July 1999

Entry... 7/3/99 10:18am

A warm summer night, a blanket in the grass, a deck of cards and silly childhood games. Bellies full of chinese food, and a cold drink from my pack. Brilliant fire lights the evening sky before the stars have a chance to strut their stuff, even the fantastic moonlight is second best and pale compared to this arial blaze. The show is on. Children run by our blanket in a hurry to find the best viewpoint. Some wear glowing tubes of plastic as jewelry. The moment is punctuated with low sonic booming and the crackle of gunpowder and the ahhhs of the crowd. A puff of sound, a spinning glowing hot trail heading straight up, a brief moment of darkness, and then *wham*. Stunning. The light is reflected in my eyes as I greedily drink it in, my ears catching every swoop and dive as the ash heads back to earth, reflected light slowly dying in the calm water of the lake. It goes on not long enough, but ends in a fury of sound and light. Applause. Time for some ice cream. Perfect.

The official web site of the Army camp near my birthplace, in Atsugi, Japana. This is Camp Zama. You can learn more about off-duty activites at this Unoffical site. There is nothing yet about Atsugi, where the Naval Hospital is located, but you can visit the US Navy's official web site here. They have loads of links to the home pages of every division and ship in the fleet.

I liked the look of this online journal/home page. Click here to visit. Here are two more great sites: The Misanthropic Bitch and Chicks Suck.

Jeepers, I have to mow the lawn again. Crazy grass. When I get done with that, it'll be time to load up the family truckster and take my PA up to the mountain top for tonights show.

Entry... 7/5/99 11:53pm

Hot. Sticky. I am sitting in front of my computer in nothing but boxer shorts. Sweet sweat beads on my hot skin. There is a fan blowing warmish air over me. I have my shoes off, and it was sheer pleasure when I gave my feet a firm squeeze, and pushed the blood back into my system. Maybe I'll sleep outside tonight.

The Albany fireworks show last night was entirely fantastic. I went down with a couple of friends and we parked the car way up on Madison Avenue, and walked downtown. There was at least an occasional breeze, but the heat from the crowd was oppressive. I was ready to stand up on a podium and ask everyone to stop exhaling. I guess we have Neil Golub to thank for the bulk of the display. It was nicely done. We stood right on the plaza, almost front row center. The sounds and lights were awesome, but they could have lost the musical taped accompaniment. That was a little campy.

I finally tried that dinner and a movie deal at Broadway Joe's in Saratoga. I saw Entrapment. My advice for you, and this applies to both the movie, and the experience: Don't bother. The already expensive crappy food was even more expensive because it is the summer season there. Despite the movie showing promise (starred Ving Rhames and Sean Connery) it was perfectly awful. The tagline for the movie poster is "The trap is set." Yeah, it was set all right. Set to take our money.

I broke even today in air hockey, 7 games to 7. They were all close, tough games, too. I am still working on the perfect mix of beer and ability to hone my game. I got spanked good on Thursday, losing 10 games to 3 or something like that. I suppose that was an appropriate choice of words. You're supposed to get spanked on your birthday.

It's like a sauna outside. You can close your eyes and almost imagine yourself wrapped in a towel while they pour more water over the steaming hot rocks. I wish there was a pool of cold water to jump into. The best thing for this condition is some nice hot monkey sex and a long cool shower. Or I could go sneak into some neighbors pool. How fast could the cops get there? perhaps they would want to jump in, too. It's too hot to write tickets. I was tempted to get into the fountain in Congress Park. I figured the jail would be air conditioned.

Here's a ton of those Redneck jokes.

I got a new portable phone for my birthday from my brother. Call me.

Entry... 7/7/99 1:07am

The rain today helped cool things off a bit. Work was pretty slow, the standard emergencies. One of our employees managed to break her leg over the weekend, so we got a whole 2 hours to configure a laptop for her to have at home to work. Nice.

I attempted to play volleyball today, but we got rained out. I'll probably try again tomorrow during the open net play. No band practice until next week.

I found this site a week ago or so. I thought that I would post it for you mature readers out there. It features erotic stories by a couple male and female authors. Click here to visit The Bear's Den.

I have to give my Brother credit for this quote, but it's a good one. "It is better to have loved, and lost...than to live with a psycho for the rest of your life."

My new phone works great. I think I talked more on the phone today than I have in the last month. It's sitting right here next to me. "Hello, phone," I say, and touch the plastic cover softly. I wait, but there is nothing but silence. It's just a freaking phone.

"I find my life easier to live the lower I keep everyone elses expectations." - Calvin and Hobbes

Entry... 7/8/99 12:27am

On vacation. Ahhhhhhhh..........

My brother showed me the newest Weird Al website tonight. His new song is a parody of the newest Star Wars movie, The Phantom Menace set to the tune of "American Pie" by Don McLean. It's really funny. You can hear the song and see the video by visiting The Saga Begins. Al has a website of his own at Weird Al dot Com. I had just taped that VH1 Behind the Music featuring him on Monday night, and I have yet to see it. My brother tells me that he got that LASIK laser eye surgery, and no longer wears his trademark glasses. He looks actually pretty good without them and with his hair cut short.

