Narcissistic Annoyance

So I was lying awake the other night unable to fall asleep as usual and all sorts of odd thoughts were floating through my head, but one in particular happened to get stuck. At the time, I contemplated getting up and blogging about it right then and there, but like most times, decided against it. I'm sure that comes as a total shock if you've ever noticed how few blog posts inhabit this space. I decided against blogging at that time, because that just would have prolonged my sleeplessness, and that's usually not a wise thing to do when one has a long day at work the next morning.

Anyway...once a year I spend a solid amount of time putting together a little something to hand out to close friends and family for Christmas. I've done this for several years now and it's the same gift every year. It's long past being any sort of surprise. Perhaps it's a bit monotonous for those on the receiving end, I don't know, as I'm not in those receiving shoes. What I'm getting at here is that for the past few years, there's not much response back from those who've received. For many, there's no response at all, besides a simple thank you, which maybe should suffice, but apparently it doesn't, otherwise I wouldn't be writing about it.

I suppose what I'm looking for here is some feedback. I'd like to know what you may have liked or disliked about it. Did you find anything humorous? Did you enjoy any pictures? Did you read something that disgusted you and immediately threw it in the trash? Was there a part of you that had any sort of reaction at all to something? Do you hate me because I made fun of religion? Just a bit of feedback is what I'm after, that's all. Much time was spent on this one and to not hear much of anything in return is sort of like Jesus finally returning from the dead only to find that nobody really cares anymore about being saved. Okay maybe it's not just like that and perhaps it's just my ego being a little bitch (quite possible), which is why I initially put off writing this post. The other reason being procrastination, but only for two days, which in my world, isn't too bad.

Well there you have it. I said it and now it's out there for the whole blogosphere to view and comment and snicker about. And for those of you who did give me some feedback, I thank you from the bottom of my heart. It's nice to know what you thought. And for those that haven't, I suppose it's possible that you were just so overwhelmed with intrigue and admiration and jealousy of my talents that you were too tongue tied to say much of anything. Perhaps, weeks later, you're still having trouble formulating a response and that's understandable.

Anyway my world continues to slowly revolve around me, so thanks for reading.

Postscript...after writing this blog, I continued reading about Huck Finn and his adventures and at some point drifted off to sleep. While sleeping I had a dream that I was at my Uncle Bill's house in Batavia, where my family and I spent six years living in the early 80's. He was having a Christmas party for the family, which is somewhat odd considering that it's been a long time since that house hosted any sort of shindig, at least to my knowledge. Anyway, I was sitting on a couch in the top portion of the living room, and behind the couch was a coffee table with a small Christmas tree on it. As I turned around to look at the tree, I noticed what looked to be a weekly calendar covered in a very thick layer of dust. I picked it up, said to myself, "see I was right", and blew all the dust off the cover. 

Work, Work, and More Work.

Print for two minutes, stop for one. Print for two minutes, stop for one. Print for two minutes, stop for one. Print for two minutes stop for one. Two hundred and twenty one sheets of paper printed. Manually clean the blanket and then run nine print cleaner sheets. Repeat 125 more times. Two weeks and 30,000 sheets later perhaps this job will be over soon.

But as everyone has tried to hammer into my head for the past few years...I should just be thankful I have a job, right?

Right.

That's probably true and all, but it's not how I like to think. This is where I should probably start ranting about the state of the economy and many of the things that took place to get to where we are nowadays, but I have no interest in that at the present moment. I'm just going to continue on 55 sheets a time, just like Sammy Hagar would do, except I will mix it up a bit by printing the cleaner sheets before manually cleaning off the blanket. It's good to change things up every now and again, so the relentless monotony of printing erodes my brain a bit slower than usual. Cranking this Journey song will help with that as well.

"Feelin' That Way!"



