric B■■■■ ... if any of you know who he is. We talked for a while.

Then I made Waleed take me back to Ryans. I think we went through Whataburger on the ride, as is evidenced by the empty bag, not by my memory. Me and taquitos ... I am so fun. I passed out in Ryan's bed and he said when he got home, I wouldn't move out of his bed until he danced. I wish I had been there cause that sounds funny. I was all indignant about letting him have his own bed. And then some friends busted in later but I don't remember that happening so hopefully I just kept my mouth shut. When we woke up we watched 28 Days, not to be confused with its sequel, 28 Days Later. It's a movie about Sandra Bullock being an alcoholic in rehab, the perfect post-lunch/breakfast (sometimes called brunch) where we all drank mimosas, bellinis, and bloody marys.

Ultimately, it was hella fun, despite my day long hangover and the dent in my bank account. Today was my dad's birthday and we ate the beautiful cake I decorated and watched Die Hard. It was good times. Tomorrow, I have to work again. How horribly depressing that this pattern will repeat itself until I die. Oh well, I'll get through it. And when I do, I will see you all on the flip side.

Last night was delightful. I got to go to Clay's house in this magical neighborhood surrounded by castlegates, drawbridges, magik and mystery. He had read my blog on having too many items in my pockets (07/24/2004: My daily inventory) and brought me a stylish euro man bag from Spain! How cool is that. Thank you, Clay, I copyright my new man bag. He also brought with him a bottle of the forbidden, therefore more desirable, Absinthe. The way we drank it was so cool. First you put some in a glass with ice. Then you take a spoonful of sugar, dip it into the alcohol, and then light the spoon on fire. As the sugar melts you let it drip back down into the glass. When it has sufficiently melted, you stir it all up until it's milky and add water. I really enjoyed my first experience. In a nutshell, it tasted exactly like liquid black licorice. Nothing to write home about ... but certain something to blog about.

Work today was so pointless. I know that my work ethic is a well known and often lamented fact of engineering lore, but I honestly believe I'm a hard worker. When I have something to do and it needs to get done, boy howdy, I'll get it done for you, and quick. I'll even work late or through the night or on the weekends if it needs be. What I don't do is show up early in the morning to the ghetto to sit on my hands for 5 hours pissing and moaning about the way things are run. I didn't do a fucking thing all day. Oh well, I guess things could have been worse. One thing I noticed today is that the number one goal of everyone on a jobsite is to pass the buck. It doesn't matter what hasn't been done or who was supposed to do it, "It ain't my job."

And a lot of times, people will use the phrase, "... and I told [insert name here] this ..." I heard that about 100 times today. Example: "What we were contracted to do ... and I told Andy this ... is not to run wires." As if having previously told some third party who is not present or involved suddenly adds credibility to your statement. I just think its stupid, and I told Trey this, that I had to wake my ass up at 6am every day this week, yeah I'm doin' the controls down in Oak Cliff.

Tomorrow is my father's birthday. I got him the Die Hard trilogy DVDs and a Winnie the Pooh DVD for when Kaylyn visits. They've been collecting Disney movies for years now in the event of a grandchild, but I don't think she's quite ready for an entire plot, and everybody loves Winnie the Pooh. I just wanted to get him something grandpa-ish (assuming he is going by grandpa and hasn't been renamed Paw-Paw or Pee-Pee or Poo-Poo or something). I also decorated his cake tonight after dinner. I watch Martha do it so much that I thought I would be good at it. I spun that cake around as I smoothed out the icing. Then I did a cool pattern with pecans on top and crushed up some pecans and stuck them to the side of the cake. I worked so hard on it and I was so proud of myself. When I stepped back to admire my work, it looked as though it had been done by a retarded third grader. I should just avoid entirely doing anything with my hands. Well...

Tonight should be fun. I'm ready for anything, and I told Ryan this, so we're going to go to a party. Catch you skillets on the flip side.

Today was a productive day. I probably haven't mentioned my co-worker, Trey, in my blog as much as I have in real life. Trey is awesome. He's an old rednek with no formal education who is a jack of all trades. He's helping to train me at work. He talks ... really ... ... ... slow. It's awesome. He also happens to have pi memorized to 1250 digits. Today I made an Excel spreadsheet that would check him 10 digits at a time, and I sat and watched him successfully enter 500 digits in a row before I finally decided that I really wanted to go home. I told him I would memorize it out farther than him ... I'm up to 32 digits now. Don't believe me? 3.14159265358979323846264338327950, bitches. If you would like to race me on memorizing it, download my pi Excel sheet here.

This weekend was too much fun. Friday, I went on my lunch break at work ... and then decided that I really didn't want to go back. So at 1:00, I hit the road for College Station. Technically when my boss said, "Leave whenever you need to," I think he meant anywhere from 4:00 to 4:30. But you just can't say something like that to me and not expect me to take full advantage of it. I got into College Station around 4:00 and went straight to Hobby Lobby to visit Marshall while he worked. After a little bit of that I met up with Allison, her friend Brian (who is fab squared), and JonS■■■ for some evening cocktails. I picked up the tab because I have money and I spend it recklessly.

Halo on a Friday night, man I miss that. They were having some wicked drink specials, so after the nine of us drinking on my tab finished up, the total was only $50. Allison brought her friend Brian from earlier in the evening, and he in turn brought his friend James, who tried to open a tab behind my back, but I got it transfered to me. JonS■■■ came against his wishes because I promised him free drinks. Marshall and I got buck wild. Raul made a grand appearance, and Justin made his presence known. We definitely got our 50 bucks worth, drinking and dancing the night away. But you know me, my faithful Sidesho-Viewers. That's just not reckless enough for me. So I drunkenly vowed that on Saturday night, I would have a $200 bar tab. Everyone thought I was kidding ....

The next night when we went out, Marshall jokingly referred to my 200 dollar proclamation, to which I replied, "Let's do it." More drinking, more fun. Despite our best efforts, the total came to $85. In my defense, James was bartending, and being the good friend he is, he told me that he had "hooked me up BIG TIME." So jebus knows how much we actually managed to spend. It was way too much fun though. After the bar, Dick was having some people over to go swimming at his apartment. Raul and I swung by Marshalls for the half bottle of raspberry vodka I had purchased the day before and managed to drink that while wading in our underwear until 4am. It was crazy, crazy drunken fun. The kind of fun business professional people do not have. I can't wait to do it again soon.

Speaking of segues, I think I will do it again soon. I got a call from Chris, the boy who goes to Yale, for those of you who are bad with names. He was in Plano last night and he got to come by my house and then I gave him the full Plano experience by going to chit chat outside Starbucks with overpriced coffee and chain smoking. He is in CS through August and I will most certainly come back sooner than planned to visit him again before he whisks away back to the east coast. It was really good to get to see him and have a chance to sit down and talk about everything that's gone on in about the last seven months. Another reason I need to get back to CS in the near future is that I really need a haircut. I'm not backing out on my decision to never cut my hair again, but my last hair cut by the fat bitch at Toni & Guy was so bad that it's just not growing out right. So I'm going to get Hannah to fix it for the long haul.

The final piece of news is that I got to swing by Humble on Saturday from about 1:00 to 7:00. I went to see my 2 week old niece, Kaylyn. That was too much fun. She was sooo small and so cute. I got her some socks, a blanket and some shoes. I told you all how much I love shoes on babies, right? G*d, that cracks me up. They are too big for her at the moment, but I can't wait until she grows into them. She was so funny. She doesn't really have control of her arms or legs yet. She kind of flails around without rhyme or reason any time she gets upset. So when she yawns and her pacifier (otherwise known by its brand name, Soothie) falls out of her mouth, it is a challenge to get it back in her mouth before the screaming starts. Every time you get close, she knocks you out of the way. So my brother does this thing where he grabs her tiny hands and kind of holds them to her chest and says, "Let's get organized!" It was way too funny. Visiting Kaylyn will definitely have to be a priority in the months and years to come. I was thinking about going out of town for my 3 day weekend over Labor Day, but Stephen, Rachel and Kaylyn are coming to Dallas to visit, so I'm modoubly staying for that. Plus, I think Ryan S■■■ is having a party, so all you College Station boys should come up for that. Start making plans.

This blog is ridiculously long, but I had a lot to say, so I hope you enjoyed reading it. My call to action is for each of you to post your thoughts and experiences with pi, big bar tabs, and tiny babies. Until then, peace, my friends. And good night.

I am truly torn here, dear viewers. I sure do hate working, but damn it's nice having money. I guess that's how they trap you, like the buzz you get off of your first cigarette. Once you get used to having that money then you want more, and you have to work more to get it, and next thing you know you have a mortgage, thousand dollar car payment, angina and you're buying smokes by the carton.

I bought a carton of cigarettes the other day. In the five years that I've been smoking, I have rarely ever splurged on a carton of cigarettes. Not so much because I'm cheap (obviously) but because I hate committing to smoking all 10 packs, since I am always on the quest to quit. Well, not any more. I realized I'm wasting like a dollar on every pack I don't buy in a carton and that is stupid. Since I am so incredibly thrifty, right? I just dropped $100 on DVDs at Best Buy. I got some classics that were never in my collection just because everyone else has them. I just finished up Office Space and I may pop in Super Troopers until I fall asleep.

At least tomorrow is a Friday. Not that I have anything to look forward to, it's just inherently relaxing to know that you don't have to wake your ass up at 6am every day this week. I may get drunk, but I have no plans. I think Ben and I will go out and have drinks again since we had such a nice time at the Flying Saucer's Trivia Night the other night. And then Friday Brent is having a party that I was on the e-vite revised list for. That should be fun.

In our next episode, ViD will tell you all about his new notepad. Same Sidesho-Time. Same Sidesho-Channel. (Oooh, my first teaser ... melikes.) Czech you skillets latah.

Yay! My brother's wife had her baby today! I'm so excited. I don't know any of the time or weight or anything, but he said that she is just fine. Her name is Kaylyn Mary F■■■■. I might need to double check the spelling on that. My parents just left to go see her, but I didn't really want to go and I've already made my plans to go. So the weekend of July 30th I am going to drive down to College Station after work, party balls, get up and go to Humble, see the baby, drive back to CS, party balls, and then go home. It's the perfect plan.

I suppose I should get the baby a birthday present, but I usually just get my friends a fifth of vodka or a carton of cigarettes ... not sure what the infant equivalent of that is. Maybe I'll get her shoes. Babies with shoes on crack me up.

I wasn't sure what I was going to do last night since my go-to guy, Ryan S■■■, claimed he was going to stay home with mud butt. Then out of nowhere, Dustin and Trey IM me and say they wanna come to Dallas and party with me. So fun! We stayed in this Motel 6 down off Highway 30 and they had like mad security, so we asked about it. The parking attendant was like, "Ohhh yeah, they've had a lot of problems with prostitution around here lately." Haha, so we stayed in a whore house! Rad!

I gave them the grand tour of Dallas, and showed them all the pertinent sights: JR's, Round-Up, The Village, TMC. We had a blast. They drove to Ft. Worth today to help some girl move, not sure what thats all about. And tonight one of my co-s is celebrating his last weekend in Dallas cause he's being transferred to Kansas City. So I'll probably have to go to a straight bar to wish him well. I'm not sure what I am going to do the rest of the day. Maybe I'll swim, maybe I'll rent a movie, maybe I'll be on the computer and suddenly realize that its midnight. I'll be sure to let you know which one I choose. Peace out, have nots.

