Yearly Archives: 2004

Love-Hate Blogs

Ever have those love-hate rela­tion­ship with blogs, where they seem so inter­est­ing in one post, then so com­plete­ly stu­pid in the next? Sometimes I’ll go through the process of delet­ing one from my book­marks then re-adding it lat­er from mem­o­ry.

Possibly His Only Chance

A few days ago, I dropped off some pants to get hemmed. They weren’t ready when I went to pick them up, and this turned out to be a major incon­ve­nience; there were some things I had to do at the mall and I want­ed to get them all done at once. The tai­lor told me when they would sup­pos­ed­ly be ready and I made my plans around that.

When I made the extra trip to pick up my pants, there were two Thai women, lean­ing over the counter, flirt­ing with him. Being a Thai man, he flirt­ed back. The women stood to the side when I approached the counter, and kept mak­ing com­ments and then ask­ing me in return, “You’re look­ing good these days. He looks good, does­n’t he? And you have a good busi­ness going. It’s a good busi­ness, isn’t it?”. I was about to say some­thing regard­ing the tar­di­ness of the ser­vice, since I was thor­ough­ly irate about the extra trip, but decid­ed against it. Here he was, being hit on by two women. Who knows when he’d have the oppor­tu­ni­ty again.

Bon Echo '04

Went camp­ing again, most like­ly the last time for the year. I’ve dis­cov­ered that I’m too much of a city slick­er to keep up with the oth­ers; I miss show­er­ing too much. The camp­ground was nice, but the paved roads and wash­ing machines sort of took away from the entire out­doors expe­ri­ence. Of course, we also had com­fort sta­tions, lighters, pre-chopped fire­wood, and fresh water taps, so it’s not like we were hard­core camp­ing any­way. It’s good to be able to get away every once in a while, to places with no com­put­ers or cell phone ser­vice, but once or twice a year is enough for me.

Bon Echo '04 Day woods

Bon Echo '04 Night woods

The woods were great. Trees stood taller than any I’ve ever seen, and the made the sur­round­ing areas thick with veg­e­ta­tion. The entire camp­ground was gigan­tic, with mul­ti­ple beach­es, qui­et areas, rock climb­ing, and cliff div­ing.

Bon Echo '04 Aaron as trucker

And Aaron pre­tend­ed to be a truck­er. The sto­ry behind the hat: Trolley got a free Hurley hat with a pur­chase he made. Trolley hates truck­er hats though cause he can’t pull them off, and was going to sell it on eBay. Aaron saw it one day when he was over, and tried it on (cause he always tries on the most ridicu­lous things as a joke). Somehow it works for him, although the hat must be worn high on the head and slight­ly tilt­ed to the right.

The Cat Gets Fat

Dolly on her pillow as a kitten

There once was a kit­ten who enjoyed sleep­ing in a lit­tle wick­er bas­ket on the top shelf of my desk. I bought her a green pil­low that had a remov­able case, and stuffed it in the wick­er bas­ket so she would be more com­fort­able. She was very hap­py in there, with her birds-eye view of the entire room, and would spend hours upon hours in the lofty enclo­sure.

Soon, how­ev­er, she noticed that the bas­ket was get­ting small­er. It got hard­er and hard­er for her to jump in with­out knock­ing oth­er things over. Eventually, she stopped sleep­ing in there alto­geth­er, as she out­grew the bas­ket and would­n’t fit in its shel­ter­ing walls.

Dolly on her pillow as a kitten

Eventually, I moved the pil­low to my bed, with­out the wick­er bas­ket, and the cat, no longer a kit­ten, resumed her naps there. The pil­low, on the oth­er hand, remained the same size, and no longer sup­ports the sheer girth of the once tiny feline. However, she con­tin­ues to enjoy sleep­ing on it, and has no prob­lem acco­mo­dat­ing for space restric­tions with an uncush­ioned limb or two.

Par 3 Pick-Up

Went through a small par 3 nine-hole course with Aaron on the week­end. I could­n’t hit a sin­gle good shot off the tee (the holes are in the 100 yard range so all tee-offs were done with irons), but my pitch­ing is fuck­ing spot on. I love the feel­ing of graz­ing tall grass with a half-swing and see­ing the ball make a per­fect arch to the green.

I can feel my game com­ing togeth­er, but almost all of my prob­lems are men­tal, just like my bad iron hits off the tee (I uncon­trol­lably lift my knees on the down­swing to avoid get­ting under the ball too much). I need to relax, loosen my grip, and pace my swing bet­ter, all when hit­ting the ball counts. I’ve got­ten to the point where stance and address come nat­u­ral­ly, so it’s good to know that all the sum­mers I spent at the dri­ving range actu­al­ly helped. Unfortunately, I’m still chok­ing down to the edge of the grip, even after hav­ing my clubs short­ened about two inch­es.

I must have been get­ting a good 250 yards off Aaron’s new tita­ni­um dri­ver, some­thing I could nev­er do with my steel shafts. Even though it makes me slice like crazy, it must have been the most sat­is­fy­ing club ever to use. It’s light, it’s respon­sive, it has a gigan­tic head, AMAZING torque, and it gives a loud, full, res­onat­ing chime on con­nec­tion. I think it’s time for a new set, maybe some sweeeeeeeeeeet Japanese brand tita­ni­um shafts, like the ones I had the chance to use while in Hong Kong. The next pur­chase will be a deci­sion between those and a DV cam, and that’ll be the end of my lux­u­ry spend­ing. Honestly.