existential fashion disaster

So … the vacation was postponed when Sarah’s Uncle passed away early this week. His memorial service isn’t until this coming Friday. Everyone’s been somber this week, but Mom had the next two weeks off work, so we all tried to be flexible and move the trip back a little bit. Then I got a call yesterday… my grandfather passed away. They’ve got a wake/funeral set up for Tuesday/Wednesday… so, I’ll be heading back just about as early as originally planned. As it stands, now, I’ll be flying back on Tuesday. Sarah and her Mom will drive out Saturday. We’ll have our vacation, and all drive back together at the end of the following week. We played with the idea of me driving and them flying, but decided that this way was more cost-effective; I’d probably be more comfortable long-haul driving than flying, but it costs the same amount of gas to transport two people as one, and my ticket doesn’t cost that much more, even though it’s last minute. I am sorta bummed that I can’t use United Miles on one-way trips, but I’ve got an itinerary on hold and ready to buy.

Gotta get through all this memorial stuff, and then we can vacation, as planned. That’s my mindset.

So, for those of you who are back east, I will be around for almost two weeks, a little busy until Thursday, and then joined by Sarah and her Mom on the weekend and for the rest of the following week. I will resume taking requests to hang out and/or suggestions for activities, now.

I need new strings. A string on my bass broke last night during practice… I hadn’t bought strings in so long, I must’ve thrown out the last batch of old ones I took off, so I had no spares. I had to leave practice early. After I left, I suppose there must’ve been some sort of discussion, because, when I got home, I got a call, thanking me for my efforts and asking when I could come pick up my amp later this week and a few lame apologies and excuses. This isn’t a disaster, though. It was good to be playing again, but it was definitely not the right group of guys. I have a very good sense of musical variety and space and melody and they could put together interesting song pieces, but didn’t really understand the musicality I was trying to bring to it. The phrase that will echo through my head is, “it sounds kinda gay when you do that, could you not do that?” I don’t think I’ve ever been told that one of my bass lines is wrong for a song. I want to believe it was just a matter of taste or style… but the songwriter dude will always be that “young, pushy and impatient guy with no sense of musical space” in my mind.

Even though I was half-relieved to be out of this musical situation, I still want to play, so I was a little upset. If nothing else, I have to go through the effort of finding musicians, again, and that’s a lot more effort than I originally imagined it to be. A little sadness and/or stress brought out all my usual urges. My first urge was the “nasty letter” … to go post on craigslist about not wanting to play with “impatient, pushy kids” and having unencumbered “freedom to use space, variety and melody” in my basslines… but I quickly squashed that idea. It was replaced with my go-to urge in times of stress and light depression: spending money. It started innocently enough, looking into the exhaust fan for the mac. But I was doing it on my zombie PC downstairs, which needed software updates… then I started looking into what kind of hardware was in there and whether I could max it out. It’s not like it was running slow at all and I barely ever even use that machine. I had an amazon cart full of hardware, when I came to my senses and realized I was stress-spending (like stress-eating, but more expensive).  I can spend money today on much more necessary things, like a haircut and an eye exam and new sunglasses…. and maybe new strings.

I guess this means I don’t need to pick up my 18″ cabinet when I go back east. I should probably retrieve it from whoever has it and get it to Mom’s, so I can have it shipped out here, when and if it does become necessary. We still haven’t firmed up any definite days for the week I’m out there, but the requests for hang-out time are coming in quickly, so if you haven’t commented or eMailed me, do it soon. T-Minus 6 or 7 Days … or something like that.

Just got through the camp training for this year. Lots of returning staff, which is a good thing. I’m an assistant/floater again, and there are four of us this year. There are also more kids, but hopefully, as we get into the swing of things, I’ll be able to break out and take a lot of pictures, like last year. One big difference is that I won’t be driving into the city, all summer, unless some special circumstance comes up at camp, or I find a band that wants to practice on a weekday evening. I did some trial runs on the trains and buses, this week, and I think I’ve figured out all my options. The rides don’t take any less time than driving, but much less gas, and will give me a chance to really listen to much more music. Camp will keep me pretty busy during the week and pretty tired in the evenings, so I will probably not blog much. This is normal summer procedure for me - I’m not dead. If I die, I’ll let you know.

