People who are sick at home with the flu should not leave sandals in the dark spaces between the bedroom and the bathroom if they don't want to trip onto ceramic tiles.

I really, really wish that the grill of the A/C unit right outside my bedroom would stop choosing the weekend that I get the flu to start hitting the fan. I think this is like the third year in a row this has happened.

Last night, I rushed home to meet up with ifuwereafrog for dinner, but when I went to my car to go pick her up, I noticed that the driver's side door was not fully closed. My initial thought was that I didn't close it properly when I last drove, but I realized that all my belongings in the car had been rifled through. Urgently needing to meet up with Erin (and having a dead battery from the dome-light), I locked up the car and decided to go over it today.

Around lunchtime today, I called up AAA to get a battery boost, and when they arrived, took a quick inventory of things that I should expect to find in my car, but are not in there:

• A ziplock bag of quarters amounting to about ten dollars in the change cup
• Other change in the driver's side hand-hold.
• My portable air-compressor for use refilling tires when they go flat.
• An emergency car kit including various tools and a set of jumper cables.
• An FM Transmitter for portable music players (and included cable) which could also play mp3s off of USB drives.
• A CD case full of CD-Rs burned with music.
• Who knows what else?

Silver linings: The thieves didn't break a window or anything to get in, so no damage, and they didn't take the CDs located on the visor which include actual purchased-from-store CDs.

Still, getting burgled sucks the bag.

Does anyone reading this have DirecTV in the Atlanta area? Bonus points if you're a fan of sci-fi/genre television.

On a somewhat related note, I have the following books up for grabs to anyone local:

• Rick Moody's Garden State (not the basis for the movie)
• Everything Bad is Good For You by Steven Johnson
• Opening Skinner's Box by Lauren Slater
• Play Poker Like the Pros by Hellmuth
• James McManus's Positively Fifth Street
• James Howard Kunstler's The Geography of Nowhere
• Geek Love by Katherine Dunn
• Comic Wars: Marvel's Battle for Survival by Dan Raviv
• The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon
• Bragging Rights: A Season Inside the SEC by Richard Ernsberger, Jr.
• The Automatic Millionaire and The Automatic Millionaire Homeowner by David Bach
• Oliver Sacks's A Leg To Stand On
• Meditations by Marcus Aurelius
• Dumbing Down: Essays on the Strip-Mining of American Culture
• The scripts to When Harry Met Sally and Good Will Hunting

If you're not local, and you want one of these books, I'll probably need like 5 dollars or so to ship it out.

Hey, you know what it's like when the cover for the light fixture above your head comes loose unexpectedly and comes crashing down onto your monitor while you're sitting in front of the computer playing Hexic, causing glass shards to fly all over you, your keyboard, your mouse, and your desk?

No?

Oh, maybe it's just me, then...

...about working from home because you're waiting for a guy to come repair your refrigerator is getting hungry and realizing that you

1. can't go out because you might miss the repair guy
2. can't really order a big pizza, because what do you expect to put the leftovers in if the repair guy doesn't show up?
3. have nothing to drink aside from lukewarm water
4. pretty much have nothing unspoiled to eat aside from poptarts and craisins.

The Pink Gator's Mother had the following to offer:

PG: "Or you could just make this arrangement with him legal and move into some place as a couple."
PG: that's what she said!!!
PG: no pressure there, MOM.
PG: you're parents would probably say the same thing as my mom.
Me: yeah, probably.
PG: yes, "Your mother and I got married due to a lack of parking."

I've been living in a condo complex in Atlanta for going on six years now. One major problem at this complex is a lack of guest parking--we have a gated lot with enough spaces for each bedroom. One-bedroom condo owners get one gated space, two-bedroom unit owners get two. For the most part, I'm okay with the parking situation, because I'm a messy, misanthropic hermit who generally doesn't have people over to entertain.

In the front of the complex is a small lot marked "Guest Parking" with approximately nine or ten spaces. When the Pink Gator comes over, she usually tries to find a space in that lot, because it's conveniently close to the door of the complex. This morning, however, she returned to her car to find a note with the following message:

Too many times in guest parking - Beyond time allowed

I call the front office to ask if I need to register her car with the security service so that she'll stop getting these messages, and our property manager informs me that several years ago, because of actual residents using the guest parking spaces, our board of directors passed a rule that guest parking is for guests who visit on an infrequent basis.

If the Pink Gator would like to visit more than say, twice a week, then she needs to park elsewhere (the property manager actually told me that she should park in the parking garage of the high-rise down the street).

Apparently, "Guest Parking" is only available to a certain class of guest.

This is why I hate people.

Dear Comcast:

Fuck you.

Fuck you and your crappy, our-tech-fell-asleep-while-waiting-for-us-so-we-fired-him customer service.

