I'm not really sure why the two week delay. You'd think not having a job would give me more of a chance to write here, wouldn't you? Ah, but I've been writing elsewhere. Go read the new reviews up on the zine site.

Cubs are only a half game out of first place and looking to make their move in the final week...

Okay, I'm going downstairs and reading some Vonnegut until I fall asleep. I promise...more will come soon.

Well, here I am again after a few days off.

As I write this, the Cubs are in first place by half a game. I'm waiting to watch Baseball Tonight, TVGuide.com says it's on 2 minutes ago. Must be wrong. Must start at midnight.

You know, I had all kinds of ideas of things I wanted to write earlier tonight. Now that I have the opportunity, I totally forget what they were.

No kittens around today.
I allowed myself a bit of a morning off. I woke up around 9 and watched the episode of OC that I taped last night. Yes, I am addicted to my evening soap on FOX. We all have our dirty little habits and secrets, so I suppose it's time you know that's one of mine. Anyway, finished watching OC, took a shower, then decided to go check out the new coffee shop a block over. The owners are wonderful, beautiful people. On my way over I talked for a couple minutes to the guys on the recycling truck. Stacey and I want to do recycling but live in apartments, so we need to figure out what to do.
I got on down to the coffeeshop and ended up talking for a while with Jennifer, the lady who runs it, and Jamie (no idea on the spelling), some girl who was working there. I told them that S. and I are vegetarian and as a result, will be down to dig on their sandwiches now and then. I also thanked them for serving organic, fair-trade-certified coffee. It's great coffee, for the record. Organic is just better, any coffee snob will tell you that. We all ended up talking about music. The owners are cool about me wanting to get some good shows in there. Jennifer and Jamie (who isn't an owner, just works there) not as picky and snobby as I am about music and knowing some of the names they were rattling off, I won't exactly be there for every show, but there's some really good taste over there, I must admit. Jamie is big into stuff like Denison Witmer, Over the Rhine, the Innocence Mission, Pedro the Lion, that sort of thing. So anyway, I was there until around 11:30 and ended up bringing home a vegetable sandwich they made that was quite good.
On my way back, I noticed a piece of paper stuck underneath my windshield wiper. Turns out I need to renew my plates.
Tonight we have a couple guys coming over to look into renting the room upstairs. Ben scheduled the one guy, Mohammed, to come around at 6, which is smack dab in the middle of when I'll be at class. The second guy should be here at 7. I hate the process of looking for a new roommate. I'm quite picky and will definitely exercise my right to be so. I'm not too stoked about the one guy coming when I'm not here, because if Ben thinks he's great and we should offer it to him, I'll still have to interview him and whatnot myself. One thing that Ben and I are talking about doing is him renting out the townhouse next door and living in the basement like I do and renting out the two bedrooms. I don't really care too much either way at this point, just don't want to put myself in any more precarious positions...I've been burnt before and am willing to take as many precautions as I need to.
Anyway, there's your update for the day and I'm sorry it wasn't too terribly interesting or funny or whatever you want it to be.

Listening to:
The Innocence Mission
Lower Lights Burning
Echoboy

Yesterday S. and I decided to go out and have a meal at a regular sit-down restaurant, just because it was a holiday and we could. We decided on a visit to a Village Inn. The good thing about the Village Inn is that you can substitute a Boca Burger for any of their regular burgers...and they offer one that is Avocado Swiss Mushroom. Yes. Our meal was wonderful to eat, what with the A-S-M toppings being in prime form (though the "red onion" had mysteriously been shocked white, apparently). Unfortunately, we were seated directly next to a table of band members who seemed to be interviewing a girl for lead vocal duties. We overheard that she is 17 and the guys are in their early 30's. From the sounds of it, these guys were hoping to construct themselves into the next Evanescence. One of the band members in particular was apparently suffering from that disorder that makes people not be able to talk in anything but their big outdoor voices. Coincidentally (I'm sure), this guy was also an interesting combination of not terribly bright and waaaaaaaaay too pumped about being in a band. Now, don't get me wrong. If you're in a band, it's great if you're excited about it. I know I would be. However, when ALL you talk about is your band this and your band that, not to mention half of what you say screams of ignorance, you should be stapled shut. That's the sort that this guy was/is.

