You are lost

Work has retained it’s dominating grasp on my time the last few months, and I feel very drained.  My knee went out on me twice in February and this is the first week I’ve gone without a brace on it.

Let’s get on with it though.  I haven’t had a great deal of time but here are some of the joys of the last month or so.  Massive Attack released their newest album Heligoland and I love it.  It’s very different from their previous works and has some very Bjork-ish qualities in some tracks.  I posted a link for Paradise Circus in a previous post, but Flat Of The Blade has become another favorite and was the background noise of choice while I finished Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand.

Telepopmusik returns to my playlist with their album Angel Milk.  Damned French electropop; fit to be music for strippers.  Though by no means a new album, released in 2005, they’re still new to me.  I don’t care for their rap influenced tracks, but more prefer songs like Love\’s Almighty which sounds like it could be in a Bond movie soundtrack.

Other misc music finds of interest include Will Young though I only like a few of his songs, and Flight Of The Conchords, a folk rock parody group from New Zealand that remind me of the kind of jams Jim Gonzales used to have back in the day.

So that’s what I’ve been up to the last month or so:  working, listening to music and reading.  Not much new then I guess.  I’ve got a list half a mile long of things I’ve been meaning to get around to that I hope to begin tackling a bit more this month.  I doubt I’ll be given time so I guess I’ll just have to make it.  Whee.

The holidays are over and things are starting to calm down again at work.  However I won’t receive the bulk of my personal time back until later this month as one of my coworkers is gone.  He just got married and will be away on honeymoon for a while.

You would think that after two and a half months I’d have a bunch of things to tell you about.  Sadly this isn’t the case.  But life hasn’t been completely uneventful either.

We had a cold snap with a little snow that lasted a couple of days.  Not exactly winter but enough to throw a couple of snowballs… er… slush balls.

Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years:  all pretty uneventful.  We did a couple of dinners when we could, trying to balance out everyone’s busy and conflicting work schedules.

December 28th was a sad day as Skol & Jen had a death in the family.  Their youngest child died.  It feels like I should say something more, but what more can you really say?  Tragic.

December 29th Jeff and Jenny had a baby.  I don’t speak with them much but I still wish them luck.

Matt got a truck from his father.  A Ford F-150 I believe.  Free.  Trucks are always useful.

Yesterday while playing scratch tickets Matt won $1000.  Pretty sweet.  A good way to start out the new year.

I find out in the next couple of weeks if I get a bonus this year (it’s looking like I won’t but I don’t know for certain yet).

In my limited spare time I did manage to find a few things of interest to me.  Massive Attack has a new album coming out soon.  I found the video for one of the singles, Paradise Circus, which I found to be very enjoyable.  Link NSFW as it does contain pornography.  A little more safe for work would be a Zombie Kitten Apocalypse cartoon.  New to my musical interests is a group called Cage The Elephant.  Not a favorite, but not bad.

Speaking of Cage The Elephant, let’s talk about video games.  Even when I don’t have time to play them myself I often will watch Matt or whoever else play.  One of the new games in the house is Borderlands, which is where we were introduced to the music of CTE, who did the intro.  Other games around the house lately have been Super Mario Bros Wii which is great fun, Left 4 Dead 2 which I haven’t had time to really get in to at all (although I want to), and Animal Crossings DS which is by no means new but pretty relaxing when you haven’t got time to commit to anything in depth or involving.

I didn’t make any resolutions for the new year.  I figure all my goals are the same as last year… and the year before.  More of the same “nose to the grindstone”  routine with maybe a touch more time management.  For those of you interested in Chinese horoscopes, February 14th marks the Chinese New Year; 2010 will be the year of the Metal Tiger.  The correlation here is Tiger symbolizes aggressive energy towards the completion of tasks, seizing of opportunities, and otherwise reaping the rewards of hard work.  I don’t put much stock in horoscopes but it sounds good to me.

Here’s hoping the best to all of you in the new year.

With it’s massive focus on a new production launch work consumed the majority of my time over the last month or so.  I miss not having to make excuses for my life.

Work aside I’ve been trying to go folfing a bit more regularly.  Maybe that’s how I caught a cold.

In household events Larry has gone back to Montana.  I hope he has better luck there than he did here.