I can't believe how much there is to say, seeing as how I haven't blogged all week. You would have thought that with my birthday and everything I would have been chomping at the bit to tell you all about it, but in classic Sidesho-style I blindsided you all once again with my cunning and prowess. And by "cunning" I mean laziness, and by "prowess" I mean "general malaise."

My birthday was fucking awesome. I mean, I had to work and all, but that wasn't too bad. My coworkers all wished me a happy birthday. After work I went to dinner with my parents at a place called Smith and Wollensky. It was fucking awesome. To sum it all up, they used a crumb duster at the table. I ate and drank until I could barely move. I would venture to say it was the best meal I've ever had. I went to bed just a little early that night.

The next day my coworkers, remiss for having been denied the pleasure of a birthday happy hour, dragged me out to Duke's in Addison. Even though I had vowed publicly long ago to never go there again. I figured happy hour didn't count. Plus they were having their weekly dodgeball tournament and I wanted to see it. The co-s kept me with a beer in my hand the whole time. At one point, someone went to get me a drink while someone went to close out a tab while someone was leaving, and they all decided to get me a beer at once. So I had three full beers in front of me. It was AWESOME. I didn't end up staying to watch dodgeball so I can't tell you if it was cool or not, but I may check it out at some other point. I came home that night to my grandmother, 10 year old girl-cousin, and her 10 year old friend. I barely had time to say hi before I went to bed even earlier than the night before.

Speaking of, the girl-cousin is in my shower right now singing her fucking head off and it's about to use up my last nerve. It was nice to get to see her and get to know her a little bit, but there is a reason I don't hang out with 10 year old girls on a regular basis. Many, many reasons. And my mom has been fighting with my grandma pretty much since she got here ... which I find to be hilarious, because it reminds me a lot of when she and I fight. But it's not very fun for either of them, so that sucks. My dad remains stoic with the glass of Jack on the rocks.

Last night was Katie and Jeff's wedding. Congratufuckinglations you two. They are too cute together, so I braved the cathlick church to watch the blessed event. I went with Ryan S■■■ and we were the ONLY two wearing any color. My outfit was kickass. I got some new chinos from Banana and paired it with this kickass purple shirt and blue/red paisley looking tie. It was a killer combo I'll just say that much. As soon as I get some pictures back from Allison I'll add them to the imaginary picture page I keep promising. Ryan was wearing a pink shirt and a pink tie and we looked stellar. Of course, we were the only ones there who didn't look like we were going to a hoe down. It was so typical. My hair was in a wedding-hawk, a hairstyle I invented just for the wedding.

The reception was ridiculously fun. Much Coronas con lime ingested. Many high school friends and many, many Aggies. A little dancing, a little mingling. Ryan caught the garder ... too funny. After the reception ended almost everyone went to TABC, a bar in Uptown. Chilled, drank a little more. Ryan and I headed to Round-Up to meet up with everyone around closing time. A couple more drinks, to TMC to dance, and then Whataburger! Taquitos at 4am, nothing beats it.

Now here I am upstairs in my room with the door closed trying to avoid everyone for the remainder of the night. I cooked a turkey for dinner ... not exactly of Thanksgiving proportions, but another winner. So I feel I've deserved some quiet time. Sorry for the hiatus, you know I was thinking of you all every moment I was AFK. I'll try to keep you more informed in the future. Crack is whack.

I am back in Dallas now after my three day excursion to College Station. It was so good to go back. I knew this was going to happen, but in my defense that was probably the longest I had been away from that shitty little city since the summer that I had knee surgery. I spent the majority of the time with Marshall, but it was so good to see everyone else as well. I spent the second most time with Ryan and Josh, but also got to see Leslie, Josh, Raul, Justin, Justin, Tommy, Robby, and some others that I'm forgetting. If I've left you off of the list, just hit me up with a comment and then I'll cleverly add you and post a comment right after yours that says something to the effect of, "Try reading it again, I clearly see your name there." It is hilarious when I do that.

There's not a whole lot of news from my weekend. I got drunk all three nights, two of which were at Halo. I miss belonging like that. Knowing all the bartenders and owners and every patron of an establishment, and having them notice when you've been out of the loop for a while. I am coming to love going out in Dallas, but there's just nothing like the CS crew. Marshall and I got shitcanned on Friday night even though I told him that there was no way I was going to last past midnight cause I was so tired. I was practically falling asleep on the drive down there despite the fact that I slipped out the side door of work two hours early. Shhhh. My supervisor was out of town so I didn't see any reason for me to hang around.

So Friday night was a FUCKING BLAST ... just what I needed. Saturday was a big drag show that I didn't even look at once the whole night. I drank a lot of Jaeger before we went out to the bar so the entire night's activities are a tad blurry. But I know I had fun and only ran up a six dollar bar tab despite telling everyone I knew to put everything on my tab. Rock out with your cock out!

Sunday night Marshall and I went over to Chris's apartment to sit by the hot tub and play volleyball. Well, I read magazines while the other boys and girls played volleyball. Sports aren't exactly my style. Then we got some beer and I drank a bunch. I am so fun. Then today I said my goodbyes to Marshall at Hoblob, swung by Josh's to pick up some of my stuff he was still holding onto and drove home. Yippee skippy. Oh but I got my diploma from Marshall who was having it framed at Hoblob. The four hundred dollar framing job that I inexplicably paid nothing for. It looks so cool. I'll have to snap a picture for all of you and include it on the picture post that I've been promising frequently as of late.

One final note: Tomorrow is my 23rd birthday. Make my day.

I am now done with orientation at work. Friday was another good Friday. For the entire three weeks, they'd been telling us about our final exam at the end and how we should be studying a little bit here and there because it was really hard and comprehensive. And of course, none of us studied. In fact, we joked, "I'm not gonna study. I bet when we walk in the door, there's nothing but cake and punch." But in reality, we were all fully expecting a test.

Well, wouldn't ya know, as soon as we opened the door to take our tests, the Recruitment and Development Department yelled out "SURPRISE!" and clapped as they stood behind ... yup, cake and punch. So rad. And then we each had a little card congratulating us, a ■■■ pen, and a ■■■ like leather zipper folder thing. It was pretty cool. We had a good time. And then we all went to happy hour at Blue Mesa Grill. I had several beers and one guy bought a round of 16 shots of tequila. These people are all pretty fun. But they were going out and wanted me to join. Something to do on a Friday night? Rad!

The other night I got really sad about the fact that I was in Dallas. Poor Josh and Nelly Ryan had to talk to me while I was upset. I've really been kind of lonely since I've been back. I have my few friends here and I see them occasionally, but I miss all my friends in College Station. A lot. So to go hang out on a Friday night instead of sitting home and going to bed early was just what I needed. That, and more cowbell. I rawked the hawk for all my coworkers who had never seen it before. I met them all at this guy Keith's apartment and we went to Arriba's for margaritas and daqueries to start with.

There was a group of about eight of us, all heavy drinkers. I'm gonna toss some names around so don't get confused. Keith's stomach was upsetting him from his drink so he asked the waitress if she had any Tums. She didn't. And she was like 18 with a full set of braces. So when Willem's check came he wrote "No Tums, No Tip" and then blackened in a big '0' on the tip line. So as we're leaving this bitch is screaming out the back door, "Real fucking cool." And she obvious thinks it was Keith who wrote it ... who is now peeing behind the truck we rode in and thinks she's pissed that he's pissing. So we got out of there pretty quick and went to Suede. So weird. People just CRAMMED into a tiny bar, no dancing, just drinking. I don't see how people find that fun. But I managed to have an alright time talking to random people. I wish I'd taken my own car though, because when these guys get drunk, they look for a fight. They tried to pick a fight with some dude selling roses. I was like COME ON LET'S GO. It took forever to get back to my car.

When I finally did I was thinking, "Holy shit I don't want to drive back to Plano right now." So I start driving and recognized this street, Thomas, right away. And I'm like, "Oh, score, I am in Ryan S■■■'s neighborhood." So I called his roommate, David, and found his apartment and then fell asleep in his bed. Good thing he didn't come home. So to you, Ryan S■■■, I say thank you. HA!

I have a bunch of pictures that I need to put up on here from the Miami trip and from orientation when we went to the top of a 49 story building downtown, but that will have to wait for another blog. Laaaaaaaaaaaaate.

I hate working. I mean, while I'm there, it's not so bad. Sometimes the hours absolutely drag by and sometimes I'm done before I realized it was getting close to quittin' time. I have another piece of flair the Nazi's make me wear. This one's a cell phone. My whole life I have hated cell phones clipped to belts more than I hate Jessica Simpson (and her little sister now too). But, in keeping with the theme of turning myself into all the things I've always despised, I wear it obligingly. It's way too big to keep in my pocket because its one of those Nextel walkie-talkie things -- which I also hate.

Some other things that suck, and then we'll move on to more fun topics. We're getting this etiquette class three times this week and basically all they needed to do was hand out a piece of paper saying, "David you don't belong here." They presented themselves as this ultra-hip, young cultured company, but now they're impressing on us the need to look like mission control engineers from the 1960's. Fuck that. I'm not taking out my earrings. That's ridiculous. All I do all day is sit in a cubicle. And they keep saying things like, "If you're not married yet, when you do get married you'll want to eat with proper etiquette. And guys especially when you take a girl out." I know that's petty, but they make comments like these all day long constantly ... everyone does. It would be nice to not feel alienated for like five minutes.

So the fun topics I promised: This weekend, my first weekend in Dallas, could not have been better. Ryan S■■■ was having a party Saturday night, and I was on the ol' invite list. I went over to his house early so I could get ready to go out without the criticism of the matriarch. I helped him put lids on the obscene amount of jello shots and then people started showing up. JonS■■■ from College Station just happened to be in town and called me to see if I was doing anything, so I invited him to join me. I was grateful for him being there since I only knew a few cats and it was a little intimidating. There were like 70 queers sardined into Ryan S■■■'s apartment. It was great. But it did get a little stuffy and hot (I should take a look at his HVAC system) so we moved the party to the bars. Starting off at JR's, JonS■■■ and I proceed to drink Pink Cape Cods like they were goin out of style. Then we stumbled over to the Village with a couple strangers and danced and drank some more. Neither of us remember the rest of the night clearly but I think it ended with us buying a shot and not having enough money, so we left.

Not much else of note happened, but hazy stumblings and drunken ramblings with people we did not know. We made it back to Ryan's where he and his brother were waiting for us to take them to ... where else? ... Whataburger! Fantastic. I spent the night at Ryan's cause I'm a lush and my mother didn't want me to drive home if I'd been drinking. I was happy to oblige. The next day we woke up and went to visit Ryan S■■■'s friend, Greg, who lives in Addison Circle, where Ryan thought I might like to live. He was RIGHT! I fell in love. That's totally where I'm moving when I can afford it, which should be shortly. My first paycheck comes tomorrow -- can't fuckin wait. After we ate lunch and toured Greg's apartment we went and met up with Brent to go to a movie. So Ryan, Greg, Brent and I all rode to Stonebriar and met up with Chris Jones to see Stepford Wives, which I did not want to see, but I did want to meet new friends so I went. IT SUCKED. Real bad. Don't see it. Anyway, I just wanted to graciously thank Ryan, Greg, Brent and Chris for such a great time.

So that is what has been going on. Once I move out of my parent's house and get my own dedicated internet connection, I'll probably be more prone to get back into the updating swing of things, but as it is, I have precious little time to plug in and I don't always want to spend it narrating the past. But do keep checking back and emailing me and stuff, all the contact with my former life is a good thing. Peace out, have nots.

