Flying up to see my moms and grandparents – always interesting.  I walked over to the SRQ airport, sweating like a pig because it’s 80 degrees or more outside and the sun’s beating down like a madman.  There’s a high of 45 in Maryland, a low around 25 and a fucking chance of fucking snow on Saturday.  Crazy fucking country where I can travel for two hours and drop 50 degrees or so in temperature.  I can only imagine what it must be like up in Maine.  Suck.

 In the meantime I’ve bought myself a new laptop (for work purposes – there’s only legal software on here!!!), I’ve been drinking beerdrinking beer and kind of relaxing – plus I went to Mardi Gras but that ended up being a clusterfuck of gigantic proportions.  Plus I’m working on getting healthy again – I get fatter every time I work and then when I’m out of work I skinny up quite a bit.  Gettin’ rid of the ole gut will be great – stupid cubicle life packs on the pounds really easily.  Working on some database/programming training and basically just trying to not be a waste of space while I’m not working for real.  I should be able to pay bills and live for quite a few months without needing to get a job again, but I’m really only planning on doing this for two months or so and then trying to work for real.  Let’s see how well it goes.  Of course, if I get contract work from the old job I can keep doing this for a long time – which is really what I’m hoping for.  I love working from home whenever I want.  It really is the best way of doing it.

Beer blog is up

I don’t know what it says about me and who I am these days that I’m kind of excited to own a real suit.  But I own a real suit.  Charcoal, to be precise – useful for all occasions.  It was inexpensive as far as suits go – I really just needed to get a suit.  But I’m pretty happy with the idea.  And I think I will get a real (expensive) suit here in the near-ish future, depending on what happens in the next week or so re: job.

But a suit – and it’s mine.  In my hands tomorrow.  I’ll probably wear it ironically around the house all the time.  You know, house shorts and suit jacket and nothing else.  Drinking beer from the can.  Like a true pimp.

However, in the past month I’ve probably played more hours of video games than in the previous 6 and it’s great. I had forgotten how much fun it is to get drawn into a story, or try over and over to reach a goal, or just complete steps to get to the end of something. I think part of it is that in the times I’m not playing video games I’m getting a large amount of satisfaction out of my job, oddly enough. Going to work and accomplishing things really fills that hole in my life; now that I haven’t really done anything of any note in a few months that void is getting filled with video games again, just like when I was a kid. Very odd – I’m interested to see if it continues if the job situation changes. At this point I’m about a hair’s breadth away from quitting and taking a couple of months off – I’m really burned out on sitting around and doing nothing all day, plus there are some changes happening that would make my nothing time even more difficult to take. The sad thing is I really enjoy what I do and I’m rather good at it – there’s just nothing for me to do because I solved all of the major problems months ago. These days it’s just maintaining things and filling a seat and I’m never good at that.

If you were wondering, the Wii is a stellar piece of machinery. Even only playing Wii Sports makes me happy – I haven’t even started in on Zelda yet (blame Final Fantasy 3 & 12 for that). You really do feel involved in the games in ways that just aren’t there as an adult (though Guitar Hero had come close in recent times). The lineup for the next 6 months looks great, too (new Mario, new Smash Brothers, new Metroid and there’s even another fucking Duck Hunt and another fucking Pilot Wings coming out eventually). I hope Nintendo manages to sway some of the graphics fiends away from their TVs and get them involved in some genuine, fun gameplay again.

One other rediscovery I’m looking forward to starts next year. It’s really my New Year’s Resolution, if you can call it such a thing. In 2007 I will try and drink 365 different types of beer. I’ve found that I’ve fallen into a drinking rut – Becks or Grolsch as a daily drinker, the Beast at New College plus an occasional Pale Ale that I see at the store that I’ve not yet tried. Nothing new, nothing different. And it’s not healthy, at least for my general well-being. Not only will I try and drink them all, I’ll write ‘em all down. I’m still trying to figure out the things that I have to write and the things that I should write on each one, plus the exact rules as to what fits into beer and what doesn’t (malt liquor does, Zima doesn’t, but what about fruit beers?) and size limits (do tasting glasses count, or should I go with at least a 6 ounce minimum). But I’ll work all those out. The frightening part is going to be finding 365 different beers. I think the Total Wine in Tampa has around 200 or 250, but that leaves around 100 or so that I’m going to have to go and hunt down in breweries or car trips (like Red Oak in the Carolinas, for one). It’ll be an interesting journey. For now I’m just buying up lots of 6-packs of seasonal beers with a goal of keeping at least one until the new year. Plus I’m really exciting about opening up one of my Sierra Nevada Bigfoot Ales from 2001 that I’ve moved from New Mexico to California and back. Those fucking things have gone nearly as many miles as I have in the past 5 years or so. So keep an eye open – I’ll be opening up another blog that I should update a hell of a lot more often with my beer drinking plus whatever happens along the way. Once I have a notebook around more often I might actually get around to writing more substantial things here and there.

I think I need some change in my life, though god knows where it could come from.

Today was mildly interesting, at least.  Instead of going to work I stood in front of an EB Games for nearly three hours in order to put money down and pre-order a Nintendo Wii.  And I made mint juleps later in the day, but that’s just because they’re delicious.  And because Calvin came upstairs and told me it was a good idea.  He was right, at least.