I picked up a copy of Wii Fit Plus.  The new mini games are fun and I’ve made a profile for my cats.  Darkie weighs almost 20lbs.

Also… new computer.  It’s so quiet and small and it doesn’t crash on a daily basis and for all the fixes my old compy needed this was a bargain.  Woot.

Before getting too deeply enveloped in work I managed to do something interesting last month.  I threw an Unpregnancy Party.  The idea came about while talking with a friend who was going to be going to a baby shower.  She mentioned wishing someone would throw her a party but she didn’t want to get pregnant, to which I responded something to the effect of “I throw a small party every time I find out the girl’s not pregnant.”  I decided my personal feeling of elation should be spread to an all encompassing celebration and made it in to a reality.  Pics here.

I also had the chance to unwind with a copy of Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box.  After the first title, Professor Layton and the Curious Village, I became a big fan and the latest installment was no disappointment.

I’ve now been with my job 2 years.  That kind of made me sad.  Not that it’s a bad job, not that I’m ungrateful or anything like that, I just want to leave this town state.

Eighteen hours doesn’t sound like a long time but when it’s spent driving non stop from Arizona to Montana it becomes a test of endurance.  There are a few scenic stretches here and there but there’s a lot of boring straight flat stretches (i.e. Utah) in between where you’d just as soon fall asleep at the wheel.

Sara was unable to get her time off in August so it was Matt, Linh, myself and 1,200 miles of pavement for company.  After some last minute tinkering (to no avail) with the car lighter we departed.

We had opted to leave Saturday night after everyone was off work.  Aside from getting us up to Montana sooner it would also mean a quiet and cool drive through Arizona and hitting Salt Lake City on a Sunday morning.  Matt was the last off work and opted for the first shift driving, which got us to Flagstaff uneventfully.  From there I took over.

I chose to take the 89 north to Utah rather than swing west to Las Vegas.  It meant driving slower but it was a more direct and scenic route that took about the same amount of time.  At Bitter Springs I took the 89Alt through Marble Canyon.  It was about 3 a.m. and the moon was bright which sillouted the stairlike mountainside in front of me.  The pirates were asleep as I ascended and without another driver for miles it was just me and the deer and the twisty road up the cliffside to Utah.

Matt took over in Panguitch.  Shortly after Panguitch is the only part of Utah I’ve come to like, the Utah 20.  However they only tell you about the turn off 20 feet before the turn making it easy to miss in the dark of night.  We saw the sign but before we could touch the brakes we were past it and had to make a u turn.  Soon we were on the 15.  We stopped off in Payson to refresh ourselves before SLC.

After some breakfast Linh took over driving to Idaho.  A couple hundred more uneventful miles and we were in Montana.  It had been a cool wet spring so everything was green and vibrant.  It was refreshing to see that the entire state wasn’t on fire as it had been when we moved 2 years ago.  We hit a couple patches of rain on our way up to Junction 90 where we stopped to gas up and I got my life threatened by a 60 year old man.  Forgot there was a bunch of crazy up north.

I was on my phone with my mother letting her know we were only a couple hours away when this silver haired geezer started walking towards me.  I stepped out of his way to let him pass but he continued towards me, dropping a sholder and bumping into me gently.  I gave him a confused look and he muttered something to the effect of “I could’ve killed you you fuck.”  Before I could even think to destroy this entity he was in his car and gone.  Welcome home.

We continued over to Townsend where I was staying with my mother.  The pirates (Matt and Linh) went to visit some friends in Helena.

I generally eat 1 meal a day, with maybe a light snack in between sometimes.  Mothers don’t allow that.  I had a big dinner that night, and breakfast the next morning and when the pirates came back over we all had a big lunch too.  It’s no wonder I gained 7 lbs on vacation.

Before heading off to Missoula my mother showed me some of the new projects they’re working on.  She and 2 other ladies are sharecropping a small 100′x100′ garden (I say small in comparison to the massive barley fields and everything else they do where you measure in acres, to me it’s still a huge garden).  I got to see the bio-deisel press (which they’re expanding) and we all went for a drive through the countryside.

