Author: Dave

Posted on

i remember

Freezecamping.
I had a friend in college who used get down sometimes for no apparent reason. During his down times he’d say that he was “in a funk.” I first remember hearing the term on some baseball wrapup on ESPN. I never really thought too much about it, I guess because I never really experienced a “funk.” I don’t know how to describe what’s been looming over me lately, but something is there. Maybe this is what a funk feels like.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m actually a really happy person, and I’m quite satisfied with every aspect of my life. It’s not that I’m overtly upset or depressed about anything, it’s more like there a “shadow” of something hanging just out of sight, just barely there enough to where I can sense it. The best way I can describe it is that I feel like there should be some “transition” coming up in my life. I’ll try to explain.

All my life I’ve tracked or measured or gauged things in terms of large events: graduating high school, graduating college, getting married, getting a job, etc. Each event is like cresting a hill on a roller coaster, I enjoy myself while all the while anticipating the nearing precipice. Then I pass that marker and start another ride, awaiting the next slope and drop. It’s like I’ve always seen milestones off in the future, and I subconsciously wait for them. Sometimes I just get this feeling like I’m poised on the edge of one of those roller coaster drops – but this time I don’t know what it could be. I feel like I’m expecting something to happen soon.

Sorry, psychobabble stuff because I’m bored. I actually wrote paragraphs very similar to those about a month ago, but never posted them because they sounded dumb. So now I’m revisiting the thought and posting it.

I used to write little one paragraph entries in my journals called “I Remember.” I’d set down fond memories in abridged form – in hopes that one day I’d have totally forgotten them and be delighted to read and recall them. Well for this blog I wanted to write a story from my youth down, but couldn’t decide which one. So I’m gonna do a few one-paragraph versions of a few I considered.

We all told our parents we were spending the night at each others’ houses. I think it was the only time we tried that particular ruse, since it was just too risky. We drove to West Cocoa and bought a $20 off some guy on the corner. I drove my red Nissan Sentra Joey had his car. We ended up driving out to an abandoned drive-in movie theater that had long since turned into a grown over forest. The only thing that hinted at the place’s previous life was a streetlamp standing in the middle of some pine trees. We parked and enjoyed copious amounts of cannabis. We laughed, talked, saw Batman in the clouds, and finally decided just to sleep out there in our cars. I remember waking up to water dripping on my leg. The inside of the car had filled with condensation from our breathing. We woke up early, covered Joeys car (containing a still sleeping Joey and Kyle) with thrown out couch cushions, and headed to McD’s for breakfast.

It was high school and Joey was spending the night at my place. We snuck out the window and headed to a party at Skyview, the abandoned drive-in mentioned above. On the overgrown dirt road leading into the party loop, Joey found a full gallon bottle of gin. I think he drank about half before we left, and maybe more on the way home. I’ve never seen anyone that drunk. I asked another friend to help me carry him. We had walked nearly five miles to get to the party. We each slung an arm across our shoulders and hauled his passed out body home. When we got home there was no way we were getting in the window with him, so I just bit the bullet and came through the front door. Justin helped me carry Joey into my room and drop him on the floor. I woke in the morning to find Joey had pissed himself overnight. I remember trying to explain to my mom that I just “wanted to clean my floor and vacuum.”

We were too young to drive, none of us had ever tasted beer. Joey’s parents were out of town and he knew where a spare key to the car was. We took the car and drove around town until I spotted someone older that I knew and persuaded him to buy us four big bottles of Red Bull malt liquor. Once back at Joey’s house, I suppressed vomit with each swallow – standing over the sink the whole time, fully expecting not to be able to finish the bottle. Once buzzed, we again took the car over to my ex-girlfriend’s house where Joey dropped three of us off and left. Somehow the cops came. I remember telling the cops we were camping and out for a walk, the same as we’d told our parents. Dispatch called each parent and we nervously awaited as she read each parents’ reply over the radio. All three of our parents said “return to campsite.” I remember the cops were so cool: “Have you boys been drinking tonight?” “No sir.” “Well you smell like a god-damned brewery.” Andy threw up in his mouth and swallowed it back down.