So this is what I've been doing all week long and the week before and for a few weeks before that. The press has not been working correctly for about a month and a half and the service folk can't seem to figure out what's wrong. What's wrong is that we have this press that is ten or twelve years old and needs to be put to rest. Don't get me wrong, 6199 and I have had lots of good times together, but at some point one of us is going to have to go, and as you all know, that's probably not going to be me, what with my precise lack of focus and direction.

"Oooohhhhh anytime that you want me, oooohhhh anytime that you want me."

And not surprisingly, the Loop follows up that one with Cheap Trick's I Want You to Want Me. Not that I'm complaining, but pretty easy lyrical transition there rock station. And with that, all of my printing focus for this blog has been shattered, much like the virgin status of all the teen girls who lost it to this song back in 1977.

"Come on, come on, come on, come on, now touch me baby...can't you see that I am not afraid."

Apparently the Loop DJ is either getting blown in the studio or he's doing his best to increase teen pregnancy rates in the Chicagoland area. Either way I appreciate the effort he's putting forth.

That is all. 

Newer Post!

Alright it's been long enough. Time to once again write about nothing, I know you've all been patiently waiting for new content, so here you are. Disappointment forthcoming my friends as I really don't have much to write. Fortunately I've got some fortunes to throw out so here we go...

Behind an able man, there are always other able men. 
This is too gay for me to comment on.

You have an unusually magnetic personality. 
Pretty sure I received someone else's fortune cookie by mistake. No doubt it was one of my roommate's as they're all about eating Chinese food, but very rarely do they indulge in the sweet delight of the cookie. Too bad for them, as they're also missing out on these rare insights. But on the off chance it was meant for me...ahhh...that's way too farfetched for me to even pretend, but perhaps they're referring to a magnetic personality in the case of two magnets repelling each other? That makes a bit more sense.

There is a prospect of a thrilling time ahead for you. 
Now this is definitely true at the moment. Not sure what you kids are doing for the rest of the week, but I'll be heading down to St. Louis in a day and a half to visit with my good friend Tim. Now surely that's enough excitement for most people, but we're not quite done as Thursday night we're going to see the greatest heavy metal band of all time, Judas Priest! I'm not sure if Tim has ever seen them live now that I think about it. It would be a shame if he hasn't already, but I can guarantee he will not be disappointed. Anyway heading back to Chicago the next day on the ol' Amtrak and then also going to see Priest here in Chicago on Saturday night. Honestly, I'm not sure if there could be a better weekend as far as excitement is concerned. Now maybe you're thinking to yourself that this certainly wouldn't be your cup of tea, but that's only because you're stupid and lame. There I said it. Somebody had to.

Good beginning is half done. 
Not sure what to write about this one. Think I had a similar fortune bestowed upon me by these Chinese fortune tellers last time, but not sure what I wrote. Good beginning is half done. Sounds to me like this blog post, but I'm not even convinced it was a good beginning. How about average beginning is hardly done at all, so get back at it and try to do something worthwhile for once? I'm guessing most people might not like that fortune all that much, but it's probably more worthwhile than some of these cookie stuffings.

You're talents will prove to be especially useful this week. 
Again, very true, very true. My air guitar mastery will be on display for several hours this weekend for all to enjoy. Surely I can shred better and faster than that fat dude one row over with the bald(er) spot and the hooker girlfriend. What other talents in my possession will be useful you ask? No idea. Work is busy, and I haven't been slacking, so that printing talent is certainly beneficial to my employer. Too bad for them that I won't be in the office until Monday after I finish up tomorrow night. I'm sure my replacement can continue the work I've started and I'm sure once I get back I'll be finishing it all up. That's what I get paid for, so that's what I'll be doing.

Your present plans are going to succeed. 
Alright this is just a blatant falsehood, as I have no present plans and I know they're not talking about my going to see Priest this weekend. I specifically made sure to be alive for such an event as this and I'll be damned if some jackass fortune teller is going to...wait a second, it says the plans will succeed. My bad. Apparently I'm good at typing out fortunes, but not so great at recalling what it was that I just typed. Anyway, yes,  my plans will succeed for this weekend. However, one caveat, as I don't really know when I opened up this fortune, so whether those present plans succeeded or not, I have no way of knowing. And damnit...that was another sneeze and perhaps my immune system is feeling a bit compromised at the moment. Not at all interested in such a situation. Cold-Eeze has entered my mouth cavity in case you were curious. Tastes lemony and zincy all at the same time.