It was evening by the time we got to Missoula.  I was staying over at The Boy’s place while I was there.  We went to the Bayern brewery for a couple of drinks then Kody and I went for coffee at Finnegans where I was bombarded by old friends.  After a couple hours we went cruising the bars looking for more people but bars are pretty quiet on monday nights.  We ended up playing some Keno instead.

Tuesday morning I met Al for coffee.  Al got in a motorcycle accident in June so I was exceptionally glad to see him well.  After that Matt and I went walking along the riverfront trail and ended up in Flippers playing more Keno.  Then it was off to Bayern again to meet up with Linh and her brother for some drinks and chess where I won handily.  Then it was off to Jayann’s for a wonderful BBQ and more drinking with many many people… and babies.  So many babies!  Mara and Tyler had a baby, Briggs and Leia had a baby, Robyn had another baby (although it was a while ago, I hadn’t seen her until now).  Josh, who had come all the way from Butte to see me, had another baby… growing up is strange, isn’t it?  I was elated and pretty drunk by the time I passed out on The Boy’s couch.

Wednesday I was to head back over to my mother’s place for a family reunion type thing.  My uncle Kevin and aunt Michelle had coincidentally taken the same period of time off for their vacation.  After a late start and some headache medicine I met up with my uncle Scott who would be carpooling with me.

My grandparents were already there when we arrived, and my mother was feeding them liquor!  Kevin and Michelle rolled in shortly thereafter.  There was much drinking and merriment and burgers and cookies and datetort and my brother and sister showed up and everything was wonderful.

The next morning we all sat around drinking instant coffee (my mother, strangely enough, doesn’t drink coffee (I know!) so this was all she had around) and joking about.  Scott and I left back for Missoula around 2ish, but not before my mother loaded me up with homemade goodies.  Cookies and food and a bottle of her homemade Huckleberry liquor.  Shortly into Helena we rain into a massive storm.  Black clouds and lightning covered the horizon and a torrential downpour ensued that blinded our vision.  The highway became a small river from all the rain, which made driving interesting.  It let up before the junction (thankfully) and we made it back to Missoula where I proceeded back over to The Boy’s for a quiet dinner of his finest grilled meats and some more drinking.  Al showed up and the pirates came over for a bit as well and we all sat outside in the cool evening watching the distant lightning.

Friday was to be my last actual day in Missoula and by this point I hadn’t eaten at any of the restaurants I wanted to hit, what with everyone feeding me barbeque.  It was a cool cloudy day, so while I waited for everyone else to wake up I went off to the Good Food Store to pick up some coffee and decided to see Skol and Jen while I was in the area.  Skol was at work but Jen was home so I got to see her new baby and talk for a bit.  By this point it was raining and everyone was awake.  The Boy, Kody and the pirates met me at Dino Cafe for some Cajun cooking.  Then we went to Uptown Diner for some milkshakes.  Then we checked out a new toy shop by The Wilma called Tsunami.  Nifty collectibles and art work.  By that point it was really coming down so the pirates went their way and the boys and I went back to the house to dry off and have some coffee.  We sat around, sharing new musical finds, smoking cigarettes, playing witht the pets and just relaxing.  Then it was off for another restaurant.  We weren’t too hungry but I really wanted to have some Kang Karee from Thai Spicy before I left.  Then we went back to the house to digest for a bit before I went over to Fins to meet with the pirates for some coffee and to figure out our plans for the next day.  After coffee Kody and I went to Club Q to see the new scene and to see who was there.  I ran into a couple of people, including Aki who had some new artwork to show me.  I love his work and he now has a deal worked out with someone who does silk screening so I got a shirt for myself and one for The Boy.  When Aki heard one of them was for The Boy he searched for one with sleeves (the boy has an allergic reaction to sunlight) and not seeing any, took the shirt off his own back to give to him.

I slept alot that night.  All the drinking and not sleeping and constant running around had started catching up to me a little.  After some coffee we all went out for Gyros before I was to meet up with the pirates for departure.  I’m not very good with goodbyes.  All I could really say is I would come back soon.

I arrived at Linh’s folk’s house, where here family LOADED the car with stuff.  Purses and lunchboxes and vegetables and all sorts of stuff.  After some quick goodbyes we left and were on our way back home.