The room was a haze, her steps heavy with drunken determination. She stood at the doorway and gazed out, seeing double. The rain fell in sheets outside, and not wanting to endure the downpour, she retreated back into the club. She looked left to read a poster, but abandoned such hope as the words melted together. She looked right with disgust at the lowly bartenders shooting disapproving leers. She should have been looking down, because unbeknownst to her, the floor ended in a cascade of stairs she had walked up and down a hundred times before.

The floor jumped up from out of nowhere, knocking her sideways as her purse regurgitated its belongings. She looked up to notice lights on the far wall, and soon realized she had hit the floor. Dazed, she felt herself lift up under the close watch of two of her friends. And then, it was time to leave.

Okay, enough with the narrative stylings of your favorite Sidesho attraction. I just promised Leslie that I would find a creative spin on the fact that she ate it hardcore in the middle of Boyz Cellar. That was the only way I could procure permission to even tell the story. Those of you who know her won't be surprised ... those of you who have met her won't be surprised ... those of you who know of her won't be surprised ... those of you who read this site a lot won't be surprised ... but everyone else will be fucking floored!

We had to leave early that night, but luckily our knight in shining armor, Brandon, was there to save the day and drive us back to Round Rock so we didn't have to wait in the rain for a taxi. "We" was Leslie, Jon S■■■ and yours truly. It was still relatively early and the rest of us were relatively sober so Jon and I sat up drinking beers and discussing politics. Lesbie Ann joined us for a spell but retired before we did. The next day we woke up and had lunch and then I hit the road for Brandon's house.

He fumbled about for a bit, not wanting to extend the good bye, just delay it. A furtive look about at his surroundings and he fixated on her. He was leaving her, and didn't know when he would see her again. A moment. Hugs and pleasantries exchanged, he strode to the car and waved a final time.

Ehh, I had to give my embarassing moment some granduer as well. It was then that our everyman realized he'd locked his fucking keys in his car. What happened was I put Tuna in the car in his Taco Bell traveling cup, but didn't want him to swelter while I was saying goodbye to Leslie so I reached in and cranked on the AC and then shut the door ... but not before remembering to lock it. So I stood outside of Leslie's for like 30 minutes as my gas ran out for 2 bucks a fucking gallon. Luckily, I had turned on the AC (although that was the problem in the first place) because Tuna would have died. So I remained calm.

I finally got on the road and made it to Brandon's house, and we went to the mall. I got to see where he works. Then we got all cute and headed out to the Pride Parade. I had no idea that it was pride, but whatever, I just go with the flow. Ran into my old pal Craig and my older pals Rossi and Brad, so that was cool. Danced the night away, but didn't get drunk. Today I drove back to Dallas amidst throngs of biking enthusiasts and it took almost 5 hours. Now its pouring rain and my first day of work is tomorrow. I'm nervous and should be in bed, but I wanted to fill everyone in on the last weekend of freedom I will ever experience ... well, until I get fired for going to work drunk. But hopefully that won't be for many days.

Wish me luck, I'm sure I'll update tomorrow with hilarious antics from the office ... Since now I have my degree, and I do engineering in my engineering office. Bah. Laaaaaaaaate you have nots.

Welcome to June, everybody. The date of my departure is nigh. I'm thinking I'm gonna go to Austin on Friday to stay with Leslie and hang out with Brandon and then head back to Dallas to await my start date. I have to be at work at 8am. This is going to be quite a challenge. The only way its going to possibly happen is if I'm in bed by 10pm. I'm not sure I'm ready for that lifestyle, though if you asked my body it would probably disagree. Who knows, though. Maybe work will just be a blast. I'm getting to do design instead of installation so that is good news.

Two nights ago, Allison and I got krunk on Coors and sat out back of Northgate drinking our free beer. On the way home, I was absolutely starving, as I've been saving money by only eating once a day whilst in College Station. We decided to stop through Whataburger (duh!). I just wanted to let you all know that this is a possibility, in case it had not occured to you previously. We got four bacon, egg and cheese AND sausage AND potato taquitos. Omega, get excited. They were incredible. And when I saw my friend who now recognizes me at Whataburger, I told her, "Oh yeah and also throw in a handful of fries for free." And she did! How fucking rad is that. I love her. I had to tell this story since there was a request for it on the last post.

You know what I was thinking about the other day? When you just kind of meet someone one day but don't really know them ... but every time you run into them you're obliged to say hello. And we call these people "Hi" buddies. Well when I'm online, I have "Hey. Sup? NM. Coo." buddies. Chew on that.

Hello all I am updating you from an ultra shady tour company that also has computers available for increments of 15 minutes online. Don't you feel special. Really, I just wanted to sit down. We have been walking up and down the beach and through the streets of South Beach all fucking day and I am more tired that I have been in a long time.

In short, I am home. I fucking love this place. As soon as we got here I knew that I was going to have a good time. Every club we've been to has been absolutely bumping. Every person we've seen has been beautiful. And the shopping! OMG. I can't tell you how awesome the stores are here. I dropped 150 bucks today in a shop called Scorch, and it was all I could do to not empty out my bank account and charge the rest to my credit card. The clothes here were out of this world. Well, out of this country, actually. She said one of the shirts I got was from Spain, not sure about the others. The sales girl was so nice though. She said any time I want I can call them up and she'll take some digital photos of new clothes and send them to me if I want them. I will definitely take her up on this. 27, you are going to be so jealous of one shirt I got.

The beach here is also beautiful. We spent the morning getting over hangovers and basking in the sun, even though I was wearing SPF 48. Hahaha, my white ass is not going out to a club with a lobster burn. Last night we cruised up and down Ocean Drive, which is like the most happening street I've ever bar hopped on. Then we ended up at this gay club called Twist. It was out of control. Allison and I earned free drinks by getting on stage with the emcee, who just happened to be a large Columbian drag queen. Whatever, you know us, we'll do anything for a free drink.

Not sure whats up for tonight. We already spent the afternoon people watching at Wet Willie's -- this bar where all they serve are frozen drinks, but they have like 30 flavors. We're big fans ... but we didn't tip today so we don't feel like we can really go back in good conscience. I think we're gonna go to a club on Lincoln Street (the best shopping street I've ever been on). The girl from Scorch suggested it to us. She was so helpful. Thank god we finally got the scoop from a true hip local. This is truly paradise, kids. I am not playing. If I could find a job here in the next two days, I would honestly not come home. Now I know what Will was talking about when he called Miami his second home. Definite vacation spot in the future.

I guess I should go now, I only have a little bit of time left on my 15 minute interval and I don't want to pay anymore money. I would share pictures but my camera is out of batteries, damnit. Don't worry about me though, just in case you were, cause ITS ALL GOOD. Laaaaaaaaate.

Hey, I just wanted to drop you all a quick line to let you know that I'm alive. I've only recently realized the magnitude of what's left to do before the end of this semester -- in reality, within the next 7 days. I am basically going to be out of commission for the entire time, and then as soon as that's done it'll be time for finals and then graduation.

Let me give you all a piece of etiquette when dealing with a graduating senior. Every last person you talk to and mention graduation asks you, "So WhAt'S tHe PLaN fOr AfTeR yOu GrAdUaTe? GoT a JoB?! DerRrRrRr!" If a graduating senior does not offer up that information to you, then don't try to extract it from them. There's a chance, a good chance, that they don't fucking know what they're going to do. And NO, they don't have a job, so fuck off. This is all just hypothetical, of course.

I have several plans. I could live with my brother temporarily in Houston and hope to find a job there before his daughter is born and I have to be out of the house. I could move back home and leisurely search for a job in Dallas, and if I get one either get my own apt, or I just IMed Ryan S■■■ last night about moving in with him. I could move to OKC with my sister just to kinda get away from it all and see if I can't nab a job around there. I could stay in College Station for the summer looking for work to just party one last time before really applying myself to the search. I might give my other brother who lives in California and works for Intel my resume, and see if that won't work, but that would mean moving to Cali, Colorado or AZ. My only other idea is to cut myself to see how much it bleeds.

Today I am actually going to class. The fuckheads in my class decided on a take-home final while I wasn't around. Take-home finals are so much harder than real ones and are certainly more difficult than oral exams. I have to go get that final. Then I have to go to my last day of yoga ... tear. Then its directly to the greenhouse to meet with my team. I might change my oil first since that's highway driving, and I might stop by Best Buy to see if I can get a new battery since it is REALLY annoying that my laptop shuts off if you even jiggle the power cord. Like I said, so much to do.

Today I woke up kinda early for me and had time to walk over to the pet store and look at their bettas. I found one that I thought would look really cool in my new tank. He serves two purposes though. First, he's my pet. Second, he's my guinea pig. If he dies then I know the tank is inhabitable and I shouldn't let Marshall bring me his fish until I get the water fixed. I would feel so bad if I killed Marshall's fish right off the bat. I still need to go to David27's and get his unused betta food so I can feed the little guy.

At first, the water level was kind of low to allow the water spilling in from the filter to make a water noise and produce lots of bubbles ... something to hear and see. As soon as I put the betta in, the force of the induced current shoved him up against the wall. I had to add more water to reduce the impact it has on his environment, but I think he still doesn't like it. I'm not sure, I don't speak Betta. But, I also know I don't want to clean this tank all the time, so he can just learn to deal with it.

Tonight, my friend Brandon is driving in from Austin to visit. He hasn't been back to College Station in a long, long time, so that is going to be fun. Idk what we're going to do but I'm sure we'll be able to find something. I just found out that I haven't been skipping class this week. My prof has been out and may be out for a while. So yay! No early classes! Excelsior!

Ahhh, the age old mantra. And this time its no more true than it ever is. I remember thinking to myself, "Wow I haven't eaten a thing all day, maybe I should take it easy." And that's about the last thing I remember. I'll just go ahead and assume that I had fun. One of the things I do after a night like that is immediately check my call history to make sure I did not make any unnecessary conversation. I had one call to Kyle that lasted 10 seconds and then immediately called David27 for another 3. Who knows what that was all about.

By far, the best was the text message that I sent to Brian that I absolutely do not remember sending. He had told me that he was mad at me last night. I think it was because we were supposed to watch Romy and Michele's High School Reunion but I ended up getting too drunk. Anyway, the text message said, "I had the worst dream, Romy. I dreamt that we weren't friends and we were really, really old. But, I mean like we were really, really old. And we weren't friends." My favorite part of it is that it is perfectly formatted as far as spelling, capitalization, and punctuation, which is not easy to do on my phone. It takes me forever to send a text message, much less a grammatically correct one, so who knows how long I spent doing that. No wonder I woke up with my cell phone in the bed.

David27 just dropped by and gave me my keys. Why did he have my keys? I didn't drive. I don't even have my car. I'm so confused.

I'm never drinking again ....

In order to keep up with the foreign exchange program we've got going on, it was College Station's turn to go visit the Dallas kids. Everyone rearranged their work schedules (well, not me cause I have no job or responsibilities) and we decided to leave at noon on Saturday. The crew was comprised of 27, Marshall and Thommi. I said we were absolutely, positively leaving at noon, whether they were there or not, no questions asked, just leaving.

Around noon, I woke up and started getting ready. I had no intentions of leaving at noon, but I figured that setting an early, firm deadline was the only way to get there before midnight. We ended up arriving at Ryan S■■■'s loft around 5:00, which left us enough time to go to the Northpark Mall. I bought this shirt at Guess that is inside out. It's so me. Like, the shirts not inside out, but the material is. I'm in love with the shirt. We got back, visited the quaint little liquor store on the first floor, and then started getting ready. Two really loud girls ended up in tow with us, one was 27's best friend, the other I have no idea. Once we were ready we went to Ryan H■■■■■■'s party.