Not driving a lot in the summer has put the new GPS device decision on hold… which is fine, since I can’t decide on a unit, now. XM NavTraffic is the clear choice for traffic service, but only older portable units have it, and I definitely don’t want to replace the head unit in the Mazda. Maybe by the time I’m driving a lot, again, another traffic service will have improved or NavTraffic will score some new portable placements.

I’m too tired to remember what else I wanted to blog about. Summer is already kicking in.

They’re like duck boats for your feet… that’s what they make me think of anyway. I picked up a pair of the “off-road” variety at the REI, that we spent hours trying to find, yesterday. They’re comfortable. The strap button is irritating me a little, but nothing out of the ordinary for a new-shoe kinda thing. We went there to look at camera bags, since mine is dying and so is Sarah’s. They’re supposed to have some Crumpler bags, but they didn’t have anything except a couple gadget pouches. By the way, when did REI start putting its “co-op” status in the limelight? I have this member card, which I thought was just another store rewards program… but it turns out that I’m a member of the REI Co-op. I even had a “dividend” that I got to put towards my purchase.

Getting utterly lost on the way there, due to our complete reliance on the unerring accuracy of printed out Google directions, made me realize that I really do benefit from the GPS. It’s time to get a unit in the car that’s mountable, unlike the cheesy little laptop. I added one with a good traffic system and a big screen to my Amazon wishlist. I’m unimpressed with MSN’s traffic system, on the laptop, but I’ve heard there are a couple new traffic monitoring systems coming out soon. We did chance upon a Cosi, though, so it wasn’t a total waste.

It’s nice to have my car back. I had to pay my deductible, but the Progressive dude seemed pretty sure that once he heard back from State Farm, that I’d get reimbursed pretty quickly. I got a nifty little keychain. It’s one of those classic, flat, rubbery ones. It’s a nice addition to my growing keychain collection. The place also did some serious cleaning of the interior. I was amazed.

I’m strongly considering using public transportation for camp this summer. I don’t need to carry a whole lot of equipment to camp everyday, and I’ve got my iPod and Nintendo DS for train/bus entertainment. I did some searching through transitchicago.com for routes from a couple of the Metra stations. The system is pretty darn cool, goes through Google maps and gives you alternate routes with approximate arrival times. Maybe I’ll try out a route or two next week, during camp training.

Spent most of the day going through pictures from the trip. I picked out about 150 of them and put them up on flickr. My flickr “uploadr” sucks pretty bad… I had to retry the upload on some of these sets two or three times. Sometimes it gives up and keeps track of what didn’t get uploaded. Sometimes it’ll try to finish it’s upload, sometimes it won’t. Sometimes it’ll fail to upload at all and not even tell me. Sometimes it’ll get glitchy and upload the ones it missed twice. It’s pretty buggy. You can see all the picturesfrom the newest sets in my Vacations collection or by searching the tag “Knopf Northwest Vacation”

In other news, someone drove into my car in the YMCA parking lot on Saturday. It apparently happened just before I was going to leave. I didn’t notice, since all the damage was around the front passenger-side wheel. I was in my car, and had turned it on and was ready to drive off… when a kid came running up with a note in his hand and apologized for scratching my car. I got out and looked at it, and it seemed to look like a bunch of scratches, so I was hoping we could take care of it without going through insurance companies. I got his contact info. But then I put the car in drive and it would not go. Upon closer inspection, I noticed that the wheel was not going straight, like the driver-side. So, I found the kid, in the Y, and we exchanged insurance info and called the police and I called my insurance company and set up all the towing, repairs and rental car stuff. It was supposed to be towed on Monday, so I went back to the Y on Sunday afternoon, after picking up the rental car, to take some pictures, and it was already gone. My rental is a Dodge Magnum, which is really fun to drive and very comfortable.