Joey, Kyle, and I snuck out of my house and headed over to a semi-cute girl’s house. We always used to carry our Zippo lighters with us everywhere we went. This girl was probably cuter than I now give her credit for, since I was judging her with the idealistic eyes of a high school male. I remember she took Kyle’s lighter and stuck it down her pants, we were in her driveway. She told him to reach in and get it. I was so jealous, but that is one of the more vivid memories I have. I thought that was such forward flirting – and I loved it.

I remember I had just kissed Her for the first time. Sharaun was supposed to be busy with Vacation Bible School at church. Her and I laid on the bed, and Pavement’s Wowee Zowee was playing on my stereo. After kissing we just laid there together. That’s when my door swung open and Sharaun walked in. I had my head on the pillow, so all I heard was my door open – then slam shut again. Then Her turned to me, eyes wide, and said “That was Sharaun.” I got up and found Sharaun in the bathroom. I promised her that nothing had happened, and while we talked behind the closed door She took it upon herself to leave. She and I used to joke that the world might explode if we ever kissed. Oh, it exploded… right in my face. Thus began my eight-month lost weekend. The only time I’ve in the past ten years I’ve not been with Sharaun.

We skipped lunch at school to drive out into the woods and check on the marijuana plant we were cultivating. A week earlier we had dug a nice 6″ deep bed about 100 yards into the woods, at the end of a self-made machete-cleared trail. We started our plant in a little flower pot. After a couple weeks it had flourished in the pot, and we could tell it was going to be a female. We were going to transplant it into the bed we had dug – and needed to fill it with fertilizer. Easy enough. We headed to Wal Mart to pick up some Miracle Grow and on the way out simply drove up to the fertilizer pallets in the parking lot and helped ourselves to 400lbs of fine manure, then headed out to do the transplant. Apparently we had been in and out of the woods too many times, and a nearby preschool had reported our car as “suspicious.” Upon getting to the plant, we found it had died and withered overnight. Out of frustration I uprooted the plant and tossed it into the woods. As we came out of our trail there was a cruiser with two cops waiting. They didn’t see me at first so I ducked back into the woods and warned the others. We quickly chose a “talker” whose story we’d all go with no matter what. Unfortunately the dumbest one of us proclaimed himself talker, and we had to follow whatever he might come up with. That was how we ended up explaining that four 16 year old kids were “building a fort” in the woods. Using 400lbs of fertilizer to “level” the ground upon which we’d build the fort. As for the Miracle Grow, our talker’s grandfather apparently loved tomatoes – but could “smell them from miles,” so we were going to grow some for him at our fort? as a surprise. Yes. Seriously. That was our story. They knew what we were doing but couldn’t prove it. We got away without as much as a call to our folks.

Dave out.

Posted on

meth-bread

Food eaters unite! Break your bonds of ignorance and eat with knowledge!
I was searching through some older tunes to find something nice. Ended up listening to some sigur rós for that ethereal relaxing vibe that sometimes helps quiet my mind. I like music without words, or even with foreign words I can’t understand. Sigur Ros different in that the dude sings in a language he invented. Yeah, he made up a whole language and he sings all their songs in it. There are even internet sites for fans to go and vote on different interpretations of the lyrics. Kinda cool, kinda strange. But above all the music is awesome so it really doesn’t matter to me.

Found out I’ll be traveling to Texas next week for a couple days, not really what I wanted to do – but the bossman ordereth so I comply. I’ll be giving another presentation. I can already tell you that I most likely won’t fully know the material, because I most likely won’t invest the proper amount of time into learning it. Doomed to repeat my viscous cycle of “getting by,” I’ll do enough to fare well and, over time, forget the sting of not knowing what I should have. I don’t really count myself as having a self esteem problem per se, but I do definitely have issues when I am to be perceived as particularly learned on something and I know I’m not. I suppose that’s more of a guilt thing, but there’s also the slight humiliation that goes along with it. Not that I have a right to complain when you consider it’s all my doing, and that I could bone up and become nearly bulletproof if I wanted to. if I wanted to. Anyway, all that aside – the timing kinda blows because I’m gonna miss an Ima Robot show that’s here in town. Bummer.