Maybe I should explain.

For the longest time I’ve been interested in people – perhaps not people so much, but their stories. If I could somehow get the stories out of people without ever dealing with them, I think I’d spend even more time in my house than I already do. So the “sociology” shelves of bookstores have always held a special interest for me; it’s like having people distill their stories into something I can hold in my hands. Brilliant, as the Guinness guys would say.

The more I read of the things though, the less I really believe in them as sociology. Browsing through the current top 5 Amazon sociology books, I see very little that I would classify as scholarly work – I see things that would either be (a) – enjoyable to read, around the same level as a Harry Potter book or (b) – something that’s a thinly veiled self-help book [see: 10 Conversations You Need to Have with Your Children]. I would have to stick both of these types of books into what I consider “fauxiology” books – trying to legitimize either a self-help book or a personal memoir with what they would love you to believe are social overtones.

Of course, I’m rather lacking in any sort of experience with actual scholarly sociology books. Perhaps they’re all like this. I tend to believe otherwise, because I know that’s how science books can be as well. Brilliant research scientists will sometimes bend over and grab their ankles and write a book for the masses on some popular subject of the times, like stem cell research or black holes, in order to make a quick buck off a fad. I can understand – it’s nice having money. History books are even worse; there’s a huge gradient between popular-style history by someone like Stephen E. Ambrose vs. horribly dense material by someone like Doenecke. One reads like a story, the other reads like a brick between the eyes. However, by the very nature of science or history you tend you really take something away from reading either of them, even the pop-culture versions of the books.

Fauxiology books, on the other hand, leave you feeling a certain way about an idea or a people or a culture. Be that as it may, you rarely also come out with any useful amount of new information besides very broad thoughts – being poor sucks, being black sucks, being fat sucks, being rich can be difficult as well, cities are fun to live in but the countryside can be as well, and so on and so forth, ad nauseum. They are far better at pulling at the heartstrings than they ever are at truly inspiring new and creative ideas.

So I shall reject this foul fauxiology – I will try and keep myself away. If I want to read crap, I’ll pick up another bad sci-fi book instead. People whine enough in real life (myself very much included); is it really necessary for me to spend my free time reading more of it?

Damn the Fauxiology! Save the Empire!

Had to add this, as it’ll make my life much easier.  Folding a shirt the easy way.

The unfortunate part about my job is that other people have to be involved. And sometimes they think they know better than I do how to do what I do. God forbid you ask me to design a robust, multi-use reporting tool that works, only to come back a month later and tell me to use some pre-computed values that makes all the work I have done pretty much useless. Not to mention that it’ll be useless as soon as you turn around and change your minds on how you want to rate people in 2 months. Whatever, I just work here. And I don’t even really do that.

Sometimes you just have to take a random half day at work from pure frustration. The World Cup makes a lovely background to a mid-afternoon nap. Now to figure out how I’ll waste my time for the rest of the weekend.

Maybe I will have that glass of wine.

Yeah, that’s much better. It does, however, make me feel somewhat like a 35-year old woman. At least it’s a red wine instead of a white – that gives me a little bit of street cred. Wine street cred. Which is kind of like street cred on the short bus.

The wine thing’s not really my fault, I’d gone quite a while not buying any wine whatsoever that wasn’t directly for some sort of meal. But we have a wine fridge around the house now, so what am I supposed to do? Not keep bottles of wine in there? And if they’re in there, am I just supposed to leave them? Of course not, that’d be just silly. Just terribly silly.

When I was in Berkeley a friend of mine was dating a German exchange student – not one of his students, so it was okay, but still one of them European folk. We went out for drinks once and she ordered a kalimotxo, a drink that’s half red wine and half coke. Having this Dr. Pepper and this glass of wine sitting next to each other inspired me to try my own version, and I have to say the shit’s delicious, though I think I’d kill myself if I drank more than the small shot-glass worth I made in this extra glass on my desk. Interesting, but painfully sweet – somehow the red wine makes the soda even sweeter than it normally would be. I can only imagine the hangover that would ensue from something like this.

God that girl was ugly. The poor guy had been on a 6+ month dry streak, though, so I couldn’t really blame him.

Did anyone else remember to drink a Beast on the day of the beast yesterday? I had actually forgotten the whole “day of the Beast” angle until I glanced over Brew’s post from yesterday. Thank god, otherwise I would have missed it. There’s something truly special about the Beast tall boys – it brings a tear to my eye every time.

Because I finally got paid back by people who owed me money and I got a (sizeable) raise at work, I went crazy last week and bought new electronics – a DS Lite as well as parts for a new computer. AMD x2 3800, 2GB Ram, ATI X1800XT. 64-bit Windows is nice, responsive and ugly – exactly what I’m looking for in an operating system. Now I need to remind myself to stop blowing money since I already went through way too much in a week.

I’ve been talking about pudding way too much lately. I also think it’s time to go buy a pack of smokes. I’ve always been a failure at quitting when I don’t have a compelling reason to do so.

Something compel me, damnit.