Bringing the Drama

I’m going up to Clemson in the morning to go to my first home game since 2006. I sent a couple of FB messages to friends who still live up there to ask about parking, etc. It got me thinking about the old times, when things were simpler. I liked when my biggest decisions revolved around how many times during the week I’d eat Easy Mac.

Also getting me thinking about stuff that happened a while back, was listening to the new David Crowder Band album at work today. Listening to that got me thinking of the night my sister and I went and saw them two months after Katrina. That night pulled us through a lot of angst we had been feeling about the world and each other. I’ll never forget it. I really love the new album, I was getting stuck on a couple of songs today, and hearing a couple of them made me tear up a bit. I’ve been going through a lot of church stuff lately. A small church plant that started off really awesome has now become frustrating. It seems the group just lost focus on what we were there for, building life together as a group. My small group that was so important to me unofficially ended a few months ago, but now there are flickers we might bring it back, only different. I’ve felt lost the past few months with wanting to become part of a church body and being let down. Working with the youth group was awesome, until the youth group fractured and some kids stopped coming. Between work and school and YG being canceled a lot over the summer, I haven’t been back in a while. When I heard about the drama a couple of months ago, it hurt to hear about how adults unintentionally (i hope!) messed up the YG. Can’t anyone just focus on what’s important? Back to the DCB, hearing “oh how He loves us” over and over again, it was like I was Will Hunting and Sean was saying it wasn’t my fault. I know I knew all of that before today, but things lately just have made it hard to see.

Last night I was going through pictures on my computer and came across one that I had never posted about but had fully intended to. I will now.

I had posted the story of when Jacob and I went and lived the good life at Jazz Fest, but the thing was, I wasn’t able to get a poster that day because we went on the last Sunday, so all the posters were long gone. I absolutely LOVE James Michalopoulos’ style. It’s messy and intense. It’s that whole impressionistic type that gets you to feel the painting. The 2001 poster he did is perfect IMO. You can feel that sweaty but satisfied feeling Louis Armstrong has as he steps out of the club. JM did the 2006 poster, and since I had such a magical time going that year, and I loved his work, I wanted the poster.

I scoured eBay for it for months, and just never pulled the trigger. My parents tried finding me a copy for Christmas in 2006, but couldn’t find one. Things kind of petered out on my search until I went to a local frame shop to get my Masters poster framed that I had gotten when I went to Augusta. Someone had brought one in to get framed and I saw one in person for the first time. It was beautiful. I wanted it.

I searched eBay off and on, and ‘watched’ auctions to see how much the poster was going for. I even recognized some of the sellers after a while, and knew who was legit. Finally in January 2008, I went for it. One of the sellers I had recognized was selling another poster for under $300 with a Buy It Now. I used some money I had gotten for Christmas and took the plunge. I waited anxiously for it, and when it came I immediately took it out of the tube to look at. There it was, the poster I had been after for so long was mine. I took it to the frame shop and got it framed and brought it home.

It’s one of my most prized possessions, not only because I like the style, the feeling of funk and happiness, but also because such great memories are tied to that day at the Fairgrounds, swaying with Jacob to ‘Easy’. (what? it’s just two guys enjoying Lionel Richie!)

A couple of weeks ago my sister emailed me to tell me Paul McCartney was playing in Atlanta and Dallas, and how much fun would be to go to the show with our dad. My dad was a fan of The Beatles growing up, in fact he still has a couple of original vinyls. When the Anthology was coming on the TV, my dad watched it and my sister became a hardcore fan. She owes loving The Beatles to my dad, and she asked me in her email “how cool would it be to go with dad?” I told her I’d go, and she should ask our parents if they wanted to go. She emailed them and by lunchtime my parents were in. The plan was set to go to the Dallas show (my sister didn’t want to go to a GA show which ATL is) in mid August. It would be the first family vacation together since we all went to Dollywood back in 1998 I think. My sister told me when she went to ask for the vacation days off she almost started crying because this trip is that important to her. And I guess it is, to do something you’ve always wanted to do with the person you’ve always wanted to do it with. I get that, it’s cool.