Well that's all I have for the moment. Still plenty more fortunes to write about, but we all have to call it quits at some point. Hopefully there aren't all that many typos or other mistakes here in this blog post, as I don't really feel like going back to check. Take care my friends.

Huh?

With that sort of title you should probably understand right off the bat that I really have nothing to write about. It's 1:14 in the morning, I have half a can of PBR left to consume and I'm listening to The Ruminant Band by the Fruit Bats on my iPod. 

Went to The Beetle earlier for a couple of drinks with Andrew and my brother Dan. On the way out I picked up a business card from a photographer who is apparently being featured on the wall at the bar for some unknown length of time. Needless to say I was very impressed by the business card, as it's clean and simple and printed on a nice, uncoated stock. Not so impressed having visited the website and looking at the photographs. Just didn't really strike me as all that impressive. Being somewhat of an amateur photographer with nothing to hang my hat on, I don't really care to be negative, but what can I say...I wasn't all that interested. What can you do? Well first I'll spit out my gum, but as to the photos, they just didn't mean anything to me. Anyway kudos to this person for showing off their photographs. 

Other than that...hell, I don't know. Finished a good book on Abraham Lincoln the other day. Sitting on this yoga ball, or exercise ball, or whatever the hell it is that I've had in my room for a year now and have obviously never used it for exercise. Needed my chair for the dining room table, as the roommates and I had a Swiss woman staying the night due to some unforeseen circumstances with Justin's sister/full capacity at the Chicago hostel/and whatever else I don't know. Anyway she seems to be a good person, so if she needs a place to crash, that's just fine with me. This is a good Fruit Bats album by the way, and if you missed them at Lincoln Hall last night, that's too bad, as they were pretty damn excellent. 

And speaking of photography, it's about time I got back on the saddle and used my camera. For some reason, I've completely fallen off the past few months. Why don't they have a pill for motivation? I'd be willing to be a test subject if something is in the testing stages. 

That's all I've got. Have a good night. 

Gratitude.

So I was thinking about my Aunt Margaret today, God rest her soul. Hadn't really thought about her lately, so it was good to look back and reflect upon her memory, or my memory of her really. It reminded me of the time when I was off at college and decided to study abroad in the Netherlands for a semester. I really didn't have much cash on hand for this trip as it wasn't all that well thought out, but I really wanted to go anyway. I kind of figured things would take care of themselves. Well I was off at school and had probably not seen my Aunt in quite some time...time possibly being years, and out of the blue she called me one day and let me know that she had heard of my plan and wanted to send me some money. Now knowing that she probably didn't really have all that much money, I was a bit reluctant to accept it, and I let her know that it wasn't necessary, but she insisted.

Afterwards, I called my Mother and let her know what had transpired, and she suggested that I just not cash the check when it arrived, and that seemed like a solid solution to my dilemma, but it did show up, and it was a cashier's check. Back on the phone with Mom and she said, well there's not much you can do now, so cash it and use it, which I did, forever grateful to my Aunt and her generosity. That money came from somewhere I never, ever would have expected. Nice surprise.

What I didn't really mention was that my Aunt was manic depressive so she, just like my Dad, would have bouts of mania and do things that weren't quite normal, which explains my reluctance to accept money from her out of the blue like that. But what can I say...that was one of the most unexpected, nice things anyone has ever done for me and I'll always be thankful.

That's all.

Good/Bad.

This is a new segment I like to call Good/Bad. I imagine it'll be pretty self-explanatory so I won't bother with an explanation or description, and no instructions for reading will be issued either. This particular segment will be based upon some of the recent happenings in the past few days, however some happenings will be excluded as I prefer to keep this blog friendly to the families.