Got some trash to take out. Got some packing to do. Got some bills to pay. Then it's off to Michigan with me.

Get your beer links here. 101 of em. There's talk of Belgian beer brewed in Cooperstown, New York.

I liked this page about a guy's favorite bands. He also has a page up about various Jack in the Box restaurants he's visited.

New in the "And if you didn't think you had enough to read" department. Here is a web site that contains almost 20,000 personal testimonies regarding their very first sexual encounter. Visit My First Time.

Entry... 7/19/99 1:29pm

Spent a lot of time on the road in the past few weeks. Nothing like dropping 1800 miles on a rental car. It cost enough to rent it, but it was worth it for not having to worry. Actually, it would have cost me the same amount in gas for my car had I taken it instead, then it did for the rental. 1800 miles at 10 miles to the gallon, at $1.25 a gallon is 225 bucks. I had a Nissan Altima GXE. A nice enough car, but it had no personality. It did have a tendency to leap off the road to the left if I let it, so I have to stay aware.

In the car, I listened to a lot of music. This Barenaked Ladies song, Told You So, spoke to me in volumes. I got the lyrics off this fan site, and there is a great picture of the "ladies" wearing not much.

Desk pop can count: 114 (Got them along with a wonderful grilled chicken dish with garlic pasta and a cup of New England Clam Chowder)

A friend of mine and I were talking this morning about her latest string of potential dates. I make some joke about her potential suitors lining up as if they were in a King's court; presenting their dowry for her review. She laughed at the image and said "I can't be bought. But I can be tempted."

I gotta say that I am very glad that I was no where near a television set this weekend. I can't understand all the attention that has been given to the loss of John F. Kennedy, Jr and his wife, and her sister. The entire front section of the Sunday Times Union was a eulogy for the trio, and a revisit to all the tragedies that have touched this family over the last 100 years. What ticked me off the most is the way our news media just shunts other important news to the back burner. India announced that the long standing conflict in Kashmir is over. How could this possibly be important to us here in the United States? After all it's the the lives and deaths of thousands of citizens of some other country. That news made page 6. Thank God those savvy editors are looking out for what's important to us here in this great country. My friend also said something very about the Kennedy crash, tragic as it may be. She agreed with the assessment that he was a new pilot, and shouldn't have been flying the plane. After all - how could he possibly have anticipated the change of conditions? How could he have known that it was going to get dark outside? The sun sets, what? 9 out of ten times? This can't be his fault. Let's blame the mafia. Hell, those bastards will even kill your dog.

Entry... 7/19/99 3:12pm

Everytime I come home, my hedges are a little bit more hacked up. This is a saga in itself. Seems my idiot redneck neighbors don't like the tall hedges outside my house. They have been complaining to my landlord to cut them down. I don't want them cut down for two good reasons. I don't want to see my idiot redneck neighbors having their little tailgate parties, and I don't want my idiot redneck neighbors to see me. So I keep telling the landlord not to cut them down, but he sneaks over and takes a little more off the top and sides. I am trying to convince him that this is not the right season to trim hedges in, as he will kill them. He is afraid of the neighbors. Hell, so am I. They drink too much and they are not happy drunks.

In other home news, the upstairs toilet isn't flushing right. Could there be a shark jammed in the pipe? I keep calling the landlord to fix it. He comes over and augers it for awhile, and declares it fixed, and then he goes outside and hacks the hedges up a little more and leaves. When I get home, the toilet is plugged up again. I am just going to give up and contract it out to a real service, and bill him for it. He's too much of a do-it-himself-er.

I saw the South Park movie last week with my brother - it was really good. Go see it. Give Trey and Matt your money.

I had a crazy dream last week. Well, maybe not crazy, just very interesting. I remember it very well. I just told my brother about it last night when we went out for a late night drive. It was too hot in the house to sit inside.

It felt like a movie. In my dream, I was at a party at my brother's apartment. It was tastefully decorated, very airy, with lots of windows, tons of floor space, and a loft type construction. Comfortable couches were in abundance, and his long time girlfriend was perparing a pasta feast of sorts. The thing was, it was just like a movie, in that my brother was being played by Jeff Goldblum and his girlfriend was played by Meg Ryan. So, we were sitting around, sipping chilled chablis, and talking. She was in the kitchen, cooking. As the evening progressed, a friend showed up with his two kids, and I guess I got along well with them, because the kids sat next to me on the couch, and we all just kept talking and blah blah blah. At some point, the friend brought out this list of questions; sort of a party game that asks all sort of questions of you about your mate, and vice versa. The idea of the questions is to sort of feel out, or test, if you truly love each other. So, I got the list, it was printed on continous form computer paper, and read my brother some questions about his girlfriend. I don't actually remember all of the questions, but they ranged from the innocuous "How did you meet" to "What habits do they have that you find adorable" and "What habits do they have that you find annoying" So, we alternate questioning them, and it goes on. Now they have been together in the dream for 4 years, and they live together, and the whole evening they have been all cute and adorable together. Little touches here and there, kissing, laughing as she cooked, and he assisted occasionally. They have thought about marriage. As the questioning went on, it became strangely apparent that she didn't really love him. Of course, they both cared for one another...but it was more apparent that she wasn't as crazy in love with him as he was with her. I remember standing up, and and sort of walking towards the living room, running my hands through my hair and saying aloud "Well, isn't this interesting?"

