Warning: Contents may blow

I hate moving. No really I do, packing all your shit up, carrying heavy ass shit just so you can move it to a new place and carry it again, then unpack it. Pain in the ass.Of course what makes it worse is the fact that I know it’s temporary and we’ll be doing this again in a year (and then who knows, probably again after that.)You know maybe it wouldn’t be quite so bad, but my life doesn’t quite fit into boxes. I started packing some books, CDs and DVDs yesterday. I now have a nice stack of boxes, and I have barely made a dent.The thing is, like many things in life my logical mind simplifies it. I mean how hard can it be? Stack stuff in a box then repeat. It’s not until you’re knee deep in boxes that you realize it’s just not that simple.—–Cara sent me her schedule yesterday morning. It kind of sucks because even though she has days off, she has to go in to do rounds on Mondays either way. So it may be a number of weeks until we’re able to get together again (which sucks.)After she left on Sunday I started going though our wedding schedule and the things to do. We’re actually pretty much ahead of the game, but I’m still itching to do more. One of the primary things on my list is to find a limo to transport the wedding party. So I hopped onto The Knot which Cara is addicted to. My intention was to see what kind of info they have on limo services (which is not much.) I decided to see what postings Cara has/had done on the forum.Nothing too exciting except for a post regarding her fear that I wouldn’t like the dress. Defiantly a female thing. I mean here are the facts 1) If we could choose the perfect dress it probably wouldn’t fit your body style. 2) We really, honestly, don’t care THAT much about clothes. It’s not that we don’t care exactly, it’s that we don’t know any better.The bottom line is that unless you do something totally off the deep end, we’ll like it. All we really care about is the lingerie under it anyway!

Cara was here in Danielson for the weekend. We drove up to her Mom’s place on Saturday for a cookout with her family (my parents were there too.) It was a pretty relaxed day.On the way home we stopped and caught a showing of “The Bourne Supremacy”. As usual there is always the discussion regarding our thoughts. I hate to say it, but the story, acting and stunts were great, but the camera work was horrible. Hollywood has been using hand held shots more and more, and I don’t think there was a dolly shot or a crane shot in the whole movie. Every single shot with any action was hand held, combined with quick cuts is just painful. Sitting there mid-theater your eyes take a beating trying to keep track of the things on the screen.I would imagine that some of this is the ability to shoot more on less of a budget. I’m sure setting up a dolly track probably takes a crew half a day. There’s no set-up for a hand held shot. The problem is that the end product suffers (IMHO.)It’s rare that something as simple as the camera work ruins a good film (usually it’s script, effects or acting.) Hopefully if they do a third movie they bring back Doug Liman.

I would say a great majority of my pet peeves involve other people’s driving habits. I’m sure I’m no different from others on these.I hate people who drive with a foot on the gas and a foot on the brake. They drive happily along oblivious to the fact that their foot is pushing the brake enough to light the brake lights. So the rest of us get the pleasure of driving along behind someone and you have no clue if or when they will be stopping. These people are worse than those people who drive around with 2 of the 3 brake lights burned out (because these people annoy us because of their actions, not their inactions.)To all of you who drive with a foot on the gas and a foot on the brake… FUCK YOU.

I grabbed Thai Truck lunch today (it’s like Thai fast food!) While I was there I picked up a pair of chopsticks. So there I was sitting at the office eating my food and I began reading over the wrapper. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, but I am. I mean, I understand that English is not the native tongue for whoever manufactures these things, but still…

Granted the issue at hand may just be a lack of quality control here, but still… they can spell “glorious” and “traditional” but have issues with “chopsticks” (I’m still trying to figure out the weird capitalization too.

So, as some of you know movies, music and video games usually come out on Tuesday (it’s the best time to visit Blockbuster.) Usually tuesdays pass without much fanfare. I think as I get older, I’m less excited about getting/watching movies and music as soon as it comes out.Today really was no different. As part of my weekly routine I go over to the iTunes music store on Tuesdays to see if there is anything of interest (and see what the free tune of the week is.) I forgot about it (mostly), so I was mildly interested when I saw the new Van Halen album up. It’s a greatest hits, so it only has a couple of new tracks. Of course I have all the existing Van Halen CDs, so there is no need to have everything. That’s one of the nice thing about the iTunes music store, rather than spending $20+ on a double CD I can just buy the 3 tracks I don’t have.Van Halen has been out of circulation for a number of years (6 years I think,) and their last album with Gary Cherone (the lead singer of Extreme,) was probably the worst ever. It’s been eight years since Van Halen put together a decent album (with Sammy Hagar.) It was a nice surprise that fences were mended and Sammy was back earlier this year.The problem is, Eddie Van Halen said that he has something like ten albums worth of material that he’s written, but to be honest the three new tracks are decent, but not great. We can only hope that this wasn’t the cream of the crop.I sit here listening to the tracks again. I hear a lot of Van Halen III (the bad album with Cherone.) It’s nice to hear Sammy’s voice, but even that isn’t the Van Halen I grew to love. That’s not to say the tracks are bad, but they just aren’t that special (and I doubt any of them will be tracks.) The two tracks that were added to the last greatest hits were better than these (and they’re absent from this greatest hits.)So the bottom line is, I still love Van Halen, it’s just great music. I don’t know if they’ll ever be able to reclaim the energy from the earlier days, but if Aerosmith can do it VH surely can. We can only hope that the next album (if there is one) of original stuff is better than the few tracks they released today.

