I ended up skipping out on going to Ocean City with Jay. She changed the date, so I ended up not being able to go anyway, but I was glad for not needing an excuse. I don't really feel like seeing her lately. I'm not mad at her or anything, the idea of spending time with her just doesn't seem compelling anymore. It's funny, I had kind of thought I'd been exaggerating when I said getting plastic surgery would end all my attraction to her. Apparently not so much.
Also on the cancelled list was Lesbian Strip Club Night. It's been postponed indefinitely, until either Esther or I gets up and actually puts together a serious plan and sets aside a date. Given our combined distaste for planning, that'll happen....... eventually. Not soon, though.
As far as things that did go as planned, Texas was nice. Hot as balls, of course, but it's July in Dallas, what did you think was going to happen? It was almost as hot here in MD during that weekend anyway, so what am I losing? Anyway, Tim and I just did the same thing we did in college: wasted time playing video games and pool, stayed up until almost dawn for no good reason, and so on. We also shopped for a car for his wife Michele, which was sort of interesting in that sociological way that I find mundane things interesting. I also got to be the awkward, what-the-hell-do-I-do-now witness to a marital spat over something or other that eventually settlted down to be the state of a comforter on their bed. I wish I could reconstruct for you the chain of topics that led from something worth yelling about (reposnsibility or money or something) to whose fault it was that the velvet was rubbing off of a decorative comforter, but I decided to just engross myself in playing Katamari Damacy (click for WTF intro-movie action!) and pay as little attention as I could manage. Whatever the deal was, they seemed to make up pretty quickly afterwards, and to be honest, they've been yelling at each other since well before they married. It may not be ideal, but it's certainly stable.
Back one week further, the concert with Dwen was pretty good. Fiona Apple's a crazy, crazy girl. Of this, I am now thoroughly convinced. She gave only the slightest, vaguest hints that she was even aware that there was an audience. Her entire introduction consisted of "hi!" and then she just started up playing. For some songs, she let someone else play the piano and just did the vocals and danced. Well, "danced," in the loosest sense of the word. More like "arhythmically flailed." She would wave the mic stand back and forth spastically through the full range of her arm's motion. To top it off, she spoke to the audience only twice, once to say hello to her stepdad, and another time to start to tell us about her biological father, only to cut herself off in midsentence and mumble "Shut up! Jesus Christ, Fiona, you always have to justify everything." She's a good performer, though, even if it's only by sheer coincidence. I might have to go get her new CD. Also, Damien Rice, her opener, was pretty good as well.
Finding a hotel that night was not as easy as I'd expected it to be. The whole plan was pretty much "go into town, and we'll find somewhere eventually." It took us about half an hour to find a place, and then it was booked. They gave us directions to another place, but we misfollowed them and ended up wasting about 2 hours just driving up and down Long Island's parkways at 1 in the morning. Dwen was not thrilled, nor was her boyfriend, who called about eight thousand times check up on her and express his displeasure at the notion that we might end up in a motel room with only one bed. (gasp!) Not that I really blame him, but I find the frequency excessive. Dwen says she's so glad he shows he cares and he's worried about her. This is precisely why he doesn't need to worry about me stealing her away: from my perspective on relationships, she's not much of a prize... Sweet girl, just definitely not my type. In fairness, though, he was probably right about how it would've been a better idea to get reservations. We ended up only paying about $65, but for the kind of motel where.... Well, let's just say when I walked in at 2am with a made-up, sexily dressed girl, the proprietor seemed surprised that I wanted a room for all night.
Spending the next day with Esther was nice, too. We went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC, which is about 10 blocks from her new apartment. (It's a so-so apartment, but an undeniably great location.) I won't go on and on about art, because that seems to bore more people than it entertains, not least because I'm not educated well enough in that area to really say anything meaningful, but I like the Met. I'd go back. The fact that Esther goes almost every weekend is pretty much emblematic of why I like her so much: she's cultured in a way that no one else I know (myself included) really is. A little jaded for it, maybe, but it still makes her perpetually interesting to talk to. We also had a dinner that I feel is worth mentioning, because it was chocolate-covered chicken. It was incredibly good. I never thought chocolate meat would be something I would praise, but there it is. The Aztecs knew what they were doing when it came to chocolate, apparently.
So, last week and this week were actually just free, but after 3 busy weekends, I'd had enough running around the country for a bit, and Tim lent me a few video games that I've been playing (except that my PS2 broke its disc drive, so not anymore). Next week I'm still supposed to go camping with Dwen--and I invited her boyfriend along to assuage his jealous fears--but I have my doubts it will be happening. See, Dwen complains that I plan things in a half-assed way, and this is true, but I know my friends well enough to realize that if we don't do these things semi-impulsively without worrying about the details, then we end up procrastinating about the planning (see also the aforementioned strip club visit) and not actually doing it. So, Dwen insisted that this needed to be put together better than the concert trip, and I told her that she could do the planning if she wanted more details that my vague notions contained. Last Thursday, she IMed me to ask if I'd figured out where we were going camping yet, so... yeah. I reminded her that this one's all her job, but I still think she's going to call me this week and ask if I've got everything together.
We'll see, I guess. In the mean time, it's almost release time at work, so most of the bugs have been worked out and I get to be lazy again, so at least if Dwen does call up asking me to set up everything, I'll have plenty of time.
