11/29/2001 01:39:00 PM

Night Boat

I'm sitting in a burger king parking lot just west of the baltimore beltway, waiting for a call from the switch to let me know it's ok to start testing. We were supposed to get started at around 12:30am, but there was a snag on their end so I'm here playing pokemon on the gameboy and writing a blog-entry and thinking how I'm more excited than inconvenienced and I wonder when that feeling will wear off. For now, I feel like a night-watchman, moments away from being called into action. There's a Donut Shop across the street that I could go hang out and wait in if I wanted to be semi-sociable, but I'm not that hungry and the last time I went into a place offering "free" dunkaccino, I ended up with a shot-glass full of oversweet coffee and a kid's donut combo I bought out of guilt having been lured into the store by the word 'free' and then not wanting to be a total cheapass. I need to accept who I am and move on, and if they want to offer somethiing 'free', they need to expect my kind to show up and not buy a damn thing.

Dork Rising

The crew at 6201 61st Place (erica, Dave, and I) stepped up our dorkiness quotients recently by buying a bunch of brushes and paints so we can paint our D+D metal figurines. Painting minitures is a hobby in itself, even though it compliments other dork-hobbies. We spent the past two nights meticulously coating and recoating the figures represnting our characters, our old characters, and now even some random monsters. It's not a cheap hobby, and if I wasn't doing it myself I might look at it as dork-overkill, but it's actually a lot of fun and an obvious extension of the dork skills we already posess. It's just like Cal Ripken says; "[Dork Hobbies]: Noone can [have] just one!", only he's talking about eating potato chips, but I think it's safe to say he'd say what I said he said if he were into painting minitures rather than baseball. I'm actually sortof close to his house right now, maybe I should go ask him to legitimize that quote...

Arrival: Starring Paul Feldman rather than Charlie Sheen

Paul gets here on Friday and I'm really looking forward to seeing him. Last time he was here in DC I didn't get much time to hang with him, and even though he's only going to be here for a weekend, I'm stoked.

User: Boney

11/26/2001 09:38:00 AM

awake-4-no-reason

I'm having trouble falling asleep tonight, but I'm not really sure why. I've always connected insomnia with some sort of inner conflict or anxiety, but I think it's just a matter of getting excessive amounts of sleep all weekend coupled with a whole lot of caffeine today. While doing some christmas shopping today, at the mall, I got really hungry all of a sudden and had to go get a large fries and a small drink because my hands were shaking and I felt light-headed. It was weird because I had a big breakfast (dave made pancakes). Maybe my body became accustomed to overeating over the thanksgiving weekend and needed huge portions of food in order to function. Whatever the case, it gave me an excuse to go grab a Gandalf light-up Chalice at Burger King. Even though I dislike the idea of Lord of the Rings doing lame commercialization things, especially with a place like burger king, I still got one. Maybe this is the inner conflict keeping me awake tonight.

Baby4Colleen

In other news, My friend Colleen is pregnant. I just talked to her today and I've known she's wanted a baby for a while now so I'm happy for her even though I wouldn't want one. People tell me I'd make a good father but it seems like a gigantic responsibility to be responsible for instilling a good heart and noble spirit in another human being when I have enough trouble being the best me I can be. I'm looking forward to seeing her and others when I go down to Orlando over the xmas holiday week. Erica and I are really leaning towards driving down unless some amazing plane ticket deal comes through. I think it could be fun to drive, but I imagine it will probably be hellish during that whole week since everyone is afraid of flying. I'm just cheap. Maybe they should make a cheap-ass-lane, like an HOV lane, so that I can get home faster. Why don't more people think of me when they plan things like interstate-highway-systems?

J&K@BR

Also, Jackie and Kristy, twins from california, are on display in poster form in Banana Republic ads and stores across the country. Observe them as they embrace and give the standard "This hug does nothing for me" look that they teach you in model school.

User: Boney

11/25/2001 10:41:00 AM

Joel in the Middle

The mighty have fallen indeed. I've been slowing in my updates lately thanks to the joys of being working-class. I'm sure I probably don't qualify for working-class-hood but I'd like to. At what point does someone change socio-economic standing? IN theory I've made about $25k a year for the past two years and probably less for the current year, but somehow I think I still manage to stay stuck in the rut which is middle-class. It's not a bad way to be by any means, it's a darn lucky way to be, although there's always the lingering guilt that comes with modest privilige. I know I've wanted to be persecuted every once in a while. White middle class males tend to play more villans than heroes, at least so far as history is concerned. They've done plenty of great things too, don't get me wrong, but I'd hardly want to identify with them. I don't really identify much with my cultural or genealogical heritage. Although I'm an Irish/English/German mutt, I'm not going to start drinking whiskey, buying pub signs, and eating bratwurst. I like potatoes, sure, but I think potatoes are prevalent in just about any culture. Both of my parents are from Pennsylvania, but I've only lived there for 2 years of my life, and I don't remember much about it except for snow and living on a hill and unearthing big boulders in the backyard and watching them roll into the neighbor's garden. I mostly consider my home to be a house in Altamonte Springs, Florida, nestled in a subdivision called Sabal Point. That's where I come from, I suppose, like it or lump it.

Grrrr
THere's a bit of angst involved in coming from a pre-planned neighborhood development. The whole idea is what of living in a place that was once some uber-developer's dream; cutting down the swampland and building thousands of houses using 3 or 4 different floorplans so the people shopping in the suburban-sprawl of gas-stations and strip-malls would have a place to be when they weren't buying stuff. Palm tress and ugly pastel colors (including pink-lake-brantley high school) set the backdrop for the greatest portion of my life, and I'm ok with that. Brian Costello wrote a song about the area, "Back Home in Altamonte Springs", a tongue-in-cheek ballad revering the caravans and cul-de-sacs of our hometown. The Napoleans had a song called "South Longwood" talking about the mean-spirited-macho-gangsta-posturing of pre-teen vandals walking around such dangerous neighborhoods as "Sabal Place" and "Spring Lake Hills". At least noone really knows what a Compton or a Englewood is. It's hard to be tough coming from "Sugar Ridge".

New Traditionalists

So anyway, I am proud of who I am, and of what I do and have done, and that is my culture. I am proud of my parents and who they are, too, and my grandparents for that matter, but I am who I am, not who they are. I had my first tofurkey thanksgiving this year, and maybe that got my thinking about tradition and heritage, but I don't know. At any rate, later!

User: Boney

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