Okay, now I’m pissed. I read that Linda Rondstat was fired from her Las Vegas show because she told the audience that they should see Michael Moore’s film Fahrenheit 9/11. Apparently many audience members walked out, tore down posters and trashed the place.This goes hand in hand with Whoopi Goldberg being fired as a Slimfast spokesperson for speaking out about Bush at a fund-raiser last week.Don’t get me wrong, I understand that the motivation to fire these two people may be about money and not politics. I know that many people are fired up about politics, but it just makes too many people look like assholes. It’s a shame that people have to make financial decisions based on politics. I read that Mel Gibson’s Icon Productions was supposed to pay for Fahrenheit 9/11 but backed out when Republicans said he would never be invited to the White House (shame on you Mel for not telling the Republicans to fuck themselves.)That said, I already know what is going to happen. Kerry is going to be elected and the Republicans are going to blame Moore’s film, blah blah blah.The scary part is that over the last six or eight years our democratic process has looked more like a circus. I think people feel stronger about their party (not really their candidate,) than before because of this.Starr Report, Florida Election and the ‘04 Election… the three rings of the circus.

I got about four hours of sleep last night. I have no one to blame but myself. The down side to not having a regular job with regular hours is that my sleep schedule gets all screwy and I end up with a weird offset that I must suffer through. I think I’m getting used to it though. One might think that a sane person would hit the sack when they got home after that, but obviously I am not sane.Justin, Brian and I went to dinner after work. We wanted to get the low down on Justin’s recent breakup. As with any breakup there’s probably still going to be a fair amount of fallout.Brian had to take off, so Justin suggested we catch a showing of “I, Robot” but we would have had to wait more than an hour for the next showing and I don’t think either of us really wanted to be getting out of a movie at 11PM or so.It was probably best that I left since I was close to falling asleep on the drive home. Of course once I got home I want to do anything BUT sleep. The human body is an odd instrument.

So for some reason, my life recently has revolved around relationships (both mine and others.) Cara and I have been practicing the old adage, “Absence makes the heart grow fonder.” There’s a lot of logic there (although I would take exception to the word “fonder”.)I guess my greatest fear of marriage is that Cara and I will end up orbiting each other, but not really touching. I suppose there are worse things in life, but I don’t think anyone dreams of a relationship like that. I keep using current events as an excuse and that “next year” things will get better. What if they don’t though? This distance between Cara and me is good though, it reaffirms a lot I think (and gives me faith.)Added to this is my realization that every relationship needs work. “Realization” isn’t really the best word though because I’ve always known this, but rarely did much about it. My problem is that friendships require a particular kind of multitasking that I’m just not good at (especially with friends of different circles.) I don’t know if it is a skill I’ll ever be able to pick up. Too bad Cara is about the same so we both have a very small circles of friends.Which brings me full circle back to my marriage. I’ve been feeling jealous and… well like kind of a looser because if Cara and I invite every single person that we would ever want to attend our wedding it would only be about 130 people. We didn’t have too much trouble narrowing that to 80 people. That bothered me for a long time, and probably still bothers me to a point. Of course the up side is that we can have quality verses quantity.Okay enough of my babbling, I have my 70 minute commute in the morning (thank goodness that is over in a couple weeks.) Although the ironic situation is that I received a call from Crabtree & Evelyn (which is based in Woodstock, CT, 10 minutes from where I am now,) for a job interview on Tuesday. Knowing the way the world works, I’ll probably get the job and then still have a fucking 70 minute commute from Manchester to Woodstock.

Okay… back again. I’m so fucked up, although not nearly as much as so many other people in this world. You know I keep sitting down at the ‘puter and think, “Gee, I could write an entry in my blog.” Of course, just the thought of actually doing it bores me. So there’s this train of thought that has finally lead me back to writing something here. It all started with a paper letter from Marlene. Yes paper (I thought the stuff was extinct.) Admittedly like so many of my old friends, I’ve just not made a lot of effort to keep in touch, so it was good to hear from her. Of course I’m lazy so I e-mailed her back. We shot some emails back and forth (and as a side note, it sounds like she may be back in the area about the same time I’ll be back in the Hartford area.) One of my questions was if she knew where some of my other old High School friends were (and how I might get ahold of them.) You know, impending wedding, suddenly you want to invite these people that you haven’t seen or talked to in close to a decade. Namely I was wondering where Beth might be. You see Beth went to Westpoint right out of High School, and was floating around the world for a great many years. Thankfully, Marlene knew that Beth was/is in PA (of course I have yet to try to get ahold of her.) Something about remembering the past makes one want to start uncovering and digging (and being lazy, I have to do this all online.) So I found Meredith’s website (which she just hasn’t touched on for more than a year,) and also Steve’s website. Now the thing about Steve is that he was the class of ‘92 (whereas Marlene, Johanna and crew were ‘90.) So once we graduated we lost touch. Being damn smart he went off to Caltech (or MIT or some brainy school.) Brian and I (and Johanna too I think,) tried to get a hold of him in various ways, occasionally finding an email address or something of the sort. Of course we’d email him, but never hear anything from him. Rumor is that he just doesn’t want any contact with people from High School. The wonderful part is that being a techie, you just can’t hide on the internet. So I’ve discovered an address for him, which means I can mail a wedding invitation to him next year (which since I’m evil means that is what I will be doing.) So the last stop on the history train is Johanna’s Site. Unlike the rest of us, Johanna has always been good about sharing her life on her website. It makes me sick. I mean this woman loves writing. I wish I had that urge. Not only does she keep her journal up-to-date, she practically keeps an hourly account of her time (okay, okay, she’s not that crazy, but she will make multiple entries in a day.) I wish I had that much that I wanted to share with the world. So you can imagine that after reading that I had to write another entry, just because I’m jealous of her (damn you Johanna.)