That was alright, but there sure were a lot of people in one small space and I think he forgot to pay his A/C bill that month cause it was toasty. And we could only smoke on the balcony that is the size of my coffee table. And the boy who was drinking an entire bottle of wine, from the bottle, was talking about his faith in his lord and saviour, jebus christ, and how he never tests him with more than he can handle. An excellent topic to have at a boozefest while endulging in far too much of the sacramental fluids. The cops showed up, shook things up. The plan was to go out to the Village anyway, so it hastened everyone's retreat. Chaos ensued. My clan hopped into someone else's car and were whisked away, leaving me and Ryan's roommate, David, to walk back to Ryan's apartment to get my car and drive ourselves to the club. Charming. To be fair, Ryan did offer us a ride back to the apt but since I was under the impression that we were all going to meet up back there, I said we would just walk. Turns out, that was also our ride to the club.

So I was a little nonplussed by the situation. When we got back to the apartment I saw Marshall walking out and said, 'Wait, where are you going?' 'To the club!' he gleefully replied as he walked out the door. I was drunk enough that I didn't really want to drive, I hate driving (and especially parking) downtown, and David did not want to go ... all of this culminated into this final straw and I proclaimed, 'Fuck 'em. I'm not going.' So I did just that. David and I went to the gas station to get some beer and cigarettes, and we sat and watched movies. David is really cool and has the same sense of humor that I do, and we are never afforded the opportunity to hang out just the two of us, so I had a blast.

I chugged beers all night until I passed out. I don't remember the rest of them getting home, but passing out on Ryan's bed worked out to my advantage cause I didn't have to sleep on the hardwood floors. The next day we went and got smoothies and sandwiches and then made the long drive home. All in all, it was an excellent weekend, and we can't wait to do it again. In fact, it may be next weekend since Clay is coming home from Spain to get his wisdom teeth out and has promised me a bottle of Absinthe. Oh yeah, and I'm off carbs and am no longer blonde.

The onset of Spring Break is upon us, my dear viewers. Shortay! We fend to go to the club and get krunk with Britney. I started off the break by taking a brief jaunt to Austin with some friends. Raul knew of a couple of birthday parties there that we could attend, so we did just that with Marshall (very much against his will) and David27 in tow. After a late start, we made really good time to Austin ... due in no small part to my superior navigation skills.

We stopped off at Jenny's apartment to get ready. It was her birthday party we would eventually end up at. She was very sweet to let us not only take over her bedroom and bathroom on her birthday evening, but spend the night on her floor. After primping, fighting over the hat, and a couple hearty belts of whiskey, we were on our way to our first destination. It was Tracy's 18th birthday, and it was being held at an apartment with a very large enclosure for around 30 mice/gerbil things. I don't know, but there were rodents in the living room ... and an injured baby squirrel in a box. Charming. Chris was there. And despite having called to make sure I was going to be in attendance, seemed less than enthused that I had come. The keg was Shiner but since Marshall doesn't drink beer, he was becoming increasingly despondent, so we had to act fast. Raul, the responsible driver, decided he wanted to get drunk, so 27 was at the helm.

Jenny's party was at a large house with two kitchens. There were green lights everywhere, and a person blowing fire and spinning large sticks on fire in the backyard. He never once caught the damn thing ... sub-par at best. But there was an ample supply of liquor, and we all partook in it greatly. 27 got drunk. It was the first time I'd ever seen him drink enough to get drunk, and let's just say it was interesting. Leslie is coming into town on Friday and he has promised to give us another show on that night. Brandon was party hopping around town during this time and was able to drop off at our party for a little bit to say hello. I haven't seen that kid in damn near a year. He seemed rather pleased to see me as well.

While Marshall, 27 and I got drunk, Raul sobered up to take us home. He would NOT take us to Whataburger on the way home even though it was totally on the way. If you know me, you know that I simply must have a bacon, egg 'n cheese taquito before bed when I'm drunk or heads roll. So 27 and I took the initiative, remembered where it was, and fucking walked there in the middle of the night. It was too much fun. We got a ride home though from two people who were also staying at Jenny's. When we woke up we ate at Macaroni Grill ... well, actually, Raul and Jenny ate. 27, Marshall and I just sat and drew on the table drinking water. I drew a delightful picture of me throwing up with my head in a toilet. I don't think the waitress liked me. The help never has a sense of humor, I swear!

Tonight we're taking it easy. I just woke up in time to watch Arrested Development, the best TV show every made. I think Marshall, Justin and Thommi are on their way over to 27's to watch some movie called Waking Life. I think its a fucked up movie, but who knows, there's a chance I would enjoy it. I'll keep you all posted. If anybody has something ultra fun to do this week, be sure to invite me (and pay for me). Thanks.

When last we left our intrepid hero, we found him in the throws of Keystone admidst strangers. Let us now discuss everything that has occurred ... from blackout to blackout. Ryan S■■■ left Dallas with three friends in tow -- Aaron, Aric and Brett. None of the three had ever been to College Station or anywhere nearly as cosmopolitan. They were expecting a cow town, and while we certainly are one, we did our best to restrict their visit to my apartment, HEB, Halo, and Johnny Carino's. In other words, no Dixie Chicken, Duddleys, Shadow Canyon, Chicken Oil Co. (or any Don Gainer owned, shotty wooden construction establishments).

I was over at 27's apartment when they arrived, but had left Owen with a phone number where I could be reached, since I had cleverly forgotten my phone at home. Once we arrived, we had a lot of fun ordering pizza, drinking beers (and Smirnoffs *shakes head disappointedly*), and inviting everyone we knew over. Even our dear friend Christina L■■■ from my major dropped by and ended up going to the club with us. My shirt from the Gap was still too big so I just wore the graphic T I had originally purchased as an undershirt. Many hours later, a large group of us were ready to get our drink on ... and we did just that. Aaron, the bartender, was very nice to us ... even giving us a free round of shots that I vaguely, vaguely remember. I had gone in with the vocalized goal of getting too drunk, a goal I never fail to meet. Several vodka tonics later, things get a little hazy. I know that we spent the night dancing erratically.

On the way home, we stopped off at Whataburger to get some taquitos. This is just a given for me, I always stop at Whataburger, but it has become a sort of College Station activity for Ryan S■■■, and he wanted to share it with his crew. And I guess us talking about it got everyone in the mood, as is evidenced by the many, many fast food bags strewn about my living room. I'm not entirely clear on the rest of the night's activities. I know I drank a few more beers and woke up with no bruises ... so it couldn't have been too crazy. Let's just say "the sun came up on us" because it did. Which I hate. Off to sleep in a massive heap on the floor because some party poopers had crashed early in my bed.

The next afternoon, the grogginess starts to fade as we're motivated to stand up and drive to Johnny Carinos (which is literally across the street, a stone's throw from my apartment). I wasn't quite ready to eat, so I got a box for mine -- so trashy, I love it. Dallas boys bid adieu, 27 and I immediately went back to bed. My sleeping schedule is so wiggity whack ya'll. And my apartment looks like a train wreck ... provided that train had been carrying an assortment of empty beer cans, bottles, and fast food wrappers. Maybe I'll remedy that today ... or maybe it'll still be here the next time the Dallas boys come party.

There is a tentative plan to make our own pilgrimage to Dallas to live it up with them. I've been out in Dallas with Ryan S■■■ many times, so I know that these country bumpkins from south Texas would absolutely love it. I will surely let you all know when that date is afoot. Until then, thanks to everyone who partied with me this weekend, you all uniquely enhanced my fun that had already runneth over. Later, have nots, have a good week.

I got that outfit I wanted, but when I got home the shirt was fucking huge so I couldn't wear it. We got ready anyway and went to see Starsky and Hutch. I didn't bust out crazy laugh at all but I did laugh constantly through the whole movie. I would suggest it to all of you. The movie ran a little late so we had to call Christopher's to push our reservation back about 20 minutes. We went home and freshened up and then it was off to the restaurant.

Ohhhh emmmm geeee. We started off at the bar enjoying a couple glasses of wine while we waited for our table to be ready. There was a live jazz trio that was pretty cool. Our table was ready after only a short wait so we took a seat. We were so prim and proper all sitting up with correct posture and everything. It was so fun. Allison ordered the mediterranean salmon and I had a duck breast in a blueberry sauce. Holy fuck. You can't imagine how wonderful the food was. It came with all kinds of vegetable sides -- mashed potatoes, mashed sweet potatoes, some kind of greens, rice, and these little sweet potato crispy things. That's all I can remember. Needless to say it was fucking decadent. We also treated ourselves to a bottle of 2000 Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon. It was definitely not the cheapest bottle available, but not nearly the most expensive either. Delicious! Just when we thought we couldn't eat another byte, they had to bring around the dessert cart. A raspberry chocolate truffle?! Give me a break. I will do anything for raspberries. It was incredible. Allison's said "Happy Birthday from Christopher's" in chocolate around the edge of the plate. Very classy. Thank you for taking me, Allison!

We could barely move after the meal was over. Allison was out for the count, going home to go to bed, but I had social obligations. I was supposed to go that concert with Marshall. Unfortunately, I was too full to do anything. David27 came over and I slowly but surely got ready to go out. Sometime after midnight we finally ended up at Halo, had a few drinks, met up with Marshall, Sonia and Chevy, and then went home.

When we got home Owen was complaining that someone in the parking lot was playing Elton John's "Tiny Dancer" entirely too loud, so me and 27 went to tell them to shut up. It was two girls jammin out in a car after coming from Northgate. As it turned out, it was Erin, the girl that I got into an accident with in my parking lot. She was with her friend Courtney and they invited us to go back to Erin's apartment to party with them. She lives in the apartment like next to mine but upstairs. It was so close. We took some beer with us and sat on her porch drinking and smoking cigarettes and bullshitting. They were so cute and fun. They said they want to go out with us tonight to Halo and I'm totally going to invite them. I will have to let you all know how that turns out. Ryan S■■■ is currently en route to College Station with 3 Dallas boys in tow. Tonight is sure to be crazy. More on that, after this....

I am so lucky. I'll give you twenty-seven guesses as to why but you'll only need one. These past couple weeks have been some of the best in recent memory. It's nice to have a constant partner in crime who likes to sit and watch home improvement shows and smoke too many cigarettes. I'll rip your face off and chop it in a million pieces.

In other news, Allison made reservations for us to eat at Christopher's on Friday. For those of you from out of town, Christopher's is the only nice restaurant in like a 100 mile radius. I'm really excited cause I've never eaten there before. Her parents said we could go eat there as a birthday present. Get excited! Then she bought tickets for us to see Starsky and Hutch but I already promised Marshall I would go see this band play at the Groove. We're gonna have to remedy that situation. I talked to Marshall and he was cool with it even though he said he wouldn't be if I tried to back out. But whateryagonnado? For my graduation Allisons parents are gonna pay for us to eat at Messina Hof. How fun is that? Maybe I should remind my parents that they didn't get Allison a graduation present and see if we can go to P.F. Changs in Houston or something.

I really want to go shopping before all the boys from Dallas get here on Saturday but I doubt I'm gonna have a chance. Ryan S■■■ had so much fun during his night here out at Halo that he convinced like 10 of his friends from Dallas to come down and stay in a motel and get shitcanned College Station style. We're gonna be sure to show them how we do. Chevy is coming into town on unrelated business so I'm sure she (and hopefully Ms. Sonia as well) will join us in our revelry. If anybody else wants to join in just let me know. I'm planning on drinking on Saturday from about 7pm until about 5am. Which means this one will be on beer all night as to monitor my alcohol intake, since Aaron always tries to kill me and almost always nearly succeeds.