I was tasked to get tickets since I have an AMEX and there was a presale. Before I bought the tickets, I called my parents to make sure my dad’s email compliance with my sister’s request was not my dad’s instantaneous response to something he had not thoroughly considered, because the tickets were a bit pricey. My mom assured me they were for real, so I went and bought tickets. They were EXPENSIVE! Double the most expensive ticket I had ever bought, but like that expensive ticket to Coldplay in 2006, there was more to going to this show than to see a show, it’s more like a quest. This was PAUL MCCARTNEY, this was in the new Cowboys Stadium (an epic example of extravagance in America), and it was going to be a family event. I was told money was no object and get the best ones I could of the cheapest price level. The presale had started a couple of days before, so that is probably why we are further back, but I think we’ll be fine. We’re in the club level on the sideline, so we’ll be able to see that GIANT HD screen like Jerry intended. The plan will be to drive up the morning of the show (Jen and I are going to a show the night before on the 18th) and then come home a couple of days later after seeing where the assassins killed JFK and a Rangers game. It should be awesome, and the magnitude of seeing Sir Paul hit me a couple of days after I bought the tickets. I’m going to see the guy who wrote Paperback Writer. He’s going to sing it (well maybe, I mean, PW is my favorite Beatles song so I hope he does). I’m going to be able to sway arm in arm with strangers and sing the chorus of Hey Jude. YES!

My dad and my sister had gone to see this show called Beatlemania a while back, where it’s a bunch of guys dressed up and covered Beatles songs. So last night my dad’s telling me “it’ll be better than Beatlemania!” and I told him “It won’t be Beatlemania, it’ll just be Beatle, and it will be a lot better.”

(The whole idea of blogging kind of got put on hold the past week or so because all I could think about was how some people just shouldn’t be parents. There was a local story here that was on my mind almost every time I thought of blogging, but it’s so frustrating and sad, that I didn’t want to put any of that on here.)

On Monday afternoon I had an appointment with my eye doctor, the same doctor who has in the past called me to just hang out. Allow me to explain…

He was recommended to me by my old eye doctor when I realized that doctor was not on my insurance. Anyway, my current doctor is cool, and I think about 3 or 4 years ago we were making small talk at some point and he told me he was a volunteer fireman. The next year when I saw him, I asked him how that was going. We talk about it every time I go now, which is not awkward itself. He’s tried to recruit me too, but I’ve turned him down. The problem is the calls after I leave the office, to numbers that are in my file that I did not actually give him when I saw him. Two years ago he called my cell phone and left a couple of voice mails. I wasn’t screening my calls, just not able to answer the phone. He was calling to see if I wanted to meet up with him and his fellow firemen for karaoke at a local bar. Last year he called me on my work phone to see if I needed my contacts polished, and also if I wanted to go hang out. I had been out of town, so when I got back I listened to my messages. The first voice mail was about how he could polish my contacts if I needed them polished, the 2nd was the same thing, but he was leaving at a certain time, the 3rd was that I could come later if I wanted because he was staying longer than he thought. I don’t find this anywhere near as creepy as the run-ins with CGG, but it’s odd. He’s a pretty decent guy, just looking for another guy friend to go hang out with (he has pictures of his grandkids in his office), and I guess he sees me as awesome, and wants to hang out with me. I guess I feel like I want to keep our relationship professional, so I’ve never called him back. I did see him in the local bar doing karaoke one night when I had gone out with a couple of work friends, but that was totally accidental.

So Monday was my yearly checkup. It was a little weird because I was the only patient under 70 it seemed like. The nurse did her pre doctor visit thing and then the doctor came in. The conversation wasn’t too awkward, although he did tell me about a fireman who was getting fired and how his friend he used to go sing karaoke with had moved or something. On the way out, he told me how his wife was now changing shifts so he was going to need something to do on Friday nights or something. I told him good luck. I know he was fishing, but I was not biting. I haven’t gotten any phone calls since either….another win.

