Idiot

Every time in the last two days that I’ve walked past the phone hanging on the wall, I’ve picked it up, checking for a dial tone. Hasn’t been there. This last time I did it, which was about 28 seconds ago, I realized, “Oh, moron, the ‘Line 1’ button isn’t depressed.” Push the button, BOOM, dial tone. So who the hell knows how long my phone has been on without my knowledge?

Frightful

Damn, I guess I shouldn’t have hoped for snow around here, or wondered repeatedly and openly why the hell none was showing up. Cuz now it won’t stop. Last Tuesday we finally had a significant snow, with about 6 inches overnight, and since then it’s snowed… three..? days and we’ve got another 4 at least. Today it’s really wet and thick, and I was walking around campus early this morning, all the snow was sticking to my hat and coat. I had to shovel the lobby after I shook off inside.

Class wasn’t bad yesterday, the consensus of my closest colleagues in there was that it’ll be nice not to have to write a short paper on the readings every week. But, it’s time, of course, to start thinking about what I’m going to write my seminar paper for that class about. And I have to think about what my thesis is going to be on as well… Oi. The paper that I wrote for Composition Theory last semester was well-received by Phil, my prof in that class, so what I think I’m going to do is have some of my classmates and/or other professors read it, see if there’s something there I could expand on. Who the hell knows?

After class, I joined fellow English folk Mike and Natalie at Ben’s house for dinner and most of a movie. It was nice. I spent 2.59 on salad dressing at the grocery store, though, so today I had to rush to the bank and put 3 bucks into my account so as not to be overdrawn in case the check I wrote to Pizza Hut last weekend for 10.49 goes through today. This bein’ broke crap really sucks. Apparently, my loan surplus check is getting cut today, so I hope I have it in the mail by Saturday. I could reeeeeeeeeeeally use a little money; y’know, bills and whatnot. Anyhoo, check up on the Interesting & Factual Tales, the first one of Volume 2 is online today. It’s about traveling again, this time my mini-adventure on the voyage home to Bozeman last week Monday.

Genesis

Still deciding whether or not this font is going to work for the page as a whole in the long run. Still deciding whether or not this is the format I like for the “blog,” still deciding on a number of things, but realizing that if I didn’t get something up, and soon, we’d be left with nothing but a glorified Word document for another semester, and wouldn’t that be boring as hell?

I struggled over the last few days trying in vain to learn how to successfully use either Macromedia’s fine web publishing software, Dreamweaver, or Adobe’s offering, GoLive, with minimal success at best. I was chatting with Nick Petters about it, and concluded two things:
1. This is just a little, personal website for chrissakes.
2. I need to be able to set all the stuff I want on the page, then easily grab them, move them around, etc.

So here I am, back where I started, on Microsoft Publisher. Eh, it’s what I know.

What else do I know, you ask. I have yet to be in class, but that’s ok, because my first week back in Bozeman was chock full of movin-movin fun. The Family & Graduate Housing office called me, quite unexpectedly, last Tuesday to say they had an opening in the building I wanted to live in from the start. I hadn’t anticipated that call for a couple months at least, so it was kind of a rush to pack everything up, arrange to move it, then get the goods over to my new pad. Here’s a link to an “info” page on where I’m living, complete with floor plan.
Oh yes, and here’s the video, first one of the Spring semester, taken amidst the shambles of the new apartment on Saturday morning, the day after I did the bulk of the move. I was quite glad to get help from the boys from Johnstone, as well as Ewan & Meredith with their jeep, and Meredith’s personal sacrifice of the use of one of her digits, given up to protect my television.

You will notice that some of the links above don’t work yet. Generally, if they are blue, they work, if not, still a work in progress. As the days go on, we’ll come up to full operating capacity, but at the moment, the site’s on auxiliary power, moving at half-impulse.

Well, time to start getting ready for the class I am ill-prepared for, thanks to my non-having of the loan surplus check I need to buy books, hope all the reading wasn’t reeeeeally important, but what can you do sometimes?

Oh, finally, Erika celebrates a birthday today, so click here to send the gal a beer, her address is “Erika_Joy_ at Excite dot com”

Earlier

EDITORIAL NOTE: I was going to merge all the posts from the first semester of the blog into its current incarnation as well, but then looked at it again and realized that for me, it’s like a page of Internetting history, akin to an electronic scrapbook. You wouldn’t trash your scrapbook and re-type a bunch of articles you had pinned in there because they would look cleaner, or re-pose and take new versions of pictures because you bought a higher-res camera. With that in mind, please follow the link below for my first 4 months of blogging…

This… is… Comedy.