It's like 5am and Im just now starting to get to bed. Shouldn't have taken that nap tonight after waking up at 2pm. Oh well, I had fun doing it ... SO fun. Catch you sluts lata.

I'm sick as a dog. The idiots at the quack shack said it was some kind of throat infection and gave me the same generic medicine they always do. Oh well, maybe it will help. Might as well take it. I didn't sleep a wink last night. I ended up taking a bath at like 5am cause I was so achy and sweating. Today's not much better. Enough pissing and moaning though. Pity me!

I was laying on the couch before my 12:45 yesterday and I noticed a moth on the wall near me. I thought nothing of it. He's welcome to chill there. But then when I came home after my lab at like 8:00 he was still in the exact same spot. I don't mind moths but I hate lazy moths. So I decided to capture him.

I put a cup on the wall, tapped him into it and then placed a coaster over the opening. Then I had a flash of evil genius. I decided to set up a Bond-esque death trap. I opened the lid just enough to allow a drop of water through it and placed it under the faucet. It was dripping slow enough to allow him time to escape, but he was going to have to time it just right. He waited until the last possible moment, the water was encroaching his wings, and then made a break for it. I attempted to squash him but he got away, so I let him go. Owen, Marshall, and I were enthralled. Okay, I was, but they also watched. Then Marshall took me to the mall and bought me some chinese food and ice cream. Rad!

In other news, my brother found out that his unborn baby is a girl. I tried to help him out and give some good suggestions for names. They were thinking about Kaylynn Elizabeth. I figured since she is going to be my brother's daughter, that she's already gonna be the whitest little girl on the planet. It might be a good idea to spice her up a little with an ethnic moniker. My suggestions were:
1. Reshawnda
2. Wei Le (but we would call her Jenny)
3. Consuala
I like them all but I think Consuala might be my favorite. And as an added bonus, it might help her get scholarships later. You never knows. Tonight Thommi and I are going to see some Russian chick play piano with the Russian symphony orchestra. I'll let you you all know how that goes. Peace.

I'm sitting in my apartment listening to my heart attempt to jump out of my chest. I'm pretty freaked out because someone just tried to open my front door. I never lock the door, but just so happened to do it tonight. Thank jebus. Justin is on his way over here so I can get some peace of mind and have a looksee outside. As it stands right now I'm too scared to look. I thought blogging might put my mind at ease. There is much to talk about, and I shall type it in between paranoid perceptions of twigs snapping beneath imagined burgler's boots.

Friday night was Boys 'n Beads, the Mardi Gras party. Marshall had spent the few previous days making masks out of stolen supplies from Hobby Lobby. I knew Marshall was crafty, but damn, I was impressed with his skills with the feathers and glue. The one I made looked like a retarded 3rd grader had done it. He fixed it a little bit for me. I still looked like Ms. Finch from Follow That Bird. It all paid off cause Marshall won 3rd place in the costume contest and was awarded a 50 dollar bar tab, which you just know I was all over. I ended up getting way too drunk, as I always do. Excess is my middle name. There was much dancing, much revelry, much too much vodka in my drinks. Sometimes I think Aaron, the bartender, derives some sick pleasure from watching me get wasted. Luckily our pal David#27 was there, and sober, and driving, and took care of me. I passed out as soon as I got home and woke up hungover like a muthafucka. It's all good though because I got to wear my new hangover mask from Bed, Bath & Beyond. It's this gel mask that you put in the fridge. Omega, it was heavenly. Made my hangover an absolutely enjoyable experience.

Skip ahead to Saturday. Marshall's bar tab awaited us, so we got dolled up and went out again. Why on earth do I drink like I do? It's so stupid. I'm drinking double vodka and vodkas and accepting shot after shot. We had to pull over again this weekend so yours truly could nearly roll out of the car whilst vomiting. Again, I passed out as soon as I got home. In other news, someone had spread the word that the afterparty was at my place. Wrong. Owen got woken up and had to tell them all to leave. I felt bad about that, even though it kind of in a way wasn't my fault. Moderation. Someday I will learn it.

Justin just left after we made sure no one was outside my apartment. I still have the door locked and the chain on. Seeing as how its almost 3 and I'm never gonna get up for class tomorrow, I don't think I'll even set my alarm. I'm just gonna read and then fall asleep. I've decided to re-read Clan of the Cave Bear for the umpteenth time. Watching the movie just totally put me in the mood. You should all get a copy and read it cause it's the best story ever. Alright, peace out, you have-nots, and stop fucking trying to open my front door.

I'm not sure where to begin this blog. There is much to say about the past 24 hours. The first thing I did was take an ultra long time getting ready. The SideshoGang was all out at Margarita Rocks and wanted me to join them but I opted for a cucumber melon bubble bath instead. After a really long soak and getting my hair delightfully hawked, I stopped off at Allison's for her dessert & wine soiree. I stayed long enough for some strawberry cheesecake and a glass of merlot.

From there, I headed over to David's to get dressed, Tommy's to pick up some clothes I left there, Mosher Circle to pick up Sonia, and back home to get some shoes and wait for the arrival of my dear friend Ryan S■■■. He drove in from Dallas and arrived around 11 o'clock raring to go out on the town. Of course, we dropped by Allison's one more time so she could see Ryan and then headed out to Halo. Ryan came just short of his goal of dropping 100 bucks at the bar, which meant many beers and shots for the two of us, as well as anyone in the immediate vicinity.

After sufficient intoxication and dancing resulting in bruises, we headed back to James's for more of the same. I had a blast last night, and I know Ryan S■■■ did too. We went to Fazoli's today to eat and go to witness a car jump the median, run over a tree, and speed through the parking lot. It was very random.

Oh, and the big news of the hour: The Olive Garden burned down. Information PLEASE.

Update: Now the fucking train derailed over by Tommy's apartment. WTF is going on in College Station today?

This is a post I've been meaning to put up for a while. I've just been waiting for a day when I didn't have anything to really say. This is the blog blog, if you will. And I will. Those of you who know me know that I spend a ridiculous amount of my life on my website, but I spend just as much, if not more, time reading other peoples' blogs. I wanted you all to appreciate just how insane I am with this. I read all of these blogs ... on a more than daily basis. Here they are now, in the order that I check them every day. And the nominees are...

• Sounding Board: Chris
• Breakfast Parade: G■■■■ et. al.
• This is my blog. But you can read it.: Alfie
• noezoom's Xanga Site: Owen
• Ryan S■■■'s Diary: Ryan S■■■
• Rock N Roll Suicide: Keith
• Welcome Spielmaniacs!: Spielman
• Welcome to Spain: Clay
• Really, it's not that interesting.: Justin M■■■
• www.Burns.tk -- Redux: Burns
• ifiam.org : do you love me?: Posterboy
• toothpaste for dinner - daily drew drawings: Drew
• natalie dee: huffing it up, every weekday: Drew's sister
• ChevyRSK: Chevy
• me: Sonia
• Day in the life of Jon S■■■: Jon S■■■
• David T■■■■'s Page of Misery: David T■■■■
• clr84's Xanga Site: Chris R.
• I like my eggs all runny...: Surge
• bryceareeni's livejournal: Bryce

So, as you can see, I'm not fuckin around. If everybody just had a blog, we could completely eliminate the need for interpersonal communication. Think about it. We'd all still carry cell phones though, so when we saw someone we knew, we could pull up their webpage and read it while they stood there silently. Sigh ... in a perfect world. If you're not on this list, that means I haven't been reading your site and I need a link. Later, you have-nots.

I'd like to introduce myself. I am Sidesho, the best typer in the world. Okay, well maybe I'm the second. Allow me to explain. There is a little typing game on the internet called LEtters 0.9. I want you all to go play it now [click here]. It's a no-bullshit typing game where individual letters scroll across the screen and you have to type them before they reach the other side. Every letter is worth one point, every mistake is a minus one. I got pretty good at the game to where I was fairly confident that I could play this game indefinitely. I was almost right.

Owen and I got back from Jin's World Cafe (excellent ... try the combo lo mein) around 2:00. It is now 4:30 and I just lost the game. You'll see my name at the top of today's top scores, but it hasn't transferred over to the all-time scores yet. When it does I'll be there pretty permanently, as it is the second highest score ever, below 109,372. So if you've found my site through LEtters, welcome! I achieved a score of 56,306 ... not bad considering my last high score was 698.

I found that the typing was not a problem. I had those letters completely in control. However, after two and a half hours of staring at the screen typing little letters, I started getting really, really dizzy. Towards the end there I thought I might fall out of my chair, but I was completely willing to do so. Also, its freezing in here, so my hands are completely frozen right now. I kept hoping someone would walk in and be willing to blast me a little bit with the shrink-wrap gun, alas no help arrived. These factors combined kept me from seeing that little 'L' in the upper left hand corner and stopped me short of the highest score ever. Although, in reality, I was already cracking and I was only halfway there. Kudos to whoever achieved that score, I know it couldn't have been fun.

Owen told me he wouldn't believe me that I was a good typer unless I got the high score, and while I fell a little bit short, I still feel vindicated. It's almost time for me to attend a lab, so I must go, but before I do, I'll insert a screen capture for all of you (since my picture blogs have been ever so popular as of late).

Have any of you ever seen anything like this before? I ripped the top off of this beer can with my teeth. I had to dig it out of the trash this morning and bring it home from Tommy's to take a picture and show you all. We were all sitting around drinking when Marshall bit the top off of his damn beer can as though it were nothing. And we were all naturally impressed, so he taught everyone how to do it. If you're interested I can totally show you how to bite the top off a beer can in 3 easy steps.

Chevy was in town with her friend Sonia who goes to A&M. Even though she's a freshman, she has managed to become the front page editor of the Battalion, our school newspaper. It has been a 5 year goal of mine to be on the front page of the newspaper. That and to be on the jumbo-tron at a football game, but I totally achieved that one.

I was totally supposed to go to Dallas last night for Ryan S■■■'s birthday party (HAPPY BIRTHDAY RYAN) but several factors kept that from happening. It was storming and everyone who was supposed to go with me backed out. And I fear leaving town, especially alone in the rain. So yeah, there was drinking and dancing and all those antics last night, but mostly I just wanted to tell you all how cool Marshall is for being a ninja. I think I'm gonna go work out with Tommy tonight. Neither of us could move our arms yesterday, but I think we're good to go now. Until then...

Pertinent information for everyone to know? Let's see. I backed into my neighbor in the parking lot. Or we backed into each other, rather. Her name is Erin. She was a delightful girl with a scratched up, cracked bumper. I bought the Nelly Fruit-ado CD because I want to be like Marshall. I saw Flock of Seagulls reunite. They weren't as good as they used to be and their hair is nowhere near its former radness. I almost went out like that the other night. Ryan S■■■ gets to meet Cameron F■■■ in 4 weeks and I am jealous. Tommy and I started working out, my chest and triceps are very sore. And I haven't smoked in three days. I lost my job at the space center, damn politics. But I already scored a new profession in the web design business once I learn how to do what these rich old men want. My new songs of the day all fucking rawk. I talked to Steve-o last night for the first time in months. He works at Central Market in Austin and has a mohawk. My professor sent out an email to have an impromptu class period today. Is he allowed to do that? I'm already tired of school even though I've only been to about 1.5 total hours of class. I can't stay awake for more than 30 minutes. My wonderful yoga teacher from last semester forced me back into her class. She is lovely. Peace, I'm outta here.

Well I'm back in College Station for a couple of days taking a sabatical from the holiday cheer of Plano. I was there for 3 days and that was enough for me. The first thing I did was put in my fake lip ring for when I first arrived. My mother went absolutely ballistic over it so I immediately had to reveal the joke whereas I had planned on wearing it all day. That kinda let some of the air out of my balloons, but it was still funny.