Something I've noticed about guys in bands is that some of them can sound halfway intelligent when they're talking about things like their band, the local scene, their genre of music, and things having relevance to those subjects. Granted, often those who are familiar with any or all of those subjects will know better, but to most people these guys will seem pretty bright and together. Once they wander into talking about anything else in the world, however (not that they often do, mind you), they display themselves as complete idiots. On the other hand, I really like guys who are in bands that: 1) may or may not be excited about being in a band (as long as they don't have that fake "i don't care" attitude that the young people seem to love so much these days), but isn't going to talk non-stop about that, and may not talk about it at all unless asked; 2) are able to talk about a variety of subjects intelligently and coherently, displaying at least a decent amount of thoughtfulness.

So anyway, yes, I'm not sure which local band these guys were in, but I got the impression they were some sort of metallish band - not the dark, blistering, interesting kind of metal, but rather a sort of bar band sort of metal-based rock. I could be wrong. Perhaps I will go see a show one of these days and lo and behold, this band will be there and will blow me away. However, it would be fairly paradoxical and I'd be scratching my head over it for a month.

Then we went home and had blueberry pie and ice cream.

Since my last post, as most of you Vagrant Cafe forums folks may know, I've learned that my position was eliminated. I'd like to thank Governor Mike Johanns for his dislike for education in Nebraska and our executive director of the company for being the biggest idiot to ever wear a tie. This is how stupid the guy is: one of my co-workers who also was relieved of her duties was standing in her cube, cleaning it out. Just minutes after hearing the news, she was still a bit stunned. The Executive Director walks by and asks her how her day is going. Then again, he never really was good with knowing who worked in our area of the company, so I suppose it's not much of a surprise.
I'm not really bitter--I'm actually glad to be moving on to what I'm sure will be better things. On the other hand, it's nice to be able to vocally call things for what they are. The man misappropriated grant money from the federal and state governments and the private sector and (though I'm on too low of a level to be instrumental at all in this happening) he is about to be taken to task for it by people he didn't know well enough to be good to.

AAAAAAAAAAAAnyway, I do see all this a good thing. I have a good severance package and can take my time getting back into the workforce. I get to focus on school and writing, at least a little bit, for a little while.

Today is my first official day off work. I've managed to do a couple loads of laundry, dishes at both my place and my girlfriend's, run some errands, get some bills paid, and work on some vagrant cafe type stuff. Also I'm getting some great time with Flannery, S.'s cat. She likes my apartment a lot because it's got a lot more space for her to run around and explore. Right now she's wandering around on my dining room table. Well, she was. As I typed that, she hopped down and came over here to look out the window (which is a wonderful hobby we both share). She just wandered across the keyboard, onto my barstool, finally hopping on my lap. She left the following comments:

56666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666

Yes...she IS an evil kitten. I don't recommend falling asleep near her. She'll decide it's time to play and start nibbling. But she's my pal. 43333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333. Yes, more comments from the Flanz. I think I'm going to have her start writing record reviews.

I have to admit...I've never really been a cat person. Flannery is different, though. She's nuts, that's for sure. She's not the typical "I hate everyone" type cat, even if her playfulness usually takes on a rather sadistic tone. She likes attention and affection, yet isn't a brown-noser, either.

All right, on to something besides the kitty.

One more comment on the work situation. Despite my being happy about the whole thing, I've already started becoming That Unemployed Guy Who Rants About The Government. Last night, S. and I were flipping through TV stations and on a news program, they showed GWBush talking about how we're in Economic Recovery and he will lead us to even greater economic times. I sputtered for a while and then went back to whittling wood.