The main thing about the visit was that my prescription isn’t changing (go gas permeable contacts!) so I won’t have to buy new contacts or glasses. I like my new glasses, so I was glad I won’t have to worry about updating them. They even said I’m seeing at 20/15!

I walked out with my eyes still a little dialated and made it to the grocery store to pick up some bread. While there I managed to find what must be the last sixer of Abita Strawberry for 2009. I had not seen any in stores since the beginning of summer! I found it inside the walk in cooler for the beer. That particular store has the walk in cooler where they keep some of the higher end stuff, and I walk in there mostly just to look around and see if there’s anything interesting. Monday I saw the Abita Strawberry sitting on a shelf and couldn’t believe my luck. I quickly picked it up and brought it home. It is THE BEST ABITA THEY MAKE and I’m sure my friends will be happy when we have our Saints party in a couple of weeks.

A few months ago my small group friends and I were at the Abita Brew Pub and discussed Twitter since it had been in the news. We all laughed about it as something that was beneath us, and we didn’t really see the point of it. My friend Sam said that he’d just have a constant update of “I’m twittering”. I had gotten emails from a couple of people for me to join Twitter because they wanted to follow me. Follow me? It just seemed a little too creepy. Then a week or so later I read an article about Shaq’s twitter, and how he tweets all the time, and people have actually met up with him because of Twitter. So I softened a bit on the “Twitter is stupid” stance. Then someone on the Ryan Adams board I read posted his new Twitter page, so I read that. I found John Mayer’s too and thought maybe it wasn’t so bad after all. Then I started keeping track of the upcoming Voodoo Fest lineup, and the way they put out information was Twitter. The stupid way they would post bands is irrelevant really, but I thought it was very lame and frustrating to jumble up band names for some game. Anyway, then I was checking information on the upcoming new album from Mute Math, and again, they used Twitter to get out information. I was also trying to find out if the album release show in NOLA would be open to the public (it is). Basically I was keeping track of Twitters without being on Twitter.

I had told my friend Whitney about Twitter because she had never heard of it, then she joined. So when we were at that Brandi Carlile show a while back, she was keeping track of tweets on her Blackberry. Then I started to find out that my friends who were not really hard core tech people had twitter. So then I thought, when weird stuff would happen at work with BO Guy, I would think “I would so twitter that.” Sometimes ridiculous things happen to me, and I don’t always remember to blog about it, so I think twitter could be a good thing. I could twitter from concerts to share things like pictures, or at sporting events where crazy things are happening (like the Hornets being blown out). The possibilities seem to be endless.

In April when I went up to North Carolina, I noticed my friend Mike had gotten a Blackberry. I used to HATE Blackberrys, because they were the symbol that work would always have their hook in your mouth and could email you at any time. Managers at my job are assigned them just for this purpose. I never really liked the idea of being connected all the time. My phone does the job it needs to do and I’ve had the same model phone for 4 years. I liked it so much that I bought a replacement off of ebay when it died instead of going to get a new phone. As I started to get more and more interested in Twitter, I thought I should get a Blackberry. I didn’t really want to pay the data plan fee though. I still don’t know if that’d be a good thing. Of course it would be nice to have all that ability, but for $30 extra a month? I realized it was a WANT more than a NEED. I emailed friends with Blackberrys though and asked if they were worth it. All of them pretty much confirmed that they were.

Then last week Carla told me she twitters just fine with a regular phone like I have. Of course, her’s is more fancy with a keyboard and all, but it’s still a basic phone. Now I’m still resisting because it’s technology. My friend Trey didn’t have a cell phone for the longest time and I thought that was so cool. He was like a backwards pioneer! Then he got one a year or two ago, so he was no longer the backwards pioneer he once was. I was slow to succumb to myspace, facebook, and iPods, so this should not come as a surprise to anyone.