That's not true.

Anyway onto the new segment.

Good - Last week was the first week in a long, long time that it was pretty slow in my department at work, allowing me to work at a much more leisurely pace.

Good - This should be a bad here, but I'm going to break with tradition and go right to another good. Friday night I took the ol' Western bus North to head back to Claremont to hang out with Flame for a while. If you don't know Flame's a cat who lives with my sister. I spent about two hours there petting him and chatting with him and cleaning myself with a lint roller, as he tends to shed quite a bit of fur. I also took some photos of him, which I should probably download and add to this here blog. Perhaps in a bit. Okay in a bit has occurred. So this is Flame posing with his good side, as he had less gunk in his right eye than the left. And below that he's checking out my iPhone, as he was curious how it worked and what apps I had purchased. I think his favorite was definitely the Hipstamatic camera app, which refused to work that night.

Bad - Woke up Saturday morning, caught a cab to meet my sister Jennifer at the vet over in Lincoln Square. We spent about two hours there getting some blood work done on Flame and finally putting the little kitty to sleep. At 11:24 am on Saturday, May 21st 2011,  Flame left this world for another one where all the good kitties snort catnip, play with balls of twine and lap up milk from little white saucers. At least that's what I've heard happens. I don't have anyway to verify this information, but at some point I imagine he'll let me know what's going on over on the other side.  The vet said that we made the right decision as his red blood cell count was really low and his white blood count was really high and he may or may not have had cancer or some other disease that's no fun to live with, even if you're a cat living with a great kitty owner like Jennifer. Here's a couple pictures from our time at the vet.

Well farewell kitty cat! You were quite a good cat for a damn long time and I'm happy to have spent so much time with you. I love you Flame.

Good - Had to get home after the vet so I could get ready and head out to Arlington Race Track for my friend Sean's Bachelor/Bachelorette party. I was taking the Metra, which usually isn't all that fun, but a couple Polish beers and some good songs on the iPod changed all that. Sometimes sitting and listening to good music while consuming a beer or two is a damn fine time. The only part of the trip that wasn't great was that I kept having to turn my head and burp because I didn't want to disgust the two women in front of me on the train. Lord knows what those smelled like.

Good - Arrived at the park and had only missed a couple of the races, the weather was beautiful and I was there with several friends that I hadn't seen in years, not to mention the happy couple Sean and Lindsey. Well this blog is taking forever as I had to stop for a burrito break, so I'll cut things a bit short. Last race of the day was upon us so as I wandered over to place my bet, I asked Marty and John if they wanted in on some of this action. Of course they said yes, so we placed a $2 trifectabox bet on horses 7, 12, and 3 I believe. I've gotta believe my kitty had passed along all his good luck to me as those three finished 1,2,3 in the race. I handed off my ticket to John to get in line, because I had to go use the john and when I came back he approached Marty and me from the ticket counter saying he didn't know how much we won, but we'd have to fill out a tax form. Always good to hear at the racetrack. Ends up we won $1750 on a $9 bet. Now you may be thinking how can a $2 trifectabox bet end up costing $9 as it should be $6. Well in a stroke of genius when I placed the bet I added an extra dollar to it, so we ended up with quite a bit more cash. In hindsight I should have placed a trifectabox with all the cash I had on me, but that would just be greedy. I'm plenty happy with what we won. So that was good.

Bad - Took me approximately 2 hours to get home from the racetrack. Won't bother going into details on this one, but it was quite a long time.

Good - Sunday afternoon I went along with Jody, Avery and Jackson to Avery's friend's birthday party at some Pump It Up place? I think that's the name. It's got giant inflatable things that the kids jump all over and run up and slide down and whatnot. All the sorts of things that I never had as a kid. Though to be fair Avery and Jackson don't have them either, they were just visiting. Pretty sure I got to bounce around in a few of those types of things, so scratch that never had as a kid part. That was just me being lame. Well it was fun to hang out with those three for the afternoon.