The next big fight was when I dared to walk down the stairs with my fauxhawk rawkin. My mother blew another gasket. She sure doesn't know how to pick her battles. Its not like we had company or anything, I was just going to sit around the house. So that was fun. I went upstairs and played guitar until my brother came home and took me with him to B&N. Oh speaking, the big news, I am going to be an uncle. Rachel, Stephen's wife, produced a couple sonogram pictures of the baby in her tummy. Thats exciting for us, even though she won't be able to participate in the booze cruise.

On Christmas we didn't exchange gifts, which, I gotta tell you, was the best Christmas I ever had. No shopping, no worrying, no wrapping, no fighting crowds ... just a family gettin together to play cards and drink liquor. I had my first taste of Courvoisier, and second, third, fourth, and fifth. I'd have to say I was a big fan. We played some Oh, Hell with everybody, ate some desserts with family friends and then went to bed.

The next day I went to see JennyC■■■ and her family. That's always fun. Then I went downtown to hang out with Ryan S■■■. We rode the rails to the Angelika Theater ... a new experience for me, v. classy. Then we ate at the cafe and saw 21 Grams. Worst movie ever ... don't go see it. Even though the movie was awful, I had a wonderful time. The next morning I woke up and drove home. And here I am. I spent last night drinking Coronas and Keystones with Josh 'n Tommy cause there was nothing else to do and nowhere else to go. It was fun.

Just thought I would fill you all in since I've been rather sparse in the updates in comparison to usual. I will be leaving tomorrow for the cruise and you won't hear from me until after the new year, so I hope everyone has a safe and wonderful new year full of drunken spirits and sloven kisses. Cheers!

I've been having a lot of fun lately. I like having fun. But if I don't stop, there are going to be dire consequences ... dire like I haven't seen since my freshman year. It seems like a lot of the blogs around me have been delineating their goals for the rest of the year, and I realized it was time for me to do the same. If I don't figure out what I want to do with my life, how will I ever know when I fail?

So here goes my list of goals for the remainder of 2003:

• Get whiter teeth
• Tan the hide
• Lose 10lbs of fat
• Gain 15lbs of muscle
• Touch nose to knee
• Do the Scorpion
• Stop spending money
• Stop drinking
• Stop smoking
• Clean car
• Clean house
• Finish schoolwork
• Have a wonderful Thanksgiving

Well I got a little carried away. I didn't realize there were so many unsatisfactory points of my life until I sat down to make a list. I guess I'll go wash some dishes .....

I'm watching this interview with Michael Jackson. It's pretty unreal. I don't know, though. I kinda feel bad for the guy because he's obviously out of touch with reality, and you can't really blame him for being insane. Although, as I'm watching how people react to his presence everywhere he goes around the entire world, I can't help but think that he might be jesus. I mean, how many people do you know that can reduce a person to tears just by being 50 feet away? I'm sure most of you won't agree with me, especially based on the recent events. Just don't forget: jesus loved the little children.

I didn't really do anything today. I was out last night drinkin' some beers with Leslie, Josh, Rick and Steve when I got a call from Raul saying that Chris was over at Terysa's (how is that for some name dropping). So I went to chill with Chris since he left town this morning and won't be back until the Christmas break. That was a good time. When I got home, my stomach was kind of queasy, so I took a phenergin. That was a bad idea, since you're not supposed to mix it with alcohol, really. But that's just a suggestion. So, I ended up catching roughly 15 hours of sleep while missing class and work today. Whoopsadaisy. I spent the evening cooking some meat 'n cheese for me and Ryan and then preparing the mac 'n cheese for Thanksgiving at AllieD's tomorrow. Not sure what else I'm gonna do tonight. Thomas might come over and watch a DVD. I should buy a boat.

I had to get up early this morning in order to take my exam in my networking class. I hate getting up early. It makes me physically ill (see Tuesday, September 30, 2003). I really think I should be able to register with the Students with Disabilities and be granted another test time. But, in the end, I just decided to go to bed at 11:30 and woke up with minor difficulties.

The test was going to be interesting. I knew nothing of it. In fact, I didn't even know there was a test until Thursday of last week, and it was agreed with little hesitation that none of us were going to study until Sunday. And then, I forgot all about it until I was laying in agony on the couch, suffering through a hangover, and Eric IMed me asking what time we were meeting to study. So it was time to employ the time honored tradition of cramming.

I find, though, that if you're going to take an exam in a class that you haven't attended since the last exam, sometimes studying can be detrimental to your grade. I went over all the slides and worked through a few example problems -- all told I spent a little under 2 hours studying. And then I quit, went home, and went to bed. I was among the first finished with my test yet again. There are two ways to finish a test first. Either you know everything, or you know nothing. Both of them accelerate your test taking time. It is only when you exist in that netherworld between knowing the answer, and forgetting what you've learned that you agonize over every answer, desperately wracking your brain to squeeze the last bit of information from its dark and unused dungeons. I prefer to stay blissfully unawares, and answer "D" to every question I don't know, because my name starts with "D." It's such a load off.

Anyway, this is my PSA to all of my beloved viewers. Next time you have a test, try not studying, instead of studying, and see how much your grade improves. Of course, you may want to wait until I get my grade back on this test to see how effective my methods have actually been.

I had two goals for this weekend. First, I wanted to get really, really drunk. Not a problem. My other goal was to accomplish absolutely nothing. Its a hard goal to accomplish because you're never really sure when you've finished it, but I know that I did it because of a little thing I've dubbed the couch-a-thon.

They kind of went hand-in-hand because my fabulous hangover kept me from wanting to do anything. I woke up on the couch the next morning and proceded to drink dr. peppers and lie about. I spent the whole day watching food network until Josh IMed me and said he was going to make some sloppy joes. He just lives two seconds away, so I actually got up and went over there. But dont' worry, because all i did was lay down on his couch. We saw the coolest show on ABC called Swapped or Switched or something like that. Check it out.

I went home after that and laid down on the couch until Allison called. We ventured briefly to Blockbuster but it smelled like ass in there so we went to Hastings. I bought The Transporter and 8 Mile on VHS cause they were cheap. So we went to Allison's to watch The Transporter and I laid down on her couch. As soon as that was over, back to my couch I went, and chatted with Neumann until 6am. I haven't talked to that guy in like 4 years, so that was a little surreal but cool. I slept on the couch, and its now 3pm and I'm still here.

If you all had pledged a nickel for every hour I could sit on a couch ... well, I'd have a shitload of nickels. So who is proud of me?

I've been putting off this blog because its going to be pretty long and I haven't really had the time to sit down and type it since I've been home. As you may know, I went home to Dallas this weekend. There's no need for pretense so we'll just jump right into the story. I got home on Friday evening and saw my mother briefly. My parents were going to Oktoberfest in Addison Friday evening and then leaving for my cousin's wedding in Denver, CO the next morning, so I really didn't get to see them. No bother though, it actually worked out better that way.

So Friday night I met up with Clay and we went to a housewarming party in Highland Park. It was the coolest house I've ever been in. It was three stories tall with four bathrooms, a huge backyard deck, beautifully decorated, a media room upstairs, and a room with some really expensive X-Men comics in it, which I appreciated. I got a little bit drunk, but we left early because we knew we were going to be getting up early on Saturday to go to Six Flags. And thats just what we did.

I woke up around 10 on Saturday and showered and got ready and Clay came and picked me up. We met up with 4 of his friends downtown and headed out to Six Flags. Has anybody been there recently? We got this thing called a Q-Bot which essentially allows you to wait in line electronically. It cost us like 60 bucks between the 6 of us, and you take this little thing around with you and you lock into rides. And it saves your spot and beeps you when its your turn to ride the ride. And then you just walk right up to the front and get on, while all the have-nots look on in disgust. It was SO fun! We got to ride every ride in the park without once waiting in line. Its actually genius on so many levels though, because if you're standing in a line for 2 hours, thats 2 hours that you're not spending money. The Q-Bot freed us up to walk around and buy shit all day long. I really only spent money on water the entire time, so I didn't lose too much. I did get my knife confiscated at the door though, that was pretty funny.

Anyway, then everyone was planning on going out, but I, naturally, had to go home and shower. I was exhausted by the time I was ready to head back to Dallas, but being the trooper I am, I managed somehow. I called up Ryan S■■■ to see if he was going out and he was, so instead of going back out with the group of new friends I'd just made, I called and left them a message saying maybe I'd see them out and went to Ryan's. Good thing I didn't rely on them, too, cause apparently they went home and fell asleep for the entire night. Anyway, Ryan and I got ready and picked up his friend David S■■■■■■ and went out downtown. We started out at JR's and the beers were not really making me feel well, so by the time we went into the Village, I was ready to just sit down. I was really falling asleep. So I did just that. I have no qualms, people probably just thought I was rolling to hard anyway. But I wasn't a total drag the whole night, I got up and danced a little bit although I didn't drink anymore. By the time we ended up at a late night restaurant watching these two scarf down chinese food, I was about to fall asleep on the table. We finally got back to Ryan's around 4 and I just crashed there because I was too tired to do anything else.

The next morning Ryan made some delicious pancakes, I borrowed a shirt (it says Texas is for Lovers and I liked it so much that Ryan gave it to me -- THANKS!), and we went back downtown for the parade. It was so much fun. We were catching beads and stuff. Ryan took an assload of pictures, but he took them with film (who does that). So as soon as he gets some scanned in, I can put them up here for you to enjoy. The parade was nuts, we ate some lunch. After the parade there was like a political rally and the people for Howard Dean were there. I got a button for my bag. It looks quite striking next to my peace propaganda. After that we took a nap and then I hit the road bound for College Station.

All in all it was one of the most fun weekends of my life. I really needed that. Thanks to everyone who was influential in making it happen. In other news, I pulled some handi-capable tickets to the game on Saturday against Pittsburg. Allison and I are going to be on the front row of the second deck for a game that is going to be televised on ABC. We want to wear T-shirts that spell something out, but so far all I can think of it either "GO" or "TX" or "AM". Any ideas? I'll tell you one thing though, it'll be nice to be sitting through all of those damn TV timeouts. I predict we will win 67 to 12.

And in international news, I've decided to leave the country. I'm not sure when, but lets just say ASAP. My new dream in life is to move to Germany and get a job writing technical documentation for German companies auf Englisch. I guess in reality it would be better if I could be a straight up translator, but I'm probably at least a year away from that. I used to be almost fluent, but not so much these days. Anyway, I think that's about enough blog for now, thank you for your patience, you have-nots. Laaaaaaaaaate.

Man, I had saved up so many choice stories for the blog this week, but at the moment I just can't remember any of them. I guess its true that beer kills brain cells. Now let's go back to that place where our beds and TV is. I got a little bit tipsy last night, which has facilitated my skipping of class and dodging of phone calls from the man ... and my mother.

My mother is calling because I told her I was coming home today. I need to pack up some dirty laundry because all of my good clothes are in the hamper. Now that i don't have a washing machine I will actually do it at home. I am going home for a number of reasons. For one, I haven't been back in a while so I need to see the rentals. My friend Ashlee from high school is in town and has been partying with Ryan S■■■ and I feel left out, so I need to do that. And Clay is leaving for Spain a couple of days so I'm gonna go hang with him.

Not that I feel the need to justify myself to all of you. Did anybody watch the game last night? Cody Scates is a badass.