Fuck you in your stupid, cable-company-acquiring, exclusive-right-to-serve-video-in-my-condo-complex asshole.

Fuck your let's-wait-to-give-appropriate-info-to-everyone-until-it's-too-late-to-get-satellite-without-an-interruption-of-service, donkey-ball-sucking ass.

Go fuck a goat.

-That Yellow Bastard

I will not be able to join you this weekend for any type of celebration, gathering, outing, function, assemblage, affair, meal, bacchanal, festivity, soirée, or gala until I've completed the following tasks:

• My taxes.
• Cleaning my place to a somewhat presentable state.

And someone needs to get this fucking guitar away from me.

While I'm quite aware that you've no idea that I've been battling the flu for the past five days, I would appreciate it if you didn't hold loud, heel-clomping, bass-thumping parties on Thursday nights until 1:00 AM. Especially if you decide to continue with bed-shaking, wanton-moaning sex directly above me at 5:00 AM, waking me up to the point where I can't really get back to sleep.

If you must, please just make the sex come right after the party so I can get a contiguous block of sleep of at least six to seven hours in length without feeling the need to get up and watch this week's episodes of Lost and Smallville because I'm tired of tossing and turning.

Your Downstairs Neighbor.

Honestly, it didn't really sound like he got you off at all either...

If you're interested in joining in sometime Friday night to see Serenity, comment on this message.


In other news, I need to outlay a little under 2k for a new A/C heat pump. Fucking yay.

In this day and age, you'll find most common consumer electronics are coming out with a nod towards internet connectivity. I've read of refrigerators having touch screens and cell phones which can switch to use VOIP when in the presence of WiFi signals. I spent Saturday night at a friend's place where his DVD player can stream MP3s and MPEG video from a networked server, as well as access streaming radio stations on the Internet.

So I don't necessarily think a networked smoke detector would be too bad an idea. I mean, you could probably build radon and carbon monoxide detectors into the same unit, thereby eliminating the need to have like 200 of these obtrusive, beige, round things in the house--I don't think I'd even mind the increase in price. People could check the safety of their houses from work, making sure that everything is ok at home with the kiddies.

But most of all, you could have a frickin' clock so that when the damned battery gets low, it doesn't start incessantly chirping at 4:00 in the morning without the means to get the thing to shut the fuck up!

Thank you for your consideration,
James, who is planning to hit Costco on his lunchbreak to pick up some 9-volt batteries...

In case there are people who actually follow this thing and are wondering about my whereabouts, I am alive and mostly well in Atlanta.

Last Wednesday, I went to work after a long night of attempted insect genocide. I left work early because of a creeping nausea which at home turned into dry heaves, full-body soreness, and a general malaise. I have a feeling it was either a case of food poisoning or too much exposure to a variety of ant killers including, but not exclusive to, CVS Ant and Roach killer, Terro Ant Killer liquid, a vinegar and water mixture (apparently ants seem to like that not-so-fresh feeling), and some ouroboric acid.

Particularly irksome was the knowledge that despite the imperative urge to bring forth stomach acid through my mouth and nostrils, I would have to get up at 6:00 in the AM to get to the airport on time for my flight down to Miami. While I did feel better in the evening, I made sure, despite my pervasive fatigue, to pack some plastic bags in my carry-on, on the off-chance that the a bumpy flight would make me want to spew some amalgam of bottled water and Cinnabon.

Didn't do much of anything down in Miami, aside from watching a whole bunch of television and DVDs. Aside from a marathon of Modern Marvel's "Engineering Disasters" on the History Channel, I watched a DVD of The Adventures of the Galaxy Rangers and finally caught Donnie Darko. The family also sat down together and watched both Hero and House of Flying Daggers even though we'd already seen the former once before.

So I'm back in Atlanta, doing a whole bunch of squat because I'm getting ready for this weekend--the family is heading to Los Angeles, where we're supposed to do a bunch of touristy type things. I don't think we'll be going to Universal, but I did just make a reservation to go see the WB Studio Tour.

Hopefully, as we pass through the Gilmore Girls set, I'll catch Lauren Graham's eye, and I can whisk her away to Tahoe or BC or somewhere for a month of something or another involving me dressed up as Santa Claus.

Yeah, right. A silly Chinese boy can dream, can't he?

Please stop with the whistling.

Thank you.

Have you been in the Apple stores?

You know in the kids' section, at the short table where the iMacs are, you know those little chairs that just look like cushiony, black spheres?

I want some of those. They wouldn't necessarily go with my decor, but they're rather comfy and fun.

I found spiralingmoon a few months ago linked off of the friendsfriends, and I forgot about it until a bit ago. She paints using her own menstrual blood. I think the average person probably finds this rather squick-worthy, but honestly, it doesn't bother me so much (Hell, I wrote a short LOTR-Buffy crossover drabble where it plays a significant role).

