Posts in category "Daily Life"

First Weekend In Boulter

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Spent the week­end at Trolley’s house with Wheaties, Aaron, and Nick. The car ride took about three hours, squeezed into the back of his com­pact Jetta. I would have called shot­gun but I doubt any­one would have respect­ed it; Nick and Aaron had pri­or­i­ty as the biggest guys. I made a playlist for the ride there, and it was good for the first half. The prob­lem with such playlists is that they’re usu­al­ly meant for sum­mer in the open air, not night time win­ter rides. A lot of songs end up being inap­pro­pri­ate.

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Trolley’s place is a 350 acre farm, on a long road that’s actu­al­ly named after his fam­i­ly. Definitely a place with per­son­al­i­ty and an amaz­ing view of the open coun­try­side. Heat is turned up by throw­ing more logs in the fur­nace. His cat Femo is more vocal than Dolly and always cries for atten­tion. She’ll quick­ly turn bel­ly up if you scratch her the right way, and does­n’t like to wan­der more than an arms-length away.

The first par­ty was at the cab­in, which is a small hunt­ing lodge a 10 minute walk away, also owned by the Trolley’s. That’s when I remem­bered that I’m real­ly bad at par­ties with lots of drunk peo­ple. Drunk peo­ple who I don’t know scare me. A lot. I nev­er know what the hell they’re going to do. At one point, two peo­ple put on box­ing gloves and start­ed beat­ing the shit out of each oth­er in this tiny cab­in, which must be about 196 square feet. The sec­ond par­ty was at the house, and much low­er key. People start­ed jump­ing into the hot tub and out the win­dow then rolling around in the snow. I did­n’t drink the first day (aside from a swig from a bot­tle of Fireball, which actu­al­ly isn’t bad), but end­ed up buy­ing some alco­hol for the next.

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One of the days was spent on a hill on some pri­vate prop­er­ty. We set up a jump to do some freestyle board rid­ing, and broke out the mod­i­fied GT Snowracers and tobog­gans.

A great time.

Cause My Legs Are Like Toothpicks

On a good day I can find two pairs of pants that I want to try on. Today I found five, and none were right. Either they did­n’t fit, or the cut end­ed up dif­fer­ent when I actu­al­ly put them on. Why is it so hard for me to find pants? Nice, durable yet com­fort­able, bag­gy yet fits around my waist, wide-leg, plain-look­ing pants.

Evil Kitty

I’m catch­ing Dolly up on the kitchen coun­ters late­ly. She’s nev­er had the gall to do so before. Nick’s the­o­ry is that she was real­ly bored and knew she was alone dur­ing the Christmas hol­i­days, so she just jumped up one day and learned that it’s pos­si­ble. She knows that she’s not sup­posed to because as soon as she hears one of us walk­ing to the kitchen, she’ll jump down to the floor and give us the hon­est kit­ty look. The one where she stands at atten­tion with the big eyes, head slight­ly tilt­ed to one side. Yeah. She’s an evil kit­ty.

Party Over Tribute Band

I met a woman last week who had the Majesty sym­bol tat­tooed to the back of her neck, which is total­ly fuck­ing awe­some. When she found out that I rec­og­nized it as the Dream Theater logo she gave a look of sur­prise, I’m guess­ing since lis­ten­ing to Dream Theater is con­sid­er some­what eso­teric, lik­ing them can be seen as an eccen­tric­i­ty, and even some Dream Theater fans don’t know of such a sub­tle sym­bol. It turns out that she’s in a cov­er band, and even though the set list does­n’t seem to include any­thing as insane as Home or Dance of Eternity, it’s still amaz­ing that there are peo­ple who are will­ing to attempt such music. She’s play­ing a con­cert tonight at Barrymore’s, with a Dream Theater trib­ute band and a Tool trib­ute band. It promis­es to be a good night of pro­gres­sive metal/rock and I had my heart set on going, until I found out that there’s also a par­ty tonight at Sheri/Emily/Christine’s place. I’m tempt­ed to go to both, but I think I’d rather focus on one instead of spread­ing myself thin. Besides, it’s to cel­e­brate the birth­days of three good peo­ple, and I would­n’t want to miss it this year. No alco­hol tonight, I’ve decid­ed, and no chance for me in stiff­ing Tom with a bill (as I mis­tak­en­ly did last year at the Clocktower).

An In-Town Journey

The ear­ly after­noon was decid­ed­ly heavy, so I turned up the vol­ume when I stepped out­side. There was pow­der in the air, pow­der every­where, and soon I was snow­blind.

As I stepped on the bus, I looked at my watch and real­ized that I was leav­ing almost two hours ear­ly for class. How had I made such a mis­take?

I decid­ed to use the best of my time and do some brows­ing. I saw what appeared to be Nadine in the mall, and would have approached her if:

  1. I was absolute­ly sure it was her
  2. a sud­den case of shy­ness had­n’t tak­en over me

I took off to Zone to see if there was any­thing new, and alas, an open-air chime box was avail­able. I was tempt­ed to buy it, if the song was­n’t some Christmas car­ol. Afterwards, I set off for Folio, but to my dis­ap­point­ment, dis­cov­ered that it’s been replaced with a soon-to-be fur­ni­ture store.

I decid­ed to peruse the book­stores in the area, and the first one I went to had noth­ing of inter­est. Even at Chapters I did­n’t find any new trans­la­tions of A Hero of Our Time, or the audio nov­el of Lolita read by the sul­try voice of Jeremy Irons. The third book­store I went to, a sur­pris­ing­ly mod­ern store with eclec­tic fin­ish­ings, had a very selec­tive col­lec­tion of books. Every wall or pil­lar had shelves set up with books of a dif­fer­ent genre, and the entire place was quite a change from the bus­tle of the street right out­side. At one cor­ner, there was a mechan­i­cal fire­place with four very dis­tinct flames warm­ing up the air. The fire would have seemed much more real­is­tic if not for the odd churn­ing sound com­ing from the chim­ney. A couch was set up in front of the fire­place for peo­ple to read, but only a beau­ti­ful, navy blue, long-haired cat was sleep­ing on it, bel­ly up, one paw lazi­ly stretched out towards the fire.

Put in a dif­fer­ent mood by the seren­i­ty of the store, I set off for class, and prompt­ly changed my playlist.