Welcome one and all to yet another rebirth of SideshoViD.com. This would be the ninth spawning of the Sidesho-Phoenix. I thought that it was going to be rather obvious to everyone that came here, that this webpage was inspired by the artist, Mondriaan. He did a lot of paintings that were just black lines and blocks of color. The kind of paintings uncultured people look at and say, "I could have done that when I was four." Anyway, if you want to sound intelligent on your next date, spend a couple seconds looking him up and talk over coffee about the futility expressed in simplicity.

You'll notice (hopefully) that I tried to bring back a lot of the content that has fallen by the wayside here. We've got recent pictures above that I've taken with my digital camera. I'm hoping those change often, but we'll see. Click them to open a full version. You'll see some pictures of me to the left that also open up to full size. The webcam is back to 24-hour version and automatically updates itself without updating the entire page. This happens every 30 seconds, so sit back and enjoy the voyeurism. I brought back the search function, as well as links to the archives. The song of the day is now the 3 songs available for download. And I have brought back the word of the day as well -- trust me, you people need it. Finally, I'm going to post funny IM conversations I've had, so if you want to appear on my website, say something funny ... or just be an idiot.

I hope you all like the next site. If you have any suggestions for content I could add, let me know in a comment. If you like the site, let me know in a comment. If there's something you don't like, go to hell. Thanks and gig this.

500 more miles on the car, 500 more P-town memories. Lets recap, shall we? The whole reason that I even decided to go home was because my brother from California was in town and I haven't seen him in a long time. But as it turned out, I didn't get to see him even once the whole time I was home because he was busy with one of his best friends marrying his wife's little sister. It all sounded a little incestual if you ask me.

So Friday night I dropped in on Simply Fondue to see my friend Blake that I haven't seen in a while. We chit chatted for a while and then I went home. Saturday I was woken up by JennyC■■■ who wanted me to go to Stonebriar mall with her. And I did just that. We shopped for new clothes for her for a while with her mom and then I decided that I needed to find a new outfit to go out in since I had made some plans so I went to Willowbend. I walked around for a long time and didn't find jack shit to wear. It was pathetic. I was getting frustrated and had an entire day to kill since my family was all at the wedding, so I stopped into Toni & Guy and asked if they had any appointments available. They had one open but it was with the top designer guy so it was more expensive. Sounded good to me. An hour and a half later, I walked out of there looking and feeling like a million bucks.

I went to Coach then because my friend Clay that I was going out with works there and I needed to discuss our plans. He got off at 9:30 and then came to pick me up. We ended up at a bar called Minc around 11:00. We had one drink there but it was really dead because there was some huge $40 cover charge party going on elsewhere that everyone was supposedly at. So we decided to go downtown to the Village. I'd never been there before, and after skipping out on the line and the cover charge by darting in the ajar "Re-entry Only" door, we made our rounds. Not 10 minutes after being there, who do I run into but my old pal Ryan S■■■. I didn't even know he was going to be there. That was too much fun. We caught up on all the pertinent gossip. The cool thing about every other fucking city on the face of the planet besides College Station, Texas is that when the bars stop serving alcohol they don't turn on all the lights and kick you out.

I started noticing though that Clay, who had driven to the club, was almost doubling my alcohol intake, so I decided to switch to water in anticipation of having to drive home. Its a good thing I did too. We ended up staying until about 3:30 in the morning dancing to the best remixes of today's hottest hits. I was completely drenched when we left. It was so much fun. Clay had to crash at my house for the night, but since we had 4 empty bedrooms that wasn't a problem.

Today I woke up and went swimming for a while, got my first taste of the sun this summer. I got packed and ready to go and then met Chevy at Starbucks to share some smokes and stories, just like in the days of yore. Now I'm back home in College Station and I'm really rarin' to go for this next week of work. Hope you all had as much fun as I did this weekend and I will see you on the ol' flip side.

I'm headed back to Plano right now. My brother, Michael, is in town from California, and since I never get to see him I thought I would mosey on over. His wife's little sister is marrying one of his best friends. I don't care for weddings, especially of people who aren't immediate family, so I've forgone the invitation, but I am sure I'll see everyone involved over at mi casa.

A couple of shoutouts before I go. This blogging thing must be contagious. I see friends' blog popping up everywhere ... and not like Keiff's adventures in blogging that lasted two days, I mean real ones. So, if you ever get bored of mine, you should check out [Owen] and [Ryan S■■■].

That's all for now, folks. Have a wonderful weekend and I shall return on Sunday.

Guess who's back. Back again. Sidesho's back. Tell a friend. Yes, my friends, I am back in the pink today. Finally. Damn those 24 hour hangovers. Although, I have to admit a rather embarassing fact. This story is graphic, and not intended for my younger viewers. So I woke up at like noon yesterday and decided while I was feeling pretty good to get a little bit of lunch in my stomach and then go back to bed. And I made Hamburger Helper the night before, but I had failed to refrigerate the shit overnight. But I didn't think it would be a problem ... but now I think that was a really bad idea. Cause I laid in bed all day feeling like I needed to throw up, but didn't think that would be a good idea since all the alcohol was already out of my system, and I'd just forced myself to eat a big lunch and it would be a waste if i threw it up. So FINALLY around 6pm, I decided to just throw up, so that I would at least not feel queasy anymore. So I did it, and then cleaned my mouth, and stood up ... and INSTANTLY started feeling better. After that, I felt just fine. So now I'm equating the length and severity of my sickness, not to the alcohol, but to the rotten Hamburger Helper. So the moral of this story is ... refrigerate your leftovers, and if you happen to forget ... just don't eat the shit. A friendly PSA from yours truly.

Today I am going to go eat lunch around 2:00-2:30ish, because I have this thing to go to at 3. My symphony class professor is the conductor of the Brazos Valley Symphony Orchestra. And since we have to write a paper over two live performances this semester, I figured this would be as good an opportunity as any other. And he's hosting a talk today at 3 to talk to people about what we're going to hear at the concert tomorrow, i.e. everything I need for my paper. I'll still go to the concert, and not just because I paid $30 for tickets so I wouldn't have to go alone. Keith is going to go with me. But also because I genuinely enjoy music and I'm open to listening to music that I normally wouldn't listen to. So hopefully this will be an enriching experience. Plus I can describe music now using obnoxious music terms like basso continuo, and ritonello. Its fun to be pretentious. Then I think I might go to the mall and do some window shopping and say hi to my friend Stev-o who's gonna be working there today. We'll see. It depends on how long this symphony talk lasts, and how tired I feel after leaving the house. Since I haven't done that in a while. Alrighty then, I'll talk you kids later. Have a good one.

What's been up? Mostly just clase and stuff. I've found that my Symphony clase is really hard to stay awake through. I go in there tired and then they turn on classical music. Thats a deadly combination. I've zonked out in there both times now. And I've been getting like 9 hours of sleep a night. I don't know what I'm doing wrong.

Tonight I had to go to an IEEE-Tech meeting. Its this club thats really all about my major and I should really be a member but I don't feel like paying 50 bucks to have a magazine delivered to me once a month. I suppose its resume fodder, which I'm sure I need so I'll see about joining it at a later date. I'm in no hurry whatsoeva. I really don't have much exciting to talk about. I think I may spend some time updating the cast page now. I've started getting some political heat from the people who should be on there and aren't yet. Again, if you are on there and want to have a picture next to you, be sure to email me a pic: SideshoViD@sideshovid.com

Oh yeah, and Burns wanted me to tell you all that he has loads of porn and mp3's available for download at his site http://www.burns.tk. Laaaaaate.

Home again, home again, jiggety jig. Hola mi amigos, tu es muy tente! I have returned unscathed from the weekend. My drives there and back were both uneventful, which is always a good thing when you're driving on the highway. When I got first got to my house in Plano on Friday night, I ate dinner with the parents. We had these fatass ribs that were so good. I brought some home with me and just ate them for dinner tonight. After dinner I played my dad at ping-pong, but I totally forgot my paddle at home so I was trying to use one that was WAY cushier than I was accustomed to and I lost. I didn't get romped or anything, I even won a couple games. But overall he still beat me, even though I'm still convinced it was because of the paddle and not anything due to my physical short-comings. Although it didn't take him long to figure out that my forehand is unstoppable and my backhand is non-existent. (Shh, don't tell anyone.) After that we went swimming to cool down, and then Paw was ready for bed, and I was ready to go out. So I met up with Colleen at the mall because they had extended hours for Tax-Free weekend. We were only there a little while before I declared that it was time to go to Friday's to get a drink. We did that and it was very tame, we got there just before last call and then went home.

The next day I woke up around noon and went shopping myself. I ran into Colleen at Willowbend, I was halfway meeting her there, and halfway just looking around. I didn't shop with her though. I tried to win a 1000 dollar shopping spree but that didn't happen, unfortunately. I coulda spent the shit out of it on some Diesel apparel. Then I went to Stonebriar cause I was still in the shopping mood, but couldn't find anything there either. It was fun to people watch though. I'm starting to feel old cause I was definitely not up to date on the current fashion trends half these kids at the mall were partaking in. And I'm sorry, but I still hate the front-tuck on shirts. I will never do that. Anyway, I wasn't there long and I went home. My parents went to go see Stomp so it was up to me to find dinner. But I had a project.

I've decided that my job is going to be playing guitar at daycares. There's good money to be had in that profession and I'm damn good at it. I can play, sing, interact with kids, and I have a shitload of experience. So I printed up a flier for myself. Maybe I'll post it up here once I get it all done. I did make a rough draft though and I took it over to MaryAnn's house to peruse it. She would know about that shit. She gave me some good advice on it and how to go about getting into the business. As an added bonus, she also fed me this badass meal of fried chicken, noodles, and brownies. It was "the bomb," as the children say. After that I met up with Steve at the ol' Starbucks and had a citrus smoothie type drink. It was really good. It tasted like a liquefied Dreamsicle. And we all know how much I love Dreamsicles. To cap off the evening I went down to Carabbas to hang out with Ryan S■■■. He's the head waiter there, and I had to wait around for forever for him to close out the registers or some shit like that. But I got to sit back in the office, so that was cool. Then we went to some guys house that he knows down in Dallas. It sucked though cause everyone there had gone to the lake earlier in the day and were already asleep by the time we showed up. So it was basically just me and Ryan playin pool and hangin out, which we really could have done at my house. Ryan's going to LA soon though to be a movie writer or something, so this may have been one of my last times to get to see him conveniently. I may go home one more time or he may come to College Station, its still very much up in the air. I'll fill you all in on that. Anyway, this should clue you into what happened this weekend. Anything else, or anyone else I talked to is insignificant. So ha! Adios, ninos.

This is just a quick note to inform everyone that I am on my way home to Plano now. I'm gonna spend the weekend with the rentals and relax. I may or may not be posting while I'm home so if you don't hear from me until Sunday, fear not, I am still alive. Well, probably. Laaaaaaaate.

Another weekend is upon us, dear readers. We have all survived another week of this hellish summer. Wait, did I say hellish? I meant hellaciously breezy. Not much transpired this week. I laid out yesterday and I'm pretty burnt today, but it doesn't hurt too much. I got a lot done on my project and I'm feeling optimistic. I might even meet with the professor next week. I tried to find him today, but to no avail. I went to the rec a few times and got swoll, swam a bunch of laps, and played a little ping pong. I went and put in an application for a job at Planet Beach, the tanning salon I used to go to. Yes, I put in an actual high schoolish retard of a position anyone with the IQ of a broomstick could do it application for a minimum wage living on welfare white trash paying job. There I said it. I need to apply to a couple other places, but today I wore a dew rag to class so I didn't think I looked particularly presentable. Allinall though I'd have to say this was an excellent summer week. I got a lot accomplished.