I will say, however, that I tend to prefer the figurative/iconic work that she was creating around this time last year--the abstract pieces aren't nearly as compelling.

Finally, I created this icon this morning in honor of xopherg's new TiVo. I, myself, bought a third one yesterday.

I've had my welcome mat for a while.

I bought it some time in '99 or so. It has four Chinese Characters on it, fú zé wú jiā

Roughly translated, it means "bless our home," or, more appropriately, "enrich our home."

Arriving home from work today, I noticed there was something slipped under my door knocker. I get a lot of things slipped under the door knocker--package notices, condo association newsletters--so I didn't think much of it. But when I drew it out, I found a slip of paper, rough around the edges, with the characters written out, their Anglicizations underneath, and their individual translations under that:

"happiness radiance our home"

It's neat that someone took the time to look up the meaning of my welcome mat, print it out, and let me know.

Hopefully, she's cute.


On another note, I think my back is worse than I initially suspected.

I spent about 30 MuVo's yesterday. Now all I have to do is tell Chase Manhattan to stop the auto-debit of my bank account. Here's hoping the new place has automatic funds transfers...

/me looking forward to paying about 300 dollars less a month for my mortgage...

( The Friday Five )
Current Mood: hungry

Well, I just signed about 40 pages worth of paperwork, reducing my monthly payments down to 880 something dollars instead of 1170 or so. Of course, I need to get a cashier's check for around three and a half large.

One added bonus: payments on the new loan begin April 1. So March's 1170 can go to paying a third of that cashier's check.

That and buying my frickin' dinner tonight...
Current Mood: relieved

The woman handling my refinancing called me earlier today, and told me that the underwriting department wanted page three of my bank statement. I bank at Wachovia (formerly First Union), and they basically send two sheets of paper with pages numbered "Page 1 of 3" and so on.

Now if you don't know, Page 3 is that total waste of paper that they include so people have some sort of example to balance their checkbook. I, being horrendously lazy, don't really balance my checkbook, and even if I did, I wouldn't need an extra sheet of paper to do so. I generally shred these things, despite their utter wastage of paper, because I, in my paranoia of identity theft, don't really want my checking account number getting out to the phantom strangers who could be dumpster diving in the Tuscany dumpster.

So at 2:00 or so today, I drove home and found my most recent checking account statement, drove back to work, and made copies to fax the useless shit to the underwriter.

Fast forward three hours. I just got off the phone with the fellow I thought was my condo contents insurance agent. Checking my cellphone voicemail, I discovered that a rep from the company which is doing my refinancing called and told me that this guy says that he's not providing me with insurance. I called him up and he told me that he sent me a letter a few months ago stating why my insurance was rejected.

Ok, does this seem odd to you? I never got a letter, my check cleared on October 29, 2002, and I haven't heard a peep from them.

Why the hell can't things ever be simple anymore?

Edit: my "agent" just called again, and he says that he's mistaken, and that I do have coverage under Farmers' Insurance, despite what he told the people who are doing my refinancing. WTF?
Current Mood: aggravated

Not fifty minutes ago, a diminutive Vietnamese woman named Tina was in the process of shearing away some of my hair.

When I walked into the Chinese barbershop/hair salon, I walked over, and she scissored two fingers into her hair, and I nodded. She pointed me towards a chair, and I sat; she wrapped a towel about my neck and draped a sheet decorated with some Patrick Nagel/Ty Wilson-wannabe graphic over me. And then she started to cut my hair.

No talking. No asking how I wanted it styled.

Once, after she had already started, she pointed at my hair in a couple of places, and muttered something, and I tried to explain to her that I couldn't speak Chinese very well. It would be about 30 minutes later, after the shampoo and the teeth-rattling massage, when she would tell me (in English) that she was from Vietnam, and ask me about myself.

At the time, however, all of this just wasn't at all upsetting to me. I just placed my trust in this woman to cut my hair appropriately.

This is, of course, in preparation for my return to Miami, so I can avoid my father's insistence that my hair is too long, and the therefore subsequent obligation to go see Lucy, the woman who used to cut my hair when I was living down there.

It's not that I don't like going to see Lucy, but you need to understand that with a trip back home, certain obligations have a tendency to crop up. Because my parents are my parents, I don't really get to say no to the "can you tell me what's wrong with the computer?" question (I've luckily ducked out on a lot of these questions since moving to Atlanta, since Jerry lives in Boynton Beach...).