Oh, and does anyone know where to get a DPFE sensor for a Ford Focus (2001)? I think mine's busted.
Also on the cancelled list was Lesbian Strip Club Night. It's been postponed indefinitely, until either Esther or I gets up and actually puts together a serious plan and sets aside a date. Given our combined distaste for planning, that'll happen....... eventually. Not soon, though.
As far as things that did go as planned, Texas was nice. Hot as balls, of course, but it's July in Dallas, what did you think was going to happen? It was almost as hot here in MD during that weekend anyway, so what am I losing? Anyway, Tim and I just did the same thing we did in college: wasted time playing video games and pool, stayed up until almost dawn for no good reason, and so on. We also shopped for a car for his wife Michele, which was sort of interesting in that sociological way that I find mundane things interesting. I also got to be the awkward, what-the-hell-do-I-do-now witness to a marital spat over something or other that eventually settlted down to be the state of a comforter on their bed. I wish I could reconstruct for you the chain of topics that led from something worth yelling about (reposnsibility or money or something) to whose fault it was that the velvet was rubbing off of a decorative comforter, but I decided to just engross myself in playing Katamari Damacy (click for WTF intro-movie action!) and pay as little attention as I could manage. Whatever the deal was, they seemed to make up pretty quickly afterwards, and to be honest, they've been yelling at each other since well before they married. It may not be ideal, but it's certainly stable.
Back one week further, the concert with Dwen was pretty good. Fiona Apple's a crazy, crazy girl. Of this, I am now thoroughly convinced. She gave only the slightest, vaguest hints that she was even aware that there was an audience. Her entire introduction consisted of "hi!" and then she just started up playing. For some songs, she let someone else play the piano and just did the vocals and danced. Well, "danced," in the loosest sense of the word. More like "arhythmically flailed." She would wave the mic stand back and forth spastically through the full range of her arm's motion. To top it off, she spoke to the audience only twice, once to say hello to her stepdad, and another time to start to tell us about her biological father, only to cut herself off in midsentence and mumble "Shut up! Jesus Christ, Fiona, you always have to justify everything." She's a good performer, though, even if it's only by sheer coincidence. I might have to go get her new CD. Also, Damien Rice, her opener, was pretty good as well.
Finding a hotel that night was not as easy as I'd expected it to be. The whole plan was pretty much "go into town, and we'll find somewhere eventually." It took us about half an hour to find a place, and then it was booked. They gave us directions to another place, but we misfollowed them and ended up wasting about 2 hours just driving up and down Long Island's parkways at 1 in the morning. Dwen was not thrilled, nor was her boyfriend, who called about eight thousand times check up on her and express his displeasure at the notion that we might end up in a motel room with only one bed. (gasp!) Not that I really blame him, but I find the frequency excessive. Dwen says she's so glad he shows he cares and he's worried about her. This is precisely why he doesn't need to worry about me stealing her away: from my perspective on relationships, she's not much of a prize... Sweet girl, just definitely not my type. In fairness, though, he was probably right about how it would've been a better idea to get reservations. We ended up only paying about $65, but for the kind of motel where.... Well, let's just say when I walked in at 2am with a made-up, sexily dressed girl, the proprietor seemed surprised that I wanted a room for all night.
Spending the next day with Esther was nice, too. We went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC, which is about 10 blocks from her new apartment. (It's a so-so apartment, but an undeniably great location.) I won't go on and on about art, because that seems to bore more people than it entertains, not least because I'm not educated well enough in that area to really say anything meaningful, but I like the Met. I'd go back. The fact that Esther goes almost every weekend is pretty much emblematic of why I like her so much: she's cultured in a way that no one else I know (myself included) really is. A little jaded for it, maybe, but it still makes her perpetually interesting to talk to. We also had a dinner that I feel is worth mentioning, because it was chocolate-covered chicken. It was incredibly good. I never thought chocolate meat would be something I would praise, but there it is. The Aztecs knew what they were doing when it came to chocolate, apparently.
So, last week and this week were actually just free, but after 3 busy weekends, I'd had enough running around the country for a bit, and Tim lent me a few video games that I've been playing (except that my PS2 broke its disc drive, so not anymore). Next week I'm still supposed to go camping with Dwen--and I invited her boyfriend along to assuage his jealous fears--but I have my doubts it will be happening. See, Dwen complains that I plan things in a half-assed way, and this is true, but I know my friends well enough to realize that if we don't do these things semi-impulsively without worrying about the details, then we end up procrastinating about the planning (see also the aforementioned strip club visit) and not actually doing it. So, Dwen insisted that this needed to be put together better than the concert trip, and I told her that she could do the planning if she wanted more details that my vague notions contained. Last Thursday, she IMed me to ask if I'd figured out where we were going camping yet, so... yeah. I reminded her that this one's all her job, but I still think she's going to call me this week and ask if I've got everything together.
We'll see, I guess. In the mean time, it's almost release time at work, so most of the bugs have been worked out and I get to be lazy again, so at least if Dwen does call up asking me to set up everything, I'll have plenty of time.
Oh, and does anyone know where to get a DPFE sensor for a Ford Focus (2001)? I think mine's busted.