I feel joining Twitter is inevitable. I have decided when that day comes, that I’ll be even more snobby than I am about Facebook. I am very picky when it comes to facebook friends, and right now I have 6 people who have requested alliances (that’s what the pirate translation calls FRs) who I’m letting sit there. it’s not that I want to be a jerk about it, but I guess I like to have FB friends count. If I wasn’t friends with you in HS, then why should I be your FB friend? Same with people I’m on a message board with, who I’m not really friends with, that doesn’t count either. So maybe Twitter just lets anyone follow you, but I’m not going to be following all of them. I kind of want to be like a celebrity and have way more people following me than I follow. Isn’t that the sign that you’re cool now? (Btw, I think the only cool white person was Fonzie)

Now I just need to come up with a username.

So last week I finally got around to getting the defensive driving class scheduled that had to be taken because of the ticket I had gotten in February. I was going to take the class more locally, but the added bonus of the class being $20 cheaper and 2 hours shorter, plus hopefully being able to see my uncle and grandfather made it an easy decision. Once I had figured all of this out, I called the BR Courthouse to get signed up for the class. The lady on the phone told me the next Saturday class was in July, so I told her that wouldn’t be good because I needed to have the class taken by the end of June. Then she said she’d be able to fit me in the class the next day (this past Saturday). Why didn’t she just do that the first time? I was finally signed up and the lady told me I had to be on time, because if I was late, they’d not let me in the room. I was fine with this rule, because you’re taking a class so the ticket doesn’t get reported to your insurance, so I’ll be there on time. She also told me I could not wear shorts, which I thought was strange.

I woke up early on Saturday morning and set off for BR at 6:15. I made it down to the courthouse and found a parking spot. There was a crowd outside the courthouse waiting for the doors to open about 7:45. I could tell a lot of the people in the crowd were courtroom regulars. I had to go back to my car to leave my cell phone since they weren’t even letting people bring them in the building. I found the courtroom where the class was going to be held through the help of a fellow classmate. The teacher called everyone’s name and we had to go up to the front to sign in. There were probably 40-60 people in the courtroom, and it wasn’t even full! The teacher basically read out of a binder and played videos, so he started reading out of the binder after everyone signed in. About 8:20 or so, two people came in late. One lady wasn’t in the right room, she was apparently wandering around looking for a certain class. The other lady was late, but the teacher let her sign in and join the class. What about the rule about being on time??? This kind of bothered me. Also bothering me was the lady who came in from a break late (the breaks were 15 minutes, and there was NOWHERE TO GO!) with a water bottle (the teacher said at the beginning don’t bring food or drinks into the courtroom). The teacher said “Ma’am, you can’t bring that water into the courtroom.” Her response was “Huh?” So then he said “You’re going to have to go outside and throw it away.” She did it begrudgingly, but really, is it that hard to follow a couple of rules for a few hours?

The class itself wasn’t that bad. The teacher was funny enough to keep boring driving rules interesting. The videos he showed were pretty good. Of course there were videos with people pretending to be horrible drivers not caring about seat belts, or easily driven to road rage. Stupid quotes about not having to wear seatbelts or whatever that were obviously supposed to be actors made you sad that there are actually people like that. The road rage video had some funny parts. The mention of a drivers’ ed teacher in NC who was with a student, ordered the student to chase down some guy that cut them off. And then the video where one guy driving a white Caravan got pulled out in front of by a Taurus. Instead of just dealing, he follows the guy and pulls up behind him in his driveway. He just happens to have an aluminum bat with him between the seats, so he pulls that out and approaches the Taurus. Unfortunately he didn’t see the guy in the Taurus was pulling out a gun. Oops! Also, the teacher told us when going over RR Crossing info that some lady in Louisiana had recently crashed into the 42nd car of a train. FORTY SECOND! The train was basically passing and she didn’t even stop. She survived though and told the officers at the scene “It just came out of nowhere.” (shakes head)

We all had to take a 20 question test at the end which was really easy. I told the guy next to me before we graded our neighbor’s that if anyone failed, they should have their license taken. You could miss 6 questions and still pass! Everyone passed and we got our certificates and I was out of there around 11:30. Unfortunately I didn’t get to see my uncle or my grandfather. I had called my uncle twice during the week and left VMs, but didn’t hear anything back. I called my grandfather as I was leaving the class in hopes I could talk to him, but had to leave a VM. I hope the non returned calls were just oversights, and I’m not on the “Never talk to again” list. I ended up driving home way earlier than I thought with a heavy heart.