Like I said, crazy. A friend of mine told me that in dreams, you should pay attention to the first initial of the first name of people who are in your dreams, because sometimes there is a correlation to someone you know in real life. Hmmm. So I have 'JG' and 'MR' to work with.

It's the standard typical day at the office. We're prepping for a busy morning tomorrow, and trying to take care of the daily emergencies. I am actually trying to learn something today (programming in ASP) between all the other interuptions, but I am finding it difficult to do. I just got off the phone with a terrifically tenacious salesperson from california (who is "in AA," and "originally came from England, love"). I gave her a fake name, so if she ever calls back, I'll have the receptionist tell her that that guy got rightly sacked for sexually harrassing sales people who made annoying blind sales calls.

Entry... 7/20/99 12:04am

Got the news today that one of our clients sites in infested with the McAfee VirusScan software. It is basically taking out all of their workstations. They were running along just fine, and upgraded the thing to version 4.0 and down she went. We recently switched over to the Norton AntiVirus product. Our virus definition files now scan for, and eliminate the McAfee AntiVirus software. It's the freaking worst virus I've ever seen.

Went to see "American Pie" with my brother and a group of people from work tonight. It was, overall, pretty funny. The line that stands out is: "What's my name, bitch?!" I won't say that it is a must see, but it was funny.

I got new business cards for my band, so I scanned it in tonight while I was doing some scanning for work. Here's a shot of it for you:

In the photo gallery, I uploaded two new pictures of my daughter from a recent karate competition that she was in. She won 3rd prize! She got her yellow belt as well, so one picture is from her test, where she had to break 7 boards. Luckily, she didn't have to use any of this on me a few weekends ago. I wonder if they teach a class in keeping your parents in line....

Entry... 7/24/99 2:48am

In good news today, I called up my daughter and her mother, and made plans to visit in August. I plan to take a week off work and meet up with them in Ohio. We will most likely go to Cedar Point and check out some roller coasters. It was nice talking to them for a little bit. My daughter is all hot to buy a furby (she is saving her babysitting money) and she wants to see the new Star Wars movie.

In not so fun news, I am battling with a bank and the child support unit again. I have a court date this week, and hopefully I won't get into too much trouble from it, as all the people at the bank who make any decisions are on vacation, and I will have not much new to tell them. I also have to research a court order that is still hanging around from 1996, and get that taken off.

Played softball today, and we got our asses handed to us on a platter. It was pretty frustrating, especially since we defeated the number one team in the league last week. I did some scoring for the team in the first half of the game since I am one of the few there who knows how to keep the book, and then they put me in at 3rd for the second half. I wasn't really thrilled about playing a base. I am much better when I can play off the hitter, and anticipate their shot, and then be able to get up to speed chasing it down. Oh well. All I can say is what a gorgeous day to be outside playing ball.

Oh - something interesting happened at the game. While I was sitting there, the human resource person from my company (the one that I love so much - sarcasm) came up, complaining about where she had to park her car. Now we play occasionally in downtown Albany, and this one stadium is not in the best part of town. She had to walk by a nasty set of row houses to get to the game, and she was all nervous about her car, and walking back to it after the game. So I offered to walk her back to it and move it right then. She just about melted with relief, and we did so. I'm actually glad I did; there was a terrible fight going on right on the street, and people were screaming and slamming doors, and stomping around, and yelling at each other, and who knows what happened next.

"If you love something, chain it to a radiator so it doesn't get away." - overheard at work.

I had an interesting dream Thursday night, that I wanted to share, but I already wrote it all down at work, but didn't upload it. I'll try to do that on Monday.

At the bar tonight after the game, a friend of mine and I were talking about all the typical stuff that people talk about, mostly about dysfunctional relationships, and she tells me that when her long term relationships when bad, she had gone through therapy for several years. She primarily was tring to figure out why she kept making bad decisions when it came to the kind of guys she picked (they all tended to drink too much), but ended up spending a lot of time on her own self, and her own dysfunctional relationship with her father. It must have worked for her. She and her Dad get along fine nowadays.

I just sort of zoned off here as I was writing, so I should go to bed. It's really, really hot. I just had an ice cream sandwich as a treat. I'll be face down in fron of my fan in just a few minutes. I have to get up early because I offered to help some friends rip down some walls and plaster in their new house. We're going to do that in the morning, and then I am going up to the lake to swim and hang on the boat.