…must do some planning for the Seattle trip… must resist urge to play Mario Kart Wii until I don’t have time to do anything but finish the Adventure Ed stats before the meeting on Tuesday…

I’m probably forgetting stuff, but already on the list are some gardens in Victoria, the Capilano Suspension Bridge in Vancouver and Pike Place Market and the Seattle Aquarium… on the probably/possibly/maybe list is the Space Needle, Experience Music Project, Boeing and the Underground Tour.

Some Yelp searching has turned up these, that I’d like to add to the food possibilities list:

Paseo - the words “food orgasm” come up in their reviews, especially when it comes to something called a midnight cuban.
HoneyHole - sounds dirty, and delicious… “best fries in seattle” in several reviews
Armandino’s Salumi - great reviews… short hours, long lines and sort of expensive, but worth taking a day off of work for!
Cloud City Coffee - need to snub my nose at Starbucks by having good coffee somewhere in Seattle and this place sounds pretty cool
Portage Bay Cafe - good breakfasts, some talk of “unlimited fruit” and such at the “toppings bar.”
Georgetown Truck Stop - affordable, delicious breakfasts

And some other stops/shopping that sounds interesting:

Elliott Bay Book Company - we like books.
Archie McPhee - toys and silliness
Lincoln Square Cinemas - in case we decide not to break our movie night tradition
Nintendo Headquarters - yeah, we love nintendo.

Any other suggestions?

Anyone who knows me, knows that I am not political. I’m not even registered to vote in Illinois. I thought I was last registered in Dudley, but who knows. Until a candidate who is an atheist, possibly an existentialist, in favor of a complete destruction and rebuilding of the monetary system from one based on debt to one based on work and is basically an anarchist runs, I can’t get behind one and give them my vote, because they won’t represent me. Having said that, I have voted once (and attempted to vote a couple other times, but was told I didn’t exist). I will vote for or against the presidential candidate that I would like to or not like to see on TV for the next four years. I didn’t want to see Bush’s creepy little beady eyes on TV for four years (or four more years), so I attempted to vote against him, twice. I didn’t really like either candidate, but I knew who I didn’t like, based on what I’d seen on TV. I occasionally watch some election coverage, so I’m not clueless about who’s on the ticket. Tonight, the Pennsylvania primary coverage was on. Barack Obama was losing the state’s primary. He’d traveled to Indiana to start his campaigning there, so he gave his speech tonight, from there. Here is what I saw… and what I don’t want to see, for the next four years:

That’s Barack Obama and three guys who look like fratboy-idiots, in Abercrombie & Fitch t-shirts. I’m not saying that this is some sort of purposeful advertising campaign by Abercrombie, though that would be really disgusting, too. I’m saying that I don’t want to see dumb people behind my president. He seems ok, but those buffoons behind him are obviously fratboy sheep. If they were blank t-shirts, it would’ve been ok. If they had witty text on them, I might’ve been intrigued. But they’re brand name t-shirts among the likes of Aeropostale, Hollister and American Eagle Outfitters. Why are they there? Do fratboy-sheep like this guy? It makes me think twice about liking him. If nothing else, this is a tragic mistake by some staffer on his campaign. There must be a guy who looks at the people who are going to be on screen with him… image is important, right? To an unimpressed, unaffected voter like myself, it’s just about all that matters. And if there is such a guy, he let those three bully-esque, stubble-faced kids with giant advertisements on their chests, be the backdrop behind his candidate.