i had a pretty crappy day at work yesterday. Nothing really bad like having to deal with KCOG or anything, but just having stuff to do, and you need some help with it, but no one has the time to help you. I hate those kind of days. I had been emailed a spreadsheet, but in order to work it, I needed help with it. Being able to use the spreadsheet would solve the issue of putting together a presentation for some analysis I have been working on. It was pretty much the last link for what I was going to do. I couldn’t get any help though, because other people who did know were also working on presentations. ARGH. I did the best I could with what I had and called it a day. I was hoping for a better day today, and it was much better. I was able to get the presentation done, even got a sparsely populated report done that I wasn’t sure about. I got an email about a part I’m trying to design with White Shoes, but the email didn’t really need to go to me. Linked from the email though was a report in the format of something I was doing, and it was already finished. I was able to see what a finished version looked like, and was able to get two reports done today. They looked so much better than before. I was pretty excited about them at the end of today. They’re still pretty green as far as information, but at least now they look presentable.

On my way home I heard on the radio about a truck driver who decided this afternoon during rush hour to jacknife his truck on the Twin Span. There are two other routes to get home, and I was taking the one less traveled. On the radio though, the DJ suggests them to which I told him to shut his mouth. There’s no need to direct more people to the backup route before I take it. Traveling the backup route today though I saw where they are filming The Expendables. So basically there’s a giant blockbuster movie filming near my work. It is very cool.

On my way home today, I stopped by the store to pick up a few things. I loaded everything in the refrigerator and then got changed to go run. I heard the fridge make some noise, but it wasn’t anything that scary. It wasn’t like the clicking sound I heard last time. I still was a little worried because when I opened the doors, it didn’t seem cool enough. I didn’t hear the compressor kick on or anything, and I heard water draining (!!!). I took off the grill part and checked the coils. They were pretty filthy, and the water draining was going into the drain pan. Still though, nothing was happening with the compressor. I grabbed the shop vac and cleaned off the coils as best I could. I googled for some answers in case I was going to have to FIX THE FRIDGE MYSELF AGAIN but didn’t find anything. A few minutes after I had vacuumed the coils, the compressor kicked on and everything went back to normal. I was so relieved. I had just bought all that fresh food, and two of the last sixers of Abita Strawberry. Think of the beer!

Of course, by the time fridge resolved itself, it was 8:30. So I’ll go run tomorrow, which is okay because I’m running in the Greek Fest run on Friday. I’m kind of excited about that btw, and hopeful for some cold beer and a gyro post race.

With last Sunday being Easter and all, I must tell you about what made me appreciate celebrating Easter this year. After I got home from the race on Saturday, I was flipping through the channels and came across a movie. It had David Schwimmer and John Krasinski in it, at the same time, during the scene that was playing when I turned to the channel. They almost had a fist fight! I kept watching as the weirdness of Ross and Jim fighting would be too much to miss. Apparently the situation involved Ross’ ex wife now dating Jim, and how that caused drama since there were two daughters from the first marriage. I kept watching though, because it was weird to see these actors I have normally seen in comedies playing out in a drama. True, you don’t really have to go too far to find a depressing Ross because I thought he played a great non Ross character in Band of Brothers, but Jim was kind of a douche. Also, the guy from 30 Rock who wears all the hats was DS’s friend in the movie who played a wannabe comedian at the casino where they worked. I’m telling you, it was like watching multiple fish out of water, and it was fascinating. However, the movie was kind of depressing. DS’ character had just about everything go wrong in his life. He lost his marriage (I think he abused her, but I missed the first part of the movie), he took up drugs and drinking, then he lost his job because of the drugs. It was terrible. His little speech in a courtroom where he was going to have his kids’ visitation rights revoked made me realize how important having God was. It was like watching the story of Job play out without God. He admitted in the courtroom scene that without his daughters, he wouldn’t have a reason to live. Ugh. By the end of the movie somehow he had gotten over some of his problems and learned to appreciate the people that were in his life, in spite of everything going on around him. So I guess the story had a happy ending, but it didn’t feel all that happy. (the movie is called Duane Hopwood if you ever want to check it out)