Ok, so I thought I’d pop in to say that the first paper and subsequent presentation was just swell.  I don’t have to turn that mother in until I leave on Monday, so still ample time to revise and whatnot.  The second paper has actually note begun to be written yet, but a list of “things I’m going to say” has been formed and is currently being ruminated upon.  Its rough-drafting will occur this afternoon/evening/tomorrow, with its less-substantial-than-the-other-paper-just-by-its-nature revisions to occur in the ensuing three days.

So I was “browsing” a bit this morning, and I happened to visit a very nice site that I used to visit more often, but now I only stop by with the randomness of a pair of axe-wielding breasts in a comic strip.  I was looking for the copy from a sketch Steve Martin did on Saturday Night Live once, and foolish me, I shoulda known Colin would have it.  Mucho gracias.

If I had one wish that I could wish this holiday season, it would be that all the children to join hands and sing together in the spirit of harmony and peace. If I had two wishes I could make this holiday season, the first would be for all the children of the world to join hands and sing in the spirit of harmony and peace. And the second would be for 30 million dollars a month to be given to me, tax-free in a Swiss bank account. You know, if I had three wishes I could make this holiday season, the first, of course, would be for all the children of the world to get together and sing, the second would be for the 30 million dollars every month to me, and the third would be for encompassing power over every living being in the entire universe. And if I had four wishes that I could make this holiday season, the first would be the crap about the kids definitely, the second would be for the 30 million, the third would be for all the power, and the fourth would be to set aside one month each year to have an extended 31-day orgasm, to be brought out slowly by Rosanna Arquette and that model Paulina-somebody, I can’t think of her name. Of course my lovely wife can come too and she’s behind me one hundred percent here, I guarantee it. Wait a minute, maybe the sex thing should be the first wish, so if I made that the first wish, because it could all go boom tomorrow, then what do you got, y’know? No, no, the kids, the kids singing would be great, that would be nice. But wait a minute, who am I kidding? They’re not going to be able to get all those kids together. I mean, the logistics of the thing is impossible, more trouble than it’s worth! So — we reorganize! Here we go. First, the sex thing. We go with that. Second, the money. No, we got with the power second, then the money. And then the kids. Oh wait, oh jeez, I forgot about revenge against my enemies! Okay, I need revenge against all my enemies, they should die like pigs in hell! That would be my fourth wish. And, of course, my fifth wish would be for all the children of the world to join hands and sing together in the spirit of harmony and peace. Thank you everybody and Merry Christmas.

Happy Holidays

 

 

Well, this will be it for a while. I’ve got a lot of work to get done over the next two weeks or so, so I will bid farewell until about December 18. May all your holiday preparations proceed without incident. Since all my decorating is already done, mine will include: watching White Christmas. That’s it. Take care, hope to see you all soon, but if I don’t before the 25th, have a Merry Christmas.

Transit

So here I at MSP Intern’tl Airport.  The flight out of Bzn was delayed about half an hour cuz of fog.  Then the plane arrived at gate G-40, which is at precisely the opposite end of this gigantic airport from my departure gate, A-14.  All that did was to keep me from having both a beer and a meal.  There was only time for a beer (6.00) and a king-size Snickers (1.25) from the vending machine.  This leads me to an observation about candy bar sales — there is far less frequently an option to even get a regular-sized bar (this machine being an example of that) so why even call the ‘king-size’ such?  The way I see it, the candy bars were a hell of a lot bigger when I was a kid anyway, so let’s just cut the crap, y’know what I’m sayin?

Whew.  A 24-oz, 6-dollar Sam Adams will make you go off about stuff.  It will also make this little pda keyboard look fuzzy, so I’ll wrap this up.

The only other comment I really needed to make was about women.  There were at least a half-dozen GORGEOUS ones on the flight from Bzn this morning, all accompanied by their husbands/boyfriends.  I think the odds of meeting a normal, single one go down a little every day.

Oh, that, and I met a bloke at the bar coming from Colorado Springs on his way to Dayton and then to Japan on Sunday.  Apparently, this eastbound detour (to his hometown) saved him 200 dollars on the fare.  Sometimes the planets are just aligned, I guess.  More from ER.

Oh a PS after I got on this plane: I am glad I had a drink first.  I will be impressed if this thing leaves the ground.

firing from the hip since 2002