Bad - Took my camera along to the birthday party and pretty much every shot sucks. I couldn't figure out what the hell was going wrong. I just don't seem to do very well at pictures when it's kid parties. I think it may have had something to do with the VR on the camera, but not sure. Oh well, you live you learn. Also bad was that I had sandals on so I couldn't jump around on these things either. In hindsight I should have just bought some socks while I was there, but I made the decision to not bother. My bad.

Good - Bought 6 new shirts online from Threadless the other day and they showed up on Friday. They were pretty large looking so I was a bit worried they'd be too big, but I washed and dried one of them and it seemed to shrink a decent amount.

Bad - Wore my first new Threadless shirt to work today. Everyone was like, "Oh Dave that's an awesome shirt! Where'd you get it? How the fuck are you so damn cool all the time?" And I just sort of shrugged it all off in my not good at taking compliments/adoration type of way, which is also part of why I'm so cool. Okay no one said anything about the shirt. Wait, that's not true. Andrew told me he liked it and had thought about buying it previously. Anyway the bad part of this is that I took the bus home, got off at Ashland to deposit my track winnings in the bank, tried to get the next bus, which had already passed me by, and then ended up walking the rest of the way home, as there weren't any busses. Stupid bus lines. Got home and was about to walk in the door and I looked down at my shirt and there was a pretty large solid amount of bird shit right on the front of the shirt. Not sure how long it had been there, but I really can't quite figure out how a bird could shit on my shirt and I had no idea whatsoever. That is one hell of a stealth shit if I do say so myself.

Okay well that's the end of this Good/Bad blog. Damn this one took a long time.

What's Going On?

Woke up today, tossed and turned a bit, tried to sleep some more, but it wasn't happening. Took a look to see what time it was, and I'll be damned if it wasn't 6:30 am. This may not be surprising to most of you, but considering that I normally wake up at 8:15 it was way too early to be up on a weekday. Regardless, I decided to get up and get on with my day...which apparently means getting a coffee and writing a blog about waking up too early. Waking up early is always something I'd like to do, but hardly ever actually accomplish. Once I'm sleeping I prefer to not wake up any time soon.

Of course now that I've written about it, I don't know what else to write. Life has been pretty good of late. Not that anything exciting is happening, but I'll take life has been pretty good over life has been pretty shitty any day of the week.

Booked my trip to Vegas last night, which was less painful than I thought it might be. Five nights at the ol' Monte Carlo hotel. Hopefully it's a bit nicer than the 'ol(der) Riviera. My friend Sean is getting married out there to his lovely fiancee Lindsey. Should be a good time. I'll have lots of time to relax and take some pictures and whatnot. This time I'll try to remember to download the pics off the SD card so they all don't get accidentally deleted by my roommate. I had borrowed his camera the last time and well, those are just memories now.

I've also been considering the purchase of a new camera, the Nikon D7000, so maybe I'll have that before the trip. Just need to persuade myself that it's worthy of being owned by such a creature as myself. Or perhaps I just need to persuade myself to shell out the cash for it. Always having to shell out cash for this or that. Okay, always making the decision to shell out cash for this or that. We don't actually always have to do it, but we do it anyway, because we know it's helping out the economy and that's what our President said we should do. Our old President anyway. Not sure what the current one would say about that.

So I won a $200 tattoo certificate last week at a benefit for my friend Justin Sanberg. Not sure I'll go through with actually using it, but who knows, I might. I've never gotten an actual tattoo, but I claim to have one as my friend Chris stabbed me with a pencil in sixth grade and the mark is still there. That definitely counts I think. Perhaps I'll just get a tattoo of a circle, which will represents the macro view of that first tat. I don't think there's any saying or motto or logo or life creed that I need poked into my flesh.

Oh well. Something to think about anyway, as I've got several months before I need to make a decision.