I’ve never been to Michigan, before. I drove very close to it on my treks between Woonsocket and Chicago, but never crossed the line. Today, I did. I believe our bed & breakfast is in about the second or third town over that line. Cute little towns with shops and restaurants and beaches. Not much in the way of urban civilization. We drove about 30 miles north-ish and found a movie theater in a town with a bunch of retail stuff. We saw Horton Hears a Who. It was cute and fairly well done. It gets the thumbs up. Our bed & breakfast also gets the thumbs up; nice sized room, friendly person at the desk when we got here… all the local restaurant menus in the “library” … wi-fi. Our first stop here was a brief one, we just brought our stuff up and took a look around and decided where we should have dinner. Red Arrow Roadhouse won, mostly due to having delicious sounding desserts and toasted ravioli as an appetizer. I had a full slab of ribs and it was yum. They had two different kinds of mudd pie, we each got one. The place was pretty full, especially for a Monday night, and it was getting even more busy as we were leaving. After food, we went to a casino in the New Buffalo (the first or second town over the Michigan border). I put in somewhere between twenty and twenty-five dollars, and cashed out at $85.75. Did a little video roulette, but won most of it on a video slot machine.

Hopefully, I’ll get some pictures of stuff tomorrow. The lake on the horizon seems unnaturally high to me. I told Sarah that it looked like a “lake mountain” and she laughed at me. We’ve got the Kalamazoo indoor flea market and other such antiquing/shopping on the schedule for tomorrow.

The sun is still only coming out on days where we sleep in or need to go to work. We got an old Polaroid 450 land camera working with a new set of batteries and a pack of 690 from the local Wolf Camera… Sarah tried to buy it at the camera store she works at, but they told her she couldn’t… something about needing it for passport photos. Pretty strange that she had to take her business elsewhere. Anyway, that’s a lot of film to use up in all these new/old cameras. So we need a sunny day… preferably one with temperatures at least in the double digits.

The adapter that came the other day turned out to be the opposite of what I needed, but I took a trip down to Micro Center while Sarah was at work. It took a really long time to get there, due to traffic/weather issues, so I didn’t get to wander around the store and bask in it’s full glory, but it was pretty impressive. Very big store, seemed to have a good selection and someone was there to help me within a minute or two of me walking in. They had the right one, so I’m closer to fixing the fish tank computer, though I still don’t know where or when I’ll tackle that.

In other news, I took some of the money in my ING account and invested it in some stocks, prompted by their eMail about acquiring Sharebuilder. I’ll never use the crazy stock strategies that I learned with Dad at those nutty seminars, but I did include some Food industry stocks in my little portfolio, in honor of his idea that “people will always need food.” I’m about 60/40 Technology & Food industry stocks, so I guess I could do another food stock or some other industry, but I invested about half of what was in the ING account, and I was kinda hoping to see the results of that savings account interest versus the stock gains over time. So I’ll probably just leave it how it is.

I’ve packed and prepared for my morning plane. This is the first of what will probably be my annual holiday visit to Mom’s. Been a while since I flew. I think I preferred the aisle seats to windows, but the allure of a window seat called to me and I chose one. I’ll just be chilling with my iPod for the whole ride, it’s a pretty short one, if I recall correctly. It’s an entirely different experience than driving out there. I miss seeing Mom; I miss some of my friends… but this definitely feels more like a visit, than a trip “home.” Here really feels like home, now. Sure, I don’t really have a desk of my own and the work situation is still a little more part-time than it should be… but otherwise, things are pretty darn awesome, here. There’s been some tension, but I think it’s related to gifts and the secrecy surrounding them. I’ll be relieved when all the gifts are open and everyone knows what they got and hopefully all the weirdness will blow over. I certainly spent way too much this year, and I know it. All year I spend stupid amounts of money on myself, I need to be able to make up for it during the holidays. I sent stuff to a few people, through Amazon, and got a whole lot for Sarah and her family. I might’ve gone overboard, but I hardly pay anything for my room and board here, so I don’t feel like it’s too much. Besides, I’m a damn good bargain shopper… it’s not like I paid full price for anything.

Anyway, planning on relaxing at Mom’s for a good percentage of my time at home, so I should be able to update a few times. Hope you all enjoy your holidays if I don’t see you!