I love Easter, I really do. It’s exciting. Jesus conquering death, getting dressed up to go to church, pastel M&Ms, etc. I ended up going to mass instead of service at my home church because my dad and i were going to the Hornets game that was supposed to start at 12. The mass didn’t seem any different than a normal mass, which was disappointing. It’s Easter for crying out loud! The one day out of the year that everything in Christianity is based on, and the priest just seemed to be going through the motions. I also sat next to an older lady with dark red hair who was excited when Jesus was projected on the screen.

After church, my dad and I went to the Hornets game, where they dominated the Mavs again. That afternoon, my family and I went out for Easter dinner. I got to try out some things for the first time including grilled oysters and Baked Alaska. Strangely enough, the waiter had BO, which made it a little uncomfortable. Plus we were the only people in the entire restaurant, so it was a little strange because of that too. At one point I was laughing about something and he had a plate for me so he said “take a deep breath” to which I wanted to respond “I’d rather not!” , but I didn’t. The food was great in spite of the extremely odd circumstances surrounding it. The chef even came out and we heard his life story about growing up poor in France then coming to the US by way of Canada. We didn’t hear about how he ended up in the NOLA area, but by the time he got to the part of how he got to the US, we didn’t really care anymore.

I got home in time to watch the sudden death playoff in the Masters, a perfect ending to the day. It felt like multiple days rolled into one with such a wide range of things happening, but it was a fantastic day.

This past week/weekend was fantastic. and as much as i want to talk about all that, this story needs it’s own post. While at dinner on Saturday with my parents for my birthday, my dad told me my uncle had called him. they haven’t talked in 3.5 years, and it’s been something i’ve struggled with being in the middle of. i’m the only one out of my intermediate family that my uncle or grandfather will talk to, at least until last week. he told me that my uncle had called to say my grandfather wanted to give my dad his Jeep since he doesn’t drive it anymore. the conversation wasn’t major or anything, but it was something. like a crack in the dam. i told him that it had been a year since i stood in Notre Dame cathedral and lit a votive candle just for the relationship between my dad and my uncle and grandfather. (i had remembered this because earlier in the day i was watching that show Cities of the Underground, and they were in Naples going underneath of a church, so i remembered being in Notre Dame.) I can’t expect things to go back to normal overnight, but at least there’s hope.

last year i spent birthday week in Europe, then in Charleston. this year i’m not going to be anywhere but home and work. however, i have some plans lined up to do some cool things. last night started the week off with a fantastic Hornets home win. today at work wasn’t all that great, but lately it’s been the same old stuff. i’m doing some work, but i’m still inexperienced (IMO) at it, so it’s frustrating at times. today was not without it’s moments though. BO Guy came up on his way to someone else’s desk this afternoon and told me to “cheer up”. then asked me if anyone has told me that before. i wasn’t sure if he was joking, and i couldn’t tell by the look on his face either, so i just said “not lately.” weird.

i slept late AGAIN this morning. i’ve been having issues waking up before 6:30 lately. this morning though i hadn’t gone to bed until after 1 last night cause i was so amped from the game then i decided i would watch part of the replay when it came on ESPN starting at 1 am. dumb move. i am getting no less than 6 hours of sleep a night, no matter when i go to bed, which is nice, but also makes me stay late at work. anyway, i left work late and skipped the gym so i could get grad school hw done. yeah, part of birthday week is grad school hw due Tuesday and i have a test on Thursday. so i got this big problem done (took me 3 pages) and can make up the other one tomorrow. i’m going to hopefully watch the video pertaining to the problem before i go to bed.

the week other than the class stuff is going to be awesome. the bulldog on wednesday, rebirth on saturday, maybe even the new fast and the furious movie on friday. hopefully the class stuff won’t make me alter any plans, esp the bulldog. i need some new pint glasses and punches on my keychain.