Has anything of interest happened to you recently?

Why? Happy mom stuff is cool, too.

That electric feeling when you're back in a ceili band. I'll be waking up tomorrow with an ache in my shoulders and a song in my fingers.

Last night, Keith Levene favourited a dumb tweet I did and sent me a message. I realize nobody reading this knows or cares who Keith Levene is, but trust me, my head exploded.

It sounds like your electric violin isn't properly grounded. Try not wiring yourself into the mains current next time.

As for me, I am finally getting over ten days of a hacking/wheezing autumn cough. And of course I have a lunch date today while my voice is somewhere between Megatron and the Kurgan for gravelly raspyness. LADIES FIND SEXY, DA?

Just spend the day singing Tom Waits.

Okay, I laughed then I had to try it. Holy crap I have apparently been possessed by Tom Waits because I can sing "Bad As Me" perfectly right now...

YOU GOTTA KEEP THE DEVIL! WAY DOOOOOOOWN IN THE HOLE!

Get on the podcast right now!

Over the past month I've been having tons of problems with my internet. It will be humming along at normal speeds and then for no reason plummet to unusable, sometimes for hours or even days at a time. It's been incredibly frustrating since there's no way of knowing if my connection will hold up when I actually want to use it. On top of that Comcast isn't the easiest company to get useful help out of. In the last three weeks we've had 5 technicians out to the house (and 3 in the last 8 days) and countless calls to customer service and it's been a crapshoot to see if we get someone who will actually look at the problem and try to fix it or just stick to their basic script. This morning's technician definitely worked to solve our problem, but his solution was strange. After checking everything in and coming to our house and finding all our lines to be working well he decided to check the other lines in our group that go to neighboring condos. He found one that was full of garbage noise and probably damaged, but since it was a line outside the house and he couldn't replace it he decided to just disconnect it. I know that several of our neighbors have Comcast, and it's entirely possible that this tech's solution to our problem was to just turn off someone else's service. Hopefully it's going to a unit that is using a different provider, and he attached a note to the line saying that he disconnected it because it wasn't working well, but I fully expect a Comcast truck to show up to a neighbor's house tomorrow and just reconnect their line without actually looking at it.

Just got back from a friends house. Her 20 year old daughter called me in a panic because one of the younger teen siblings had emptied the ashes from last nights fire into a card board box and had left it on the hard wood floor next to the fire place. A couple of hours later she and a friend smelled smoke and tracked it down to the card board box. Some hot coals burned through the bottom of the box and were burning through the floor. They drenched the floor in water then called me to ask what to do next (mom and dad didn't answer their phones). They thought it might be still burning under the house so I told her hang up and call 911 and I would be right over.

Luckily everything is okay, just a dinner plate sized hole in the hard wood and a scorch spot on the sub floor but a big lesson learned about fire safety. They also learned that they need new smoke detectors since the ones in the house didn't go off. They work if you press the button but the house was very smoky and they didn't go off.

I'm an uncle! My brother's fiance had a baby boy yesterday.

My dad underwent surgery today with full anaesthesia. Went in about lunchtime and was driven home almost in time for dinner. Everything went smooth. A good day.

Well shit, I just got laid off. One of the companies we do business decided to stop doing business with us and bam, I'm the 1st to go since I was the last to get hired. Now, do I apply to work at the pizza place down the street, or do I sell my soul to a temp agency until I go back to school in a year or two?

That's rough, man. If money's tight and you need immediate cash flow, then yeah, any job will do to bring in rent money. But if you've got a bit of a cushion, headhunting for something a bit more suited to your skill level and experience will be worth it.

Sorry to hear that Shake. Your avatar is fully appropriate now.

I've received my Victorinox 8" chef's knife today. I am a chef!

Grandma's got stage 3 cancer. She's in her nineties, and not in any pain, so she's just going to let it take its course. I'm not particularly close with her, or her side of the family beyond my mom. So I feel sorry for her, but also a little guilty for not trying to stay in touch at all. Granted other than her and my mom, they are pretty much all awful people.

Today I visited a donor who's a big collector of fantasy and comic book art. I got to see an Alex Ross painting from Astro City--so beautiful!

This is why we don't sleep on trains.
TIME TO MAKE SOME PHONE CALLS.

There should be a bus route from around there. Want me to text Speak With Bread and ask her if she can pick you up? :)

Well, if you want dinner, you should come over (we're in San Jose!). There's rajhma (curry), rice, and chicken.

But I'm glad you've got it resolved. :)

If you guys get a chance, you should check out Kabul Afghan Cuisine. Holy shit, so good. At least, 15 years ago it was when I lived within walking distance of it.

Been there! Not bad at all.

SO UH.
A friend's new girlfriend randomly messaged me on Facebook to tell me to leave her boyfriend alone.
1) This girl's 19. I don't know who she thinks she is, but she is in no position to tell me what to do or who to talk to.
2) I've been her new boyfriend's friends for years now. We've been through some serious shit in the past.
3) I have never spoken to this girl previous to this message.

i am laughing in disbelief. a part of me wants to snatch that weave right off her head.
the other part of me just kinda. can't even believe that people like this actually exist.

Seen while listening to this:



nightmares forever

So this has shaped up to be an interesting week. Yesterday I turned 30. Which kinda sucks, because I live in my parents basement and play WoW all damn day.

Today, I got a new job. I'll be making about 50% more money than before (also, salary as opposed to wage), my employer is going to pay for my tuition (provided I pass), and a whole host of other pretty awesome benefits. Hooray to that!

I wrote a short story. I rarely write fiction, so this is interesting to me at least.

Tonight there was a single showing of the 50th anniversary rerelease of Lawrence of Arabia.

It was amazing.

You might remember I did well on the GRE a few weeks ago. Well, the writing scores take a few weeks to process, and I got mine in the mail today.

6.0 ! 99th Percentile! ANONYMOUS JUDGES THINK I'M GREAT

Not really sure what to do with it, but on Tuesday morning I got one of these things!



We named him Isaac. He's not so bad. Underneath his badass hat is a whole mess of dark hair. He is our first.

He looks so serene. Like a tiny Tibetan lama. I think it may be the swaddling+hat combo.

He's so cute! Isaac is a great name, too. Congratulations.

D'awwww. Welcome to the internet, little Isaac, and mazel tov to his father. :D

They're pretty cool. Takes a bit of twinking, but once they're doing stuff on their own, they're great fun to hang with.
Congratulations.

CONGRATS TO YOU hi tiny baby look at you all peaceful and stuff awww

Hey man, congrats Adam!

Ohhhh so peaceful. It's a trick. Get an axe.