Other obligations: going shopping for who knows what. While this may seem like something that would appeal to me, invariably we'll go shopping for the most tedious things,
The most taxing of the expected obligations is the Moving of the Stuff. For some reason unapparent to those of us under the age of 31, we need to move Stuff around the house a lot--from trunks full of clothes, to, more usually, furniture. Beds, shelves (and the books on them), dressers, etc. My mom and dad are worried about my father's back. Jerry and I, are worried about our own...

Oh well... Here's to family get-togethers.

Oh yeah, the haircut turned out fine.


I actually did go to see Die Another Day yesterday afternoon, with Jeech and Earnie. It was entertaining enough, but quite stupid in parts. For example, why would anyone get onto a plane in North Korea, dressed in army fatigues, and then change into some ho-cake tube top, arm-length gloves, and skin-tight white pants? Is this really necessary? Give me Famke Janssen in a short cotton robe anyday...
Current Mood: shorn
Current Music: "Standing" (remix) by VNV Nation

I just found out that the sum of the lawsuit against the HOA is along the lines of $180,000.

One. Hundred. Eighty. Thousand. Dollars.

ONE HUNDRED EIGHTY THOUSAND DOLLARS!

WHAT THE FUCK?!

The stupid wench is suing for an amount about 39 grand greater than the value of her bleeding condo!

I'm about a hair's breadth away from going apeshit.

. . .
. . .
. . .
. . .

There...I've gone apeshit.
Current Mood: livid

Ok. About two months ago, I made the motions to start refinancing my condo, because the rates were good, and I could use the extra cash. First I had to call around to all the various insurance companies and get condo contents insurance coverage. Most of the time, mortgage companies will want you to show some proof of coverage so they know that they're not going to just lose money on shit.

It took me about 2 weeks to get anywhere with coverage because my existing car insurance company (State Farm) apparently had quotas on how many homeowner's policies that they could write. So I finally found a company that would cover me (Farmers), paid their fucking blood money, and got ready for the refinance.

After shopping around for good rates, I actually put an application in for my refinance with a company who took my application (along with a $300 application fee). At one point I had to meet a guy at my place so he could appraise it, and then...nothing.

For two weeks.

When I finally get some news, it's bad--some litigious bint who lived here for less than a year has decided to sue the Homeowner's Association and the Developer of the place for water damage (to her bloody furniture). Someone please explain to me how the damned homeowner's association is liable for water damage? How does that make any sense?

On top of that, because the HOA has only been in the control of the homeowners since January of this year, the refinancing's underwriters have determined that the mortgage will be unwarrantable. Eh? All of this means absolutely nothing to me. I've been paying the fucking HOA since October of 2000. How exactly does the voting control of the stupid thing matter?

Well, I can bitch and moan all I want, but the bottom line is that

1. I need to do more running around to get my place refinanced,
   
2. I'll probably get a higher rate than what I locked in at, and
   
3. Dealing with mortgage companies is about as fun as I'd imagine being the recipient of lubeless fisting would be.

I need to find out who sued the HOA, so I can spit a chocolate-oj-milk-based loogie on her if I ever see her again.
Current Mood: aggravated
Current Music: dj tiesto - live at innercity amsterdam.

Went to sleep at 6:15 last night (err... this morning...) for some reason because after trying to watch all three Godfather movies at Rob's place, playing four games of chess (in the we-made-a-mockery-of-the-game-of-chess sense) with Nandu and Jason, and eating way too much wonderful food prepared by Keely (plus Jessyca's delectable tiramisu, I went home at about 4:30, showered the smoke from me, and began to play Hoyle Casino (2 Texas Hold'em Tournaments) and Hoyle Card Games (Hearts and Gin Rummy).

Woke up around noon today, and watched some TV, and then went to eat brunch at Apr´s. John and I then went to CompUSA and I bought another SiPix for Jerry and some other stuff. Went to CD Merchants afterwards to look for used CDs, because let's face it. I'd rather buy a used CD to prevent the freaking RIAA to get any additional income. As a matter of fact, I think I may sell a good many of my CDs now--it's not like I listen to most of them...

But I digress. After CD Merchants, I went to Target and bought some cleaning shit for all the mildew growing on my mildew-resistant shower curtain. What gives? I did get to see what could be one of the most sultry women I've ever seen walking by me amidst the aisles of the store. Or maybe I'm just being hyperbolic because it's really just been far too long.

So anyways, I made some leftover pasta that Keely left for me with garlic and oil (when garlic starts growing roots and stuff, is the darker part in the middle of the clove OK to eat? I sure hope so, 'cause if not...uhhh.... uh-oh...). Cleaned the tub, and watched John Doe.

I was thinking about heading to the bar, but I'm a bit tired, and I don't feel like getting all smoky. So I'm going to upgrade my computer so I can use USB 2.0 devices. Yay.

Word of the moment: odalisque
Current Mood: mellow
Current Music: Good Eats: Gravy Confidential