The trip home was pretty uneventful until Utah.  Our trip up we had unintentionally staggered our sleep schedule due to work.  Now we were all getting tired around the same time since we all got up fairly early.  So now tired and a little hungry we stopped in Provo to eat and refresh, when we got pulled over by the police.  They had run my plates (without reason) and felt my registration was in error (which it wasn’t).  Whatever.  We ate and got back on the road.  Then just south of Kanab at the 89 alt turnoff we got pulled over AGAIN.  It was about 3 a.m. and we were but a mile or two from the Arizona border and this cop was following us when he decided to pull us over.  He said we were speeding (we were 10 feet away from a sign that said 45 mph, but to him it was 41 in a 35, though he was following us so it couldn’t have been an accurate reading) but it seemed like an excuse to search us for drugs we didn’t have.  For about half an hour he searched the car over for these non existant drugs before letting us go, tired and severely annoyed.  The rest of the trip back was boring, tiring and uneventful and we were pretty glad.  It was 7 a.m. on Sunday when we arrived home, and crawled directly into our beds.  Sara had cleaned the entire house top over and had found a new kitchen table and such while we were gone which was surprising to come home to.

I’ve been back to work a couple of days now, but mentally I’m still on vacation.  It’s taking a while to get back in to the swing of things, and I don’t really want to either.  Not just yet.

As per usual I’ve been pretty busy with work, but that’s not very interesting to read.  Let’s talk about what I’ve done with my downtime instead.

I’ve been getting some use out of the bicycle I purchased.  This area is kind of hilly and uneven so there is plenty of uphill to work my legs and steal my breath.

In addition to that I’ve been playing Wii Fit again.  Matt and I get very competitive with the balance games which keeps things interesting.

I’ve been trying out my new camera and I really like it.  I can’t say that I like Kodak’s EasyShare crap though.

Aside from that I’ve had 3 love-starved kitties begging for my attention.  Ah pets.

I’m still planning a vacation, just got a few things to tinker out.

I guess that’s pretty much it.  I’ll try to write something of substance at another point in time.

June is over and I’m grateful.  Last month I had 2 actual days off where I didn’t get called in or had to go in to work for something.  My job pwns my life.  Unfortunately I don’t really have anything to show for it monitarily or otherwise.  Just exhaustion and burnout.

Everyone here is in dire need of vacation time and fortunately it’s not too far off.  I’m making plans for later this summer; it’ll be the first time in 2 years I’ve had more than 3 days off in a row.

Sara bought me a new camera as an early b-day present!  I’m hoping to play with it on my days off.  Maybe it’ll give me some motivation to post some new (read that as any) pics in the upcoming weeks.

I’ve been saying it for a while, but I really need to have a yard sale.

Goodness, the month has gone by so quickly.  Work eats my life.

Monsoon season is coming, which excites me.  Last year was the 5th wettest on record and was such a pleasant experience.

For relaxation I’ve been playing Left 4 Dead lately.  Shooting zombies in the face with shotguns is quite refreshing after a long day of work.

Not much else going on, just figured I should post something.

When over 273 days a year are sunny and the weather begins to get hot having a few rainy days becomes a very special thing (Missoula averaged about 159 sunny days a year).

The temperature, which had been getting in to the 90′s already, is back down to reasonable 80′s and we’re expecting a few more thunderstorms throughout the next few days.

I’ve been enjoying Patricia Kaas‘s album “Kabaret” lately.  She was France’s entry in Eurovision this year, and the bluesy touch of her album has been very suitable for the dreary weather we’ve been having.

I watched Martian Successor Nadesico again.  It’s been a long time since I’ve seen it.  Not a great nor a bad series, but the memories I have attached to it made me feel nostalgic, and old.  It’s been a decade since the first time I saw it.  I was still sleeping on couches, Laurilie had yet to be born, work was graveyard shifts with Curtis…   It’s strange to see how much things have changed since then.  “Those unforgettable days, for them I live.”

I’ve been a little tied up with work the last couple of weeks.  It’ll be at least two more weeks before I have the potential for an uneventful week.

So Eurovision finished up today with Norway taking 1st place, Iceland 2nd, and Azerbaijan 3rd.  Personally my favorite this year was Estonia’s entry Urban Symphony.  There seemed to be a few entries with orchestral pieces, and of course plenty of bad techno and slutty pop crap.  I love this contest.