Recent past #1:I played a show at the Gibson, and many people turned out. Upon closer inspection, they were discovered to mostly be women. For some reason, on the 3rd of July, a bunch of women that we didn't know had decided to come see us. They were very friendly, one of them going up to dance with Brandon as he sang (or whatever he calls that thing he does with his voice).
Laterward, after we had packed up all the equipment, I got a ride home with Erin, the black-haired, pierced-lip ex-roommate of Julie, the person who drove us all there. As I was walking out, this girl comes RUNNING out after me to say how much she enjoyed the show, etc. "Thanks, it was good of you to come see us!" I overprofessionalized. She introduced herself as Molly. "Bye Molly."
Later, Julie noted the interaction and confided to me that Molly was a terrible person. Julie tends to put down women that she perceives as threatening her influence over the male band members, I think. I had to know that Molly wasn't very nice, you see, or else I might start hanging out with her, and if that ended up with her entering our little isolated social circle, WELL! Julie would no longer be the lone object of the unfocused male attention in the group. (My male attention is somewhere else.)("holy shit", say the uninformed)
Recent past #2:I visited Lopez Island to meet with my relatives for the scattering of my Dad's ashes. We put them with his Mom (Noonie) and Brother's (Gordie) ashes, close to where Cathy (Gordie's Widow) lives. Actually, I'm not so sure about who is who on that side of the family. I've had so little interaction with them, they just seem like strangers with some features that match mine. My cousins on that side are blonde, mostly, and have heavy eyebrows and sharp features. It wasn't until we were all standing silently on the point, watching the flowers slowly spread across the water that it really struck me that they were blood relatives, and seeing that they all cried for my dead father was as wrenching as when I first felt the irrefutability of death.
My sisters, brother, and I slept in a guest house with 5 others. Late at night, maybe 2 am, on the second day, we came in bearing pop-tart "danishes". These are different from normal danishes in that they are waffle-thin and they come in a pop-tart box. We were being very quiet, to avoid bothering our sleeping housemates. Ian stayed with the toaster to prepare the "danishes", while the rest of us went upstairs to wind down. Minutes later, the whole house started beeping at a volume that would awaken Mt. St. Helens and with the precise frequency for waking up housemates. Beanie looked at me, stricken. I helpfully pointed at the smoke alarm above our heads. Fact 1: Every smoke alarm in the guest house communicates with the others, so if one goes off, they all go off. Fact 2: The toaster in the guest house has a broken toastedness sensor. "Danishes" one and two had gone critical in-slotu, and the entire house was awakened to witness the carnage.
Later, Caroline re-discovered Fact 2 with the last "Danish", and she swears that she actually witnessed hellfire spouting from the empty slot. Flames, in any case. That seems reasonable, considering the flaming pop-tart experiment. This observation was met with skepticism from Ian and Beanie, who referred to Caroline's earlier insistance that airplane tails, viewed when flying away from the sun, always have rainbows around them.
Recent Past #3:I ran my bank account down to negative $600. This is really pushing the limits of "overdrawn". Fortunately, I got a new job with which I will earn money. The company is based in Sunnyvale, California, so I have to travel down there a lot. Advantage: on non-travel days, I don't even have to wear pants to work. They pay my DSL bill. I get to write programs that know EVERYTHING!#(!#% Well, serious. Lots of very high profile clients. Lots of expensive gear. You might use them and not even know it. I had on purposely been avoiding posting anything to my web page because my new boss has it bookmarked (yeek.). Hey Boss! You're a great guy! Keep on programming! I really will wear pants to work!
Also, Brett and I went to find a new house to rent. At one particularly desirable location, we were waiting outside with no less than 12 people, including a noticably impressed couple of spike-haired girls in black. After the initial run through the house's 3 storied and many huge rooms, we expressed our extreme interest in renting to the owner. Soon afterward, the grim two chicks come by to offer similiar gushing. I go upstairs, they follow me. We go outside to talk to the owner for a sec, they go outside to talk to the owner for a sec. We realized that they didn't want anyone else to have more face-time with the owner than they, since there was no other way to stand out in the sea of applicants (apparently the answering machine was flooded with inquiries). Brett's workplace turned out to be an investment interest of the owner, though. The girls didn't seem happy about this trump card of memorability ("Just tell me you're the guy from Real", the owner quipped). Brett's new motto is "Beat the dykes!".
Not-as-recent past - July - Future(TBA) ::: andr00@earthlink.net - tell me what you want, what you really really want.