"Whats on the slate for tonight?" you ask. Ah my little naivette viewer, always such a curious little monkey. Well, I imagine there'll be some alcohol consumed judging by the massive amounts we just purchased. We might go out, we might stay in, we might have company, we might not. Everything is up in the air still, but I don't care either way cause I'monna have fun regardless. Tomorrow, I think I want to go see Austin Powers. I didn't get to see it today like I wanted. So if anyone reads this before tomorrow and wants to accompany me (or pay for me or whatever) just let me know. As you know you can always email me at SideshoViD@sideshovid.com. Excelsior!

Big news everybody. Say it with me now all together, "SCREW YOU AOL!" HA, we don't need 'em anymore. And you know why? Cause we've got

SideshoViD@sideshovid.com

Oh yes, you read it right. We're becoming more self sufficient every day, my friends. Along with this comes the news that Hit-O-Meter, my long time counter service will be going offline in August. So now I'm gonna use my own cgi counter that will be self contained inside my webpage. I know I say it often, but this time its really true. Some very exciting things are happening at SideshoViD.com!

Whats new IRL tho. Not a whole lot. Class has become a secondary thing since I took a test on Monday. I think I may be coming down with something because I sleep far too much to be a normal person. But I haven't diagnosed myself with mono just yet. I'm still gonna give it some time to just pass on its own.

I'd like to take this opp to thank Steve for helping me test my email and sending the first ever email to SideshoViD.com. And likewise, I'd like to thank Ryan S■■■ for being the first ever to receive an email from SideshoViD.com. (I got the incoming working way before the outgoing.) These men were a part of history today. Hopefully a long and celebratory history. I'm just a little too excited, so I think I'm gonna go update the cast page like it badly needs. Excelsior, you have nots!

Well today was fun. About a week ago we were assigned a speech for my SCOM203 class. If you'll recall, it was supposed to be over a significant historical event. I pissed away my time trying to think of a really stellar topic until it became the day before it was due. I finally had to just pick a topic, any topic, and start writing the speech. I chose the murder of John Lennon. Not that I'm a huge Lennon fan, nor did I particularly care for the Beatles, but I wanted to do something with music, I respect the man and his work, and there weren't any good sources over John Denver's death.

I feel it necessary to give thanks to a couple of people. First Ryan S■■■ for helping me get started, figure out a killer intro, teaching me about ethos, pathos, and logos, and telling me to just shut up and write the speech. Also to Allison who let me come over at like 11:30 to help/encourage me to finish my speech and then listen to me read it a few times. I ended up finishing writing the speech and the outline I used to speak from around 2am. And I got up this morning at about 8 to get to school, print it out, and practice it. In fact, that reminds me that I used my ftp to transport the files, so if you would like to read my speech you can do so here.

I managed to memorize the thing in a little over an hour this morning and was feelin good when I got to class. There were 8 people speaking today and I was fifth. Some of them were clever, a couple were well written and a couple were even pretty good speakers, but all of them before did nothing but bolster my confidence that I was going to do fine. And I did. I didn't studder or mess up or anything. I'm pretty confident that it went well, I'm just hoping my outlines and stuff are in the proper format so I can get full credit there.

My friends in my class were very supportive of my speech, which was flattering. And we all know I do like to be flattered. My friend Adam leaned forward after I sat down and said, "And you hadn't even picked a topic until last night? You bastard." And I made a new friend today, Nadia. She volunteered to work the camera so she was sitting right next to me. I think I like summer school, everyone's so much friendlier, I think. Or maybe just I am. Oh well. Catch you skids later. Give peace a chance.

Hello, dear friends! How I've missed you. Carpe diem, my friends, sieze the day! Excelsior! Haha! Boy, its been a while since I've had time to sit down and blog. Consider yourselves lucky though, the only reason I have time now is because my 9:10 got canceled today. So I thought I'd fill you all in.

Basically this has been a hellish week. I've never had so much to do in my life. Well, allow me to rephrase. I've never had so much to do that I actually HAD to do. Like none of this shit is optional in the least ... unless you consider graduation 'optional.' Yesterday I had a presentation at 8am and another at 8pm. The one in the morning was for tech writing. We presented our Argentina webpage, which is here if you really feel like looking at it. That presentation was inherently lame, there was nothing we could do about it, but we got an A on it. I doubt it'll be enough to bring my grade up to a B overall, so its basically worthless, I may as well have gotten a C on it. But regardless I'm done with tech writing! Yahoo!

Then I went home and took a nap so I wouldn't be yawning during my evening presentation. My group met at 6 to start practicing. We found what we thought was an out-of-the-way classroom with a media center to practice in but around 7:00 our professor walked in to find us doing a dress rehearsal with our powerpoint up on the screen and everything. It kind of threw us off, though I think he appreciated us practicing. The actual presentation went really well. We had practiced it so many times that we hardly had to think while we were speaking. I think the prof enjoyed it. Then came the dreaded Q&A session. I'll just say that I think I did really well answering his questions clearly, concisely, and for the love of God, correctly. If the demonstration goes well, and our documentation is as good as I think it is ... I could be looking at not only passing, but ... (nevermind, I'm not gonna say it).

On the slate for this week is a review today at 10:30am, a demonstration tomorrow at 8:30pm, a final Thursday at 10:30am and then a massive, well deserved drinking binge on Friday. I'll see you all there. And remember ... Carpe diem, my friends, sieze the day! Excelsior!

Well, here it is ... SideshoViD.com version 3. I'm so excited. I am really happy with the way it turned out. Be sure to vote in the poll for how you think this page relates to SideshoViD.com's of the past. Also, the pics, bio, links and webcam are basically the same, but please check out the downloads cause i made all new buddy icons. Also, leave me a comment, that would be so awesome. Alright, you guys, its 5 oclock in the morning, I've been working on this site for like 16 hours just today. Its way past time for me to catch some shut eye. Hope you like the new site!

I am finally back in College Station. I woke up this morning around 4:30am (California time) to leave for the airport in San Francisco. I think we got into Dallas around 4:00 CST. Then I hopped in the car and set out for Aggieland. Being stuck in traffic for over an hour extended my car trip to 4 and a half hours. I am so sick of travelling. And I have a migraine now, but anyway...

My week was fun. I went to San Francisco with my parents. We spent 2 days there doing the whole tourist thing. We went to Fisherman's Wharf, Alcatraz, Coit Tower, rode the trolley car, drove over the Golden Gate, etc, etc. Then we went to Sacramento to visit my brother. There we went to one of his softball and one of his soccer games. We also went wine tasting, but I was the DD.

All in all the week was a little more hectic than I prefer. But it was really fun. If you need more detail than this, you can always IM me. Now let's play a little game. Everyone who cares to share, Post a Comment on this blog and give us a little soundbite about how your Spring Break went.

Sadly, I don't have a lot to update you on. I think Plano exists directly under an anomaly in the space-time continuum which allows time to move at like a third the rate it does everywhere else.

But that will all change soon because I am leaving for San Francisco at around 6:30am tomorrow. Well, thats when we're leaving for the airport. We're taking off at like 10:30 and landing around 11. Time zones are so weird. It should be fun, and you, the loyal Sidesho-Viewer, will be the first to hear about it.

In the meantime, I've been hanging out at the mall. I got the new Kylie Minogue CD. It's pretty good, I haven't listened to the whole thing yet. That's what road trips are for. I have also seen some of my P-town friends. I went to Martinez Cafe with Ryan tonight, just like we used to EVERY day in high school. It was fun. I won't be posting for a couple days, but you can still visit my page if you like. Laaaaate.

ATTENTION: Today is Allison's birthday. I've probably shut down the entire site in reverence of the occasion, but just in case I didn't get around to it, be sure to tell her happy birthday. She's 21 and will be buying me lots and lots of drinks tonight. WHOO HOO.

I know I said I didn't want to get cocky, but the time for being cocky has arrived. I am so certain I aced that test. I normally don't say that because then I make 50's, but I had so much time to check it over that I'm certain its 100% correct. In fact, I even told my professor, Dr. O■■■, afterwards that I'd bet him a soda I aced it. He said if I made a 100, we'd talk. Boo yah.

On a 'side' note, you'll see the new Sidesho-Pic to the side here. There's no deeper meaning. Its just the amalgamation of my webpage and the Matrix. Its COOL. Why don't you people get it?

Man, its going to be another late night. I am such a procrastinator. Tonight's late night is brought to you by the letters ENGL and the numbers 210. I have to do an audience profile on the job that I'm going to be "applying" for. I was supposed to have already turned in the job advertisement I'm going to use, I just found out, so I went on Monster.com and found some web designing position for Travelocity.com. I like to use computer based subjects for my papers because its easier to bullshit since my prof doesn't know anything about the internet, I've gathered. My last memo proposal about creating a new layout for the company website got me an 82 cause she couldn't tell that 80% of what I said didn't even make any sense. Ah the perks of random jargon. Hopefully I can churn this out in about 30 minutes and be in bed by 2am. I have class tomorrow at 8, and then at 9:10. Then I have an Intel Training course from 12:40 to 2:40. Then I'm meeting with Bob to teach him more about making a website (the prof I'm working for now). Then I have like an hour or two to chill before open lab hours start for ENTC249 (the class that consumes my life). On the plus side though, I've reassessed our progress and decided that my team is ahead of schedule. Thats a first and it feels good. I hate to be an asshole, but every time I hear another team bitching about not having something done, it makes me feel really really good ... provided we have ours working. Oh well, I suppose I've stalled long enough, time to start working.

On a side note, everyone click here to send Steve a shoutout. Today is his 20th birthday, and I just know he'd love to have some well wishes from loyal Sidesho-Viewers. Thanks!

Hey, thanks for all the great comments yesterday *makes masturbatorial motion* Anywho, some people grasped the concept, the rest of you, I'll have to have a talkin to. So, to everyone in Aggieland, is it fucking cold enough for you today? My God, I don't know what the temperature is, but the wind chill must be below freezing. I wasn't wearing a single article of clothing today that could block the wind. Today sucks. And I have to go back out in it in a couple of hours. I'm gonna maybe take a nap or watch some TV for a couple minutes. Then I'm gonna go get Lisa Loeb's new album. It's gonna be most excellent. If you want to hear her new single, Someone You Should Know, on Real Player, you can click there. Then I'm gonna go get some tickets for me and Keith to Thursday's showing of The Vagina Monologues. Then its off to class for the rest of the day. It should be a fun and exciting, albeit subfreezing, day.

Hey, I'd like to welcome everybody to the newly formated SideshoViD.com. I spent all day getting my new weblogger program, GreyMatter, to work. Its all running off of my site now, no more blogger.com. First and foremost, I'd like to thank my friend, SHAN, who helped me get it all set up. Without his help, I would still be shaking my monitor getting ready to throw it out the window. I hope you all like the new look. I wanted the blog a little skinnier so I moved it over here and then threw the SideshoPic and SideshoPoll off to the side. Part of me thinks its nicer, part of me isn't quite sure. One thing is for sure, some very exciting things are happening at SideshoViD.com. I don't really feel like I'm finished with this blogger, but I was too excited to wait any longer before unveiling it. Also, the rest of the pages are in the same format, not this forced width, so they'll be changing slowly I'm sure. It's a very exciting time. The most exciting thing of those being COMMENTS! If you look below it will tell you how many comments have been posted about this particular blog. If you have something to say, either to me, or to another Sidesho-Viewer, simply click down below, and put your comment into the white boxes. Its very exciting stuff. I hope to see lots of great comments. Peace and love, you have nots!