Benz informed me that the Notwist is playing at Slims in February, which is cool because counting the Decemberists show this month it looks like we’re off to a well rounded concert schedule for 2004. I hate it when the paragraphs in my entries are all big and then there’s on tiny one, so I’m adding this sentence to fill round out the size of the paragraphs on the screen.

The other night I got this crazy itch to bake some cookies. Not like the kind you buy in a plastic tube and slice off onto a sheet, but like the kid where you need flour and eggs and crap. So I started looking online for recipes, and I kept seeing these crazy ingredients: baking powder, baking soda, cream of tartar. What the heck is that junk? I mean the words “baking powder” aren’t all that descriptive. Just what is baking powder? Well, since I was already on the internet, I decided to check it out.

Turns out that baking powder is a combination of baking soda and cream of tartar, along with some flour or something. Well great, a circular definition. The bottom line is, they’re chemicals; all chemicals that act as catalysts for the baking reaction that makes air and causes things to rise. Kind of like yeast substitutes. My question is, when did baking powder come into existence? Who first decided that adding some NaHCO3 to some KHC4H4O6 might make their cookies get all fluffy? Did people use yeast until that crap got invented or what? Anyway, I skipped the cookies, as it all took on some kinda “meth lab” imagery in my head. I envisioned whipping up a batch of peanut butter cookies (with fork marks) in my bathtub while wearing a chem suit, not too appealing.

Food trivia like that is really interesting to me. It amazes me how much I don’t know where what I eat comes from. So much history has gone into the way food is made that we just pick things off a shelf and take it all for granted. I mean, who discovered that you have to boil some poisonous root for days before it turns into delicious tapioca? Some totally hungry dude I’d bet. Where does yeast come from? I know it’s naturally occurring, but if I was stuck in the woods with nothing and wanted to make bread – how would I grow/harvest/cultivate some yeast?

Who first thought of all the crazy things we do to make inedible things edible? That stuff trips me out. What’s more, I like to think about things like “what is baking powder,” because in my mind it’s some small form of questioning authority. The authority that tells me “it’s baking powder, just buy it and use it.” Screw you baking powder conglomerate!! I’m onto you, I won’t be blindly fed your propaganda! Question authority!! Now, why is wheat brown and flour white…. they bleach it?!?! I have so much to learn…

That’s it for today. A fresh-written piece, not canned like yesterday. More cut-n-paste to come this week, but this flows straight off the dome.

Dave out.

Posted on

another thing to work on

The boy's got the devin in 'em and it needs to come out!
I watched the collectors edition five-disc version of The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers on Friday afternoon while Sharaun was busy at a salon of some sort. The additional scenes were absolutely excellent, and really aide in conveying the spirit of the story. I wish I could’ve had Sharaun see this extended version first, as it helps to explain things much better for those who may have not read the books. Though I doubt I’ll be able to convince her to watch it again now that she’s sat through the screener version I originally downloaded. Although, she did say she really enjoyed the non-extended version. Anthony and I have talked about having an all day marathon when the last dvd set comes out. Starting in the morning and watching until the end. I heard that the Return of the King dvd cut will clock in at four and half hours, that means watching all of them in a row would amount to something like eleven hours of movie. I’m up for it, and I think it’d be an awesome experience to watch them all in sequence as a whole. I know it’s because I enjoy the story so much, but I honestly think the films are some of my favorites; ever.

I’ve found my next frivolous project.

Friday night we also played some more DDR over at Anthony’s place, and I’ve got the totally busted calf muscles to prove it. I’ve been considering downloading the game for the Xbox and then buying a couple dancepads, since that’d be the cheapest option. However, during our Friday night DDR playing, Ben managed to find a few open-source DDR emulators online. A couple seemed really good, but StepMania seemed to be the best. So, Saturday I BitTorrent’d the complete DDR mix package for StepMania. With over 1000 songs, you get a lot more variety than just having the Xbox game. All you need is a computer plugged into your TV and some dancepads. I picked up some PlayStation dancepads and ordered a PS-USB converter so I can use them on the PC with StepMania. I’ve already started on the project, because it kills two projects with one stone. Lemme explain:

I want to create a complete console emulation machine. A small computer that plugs into the TV and has joysticks and can play all the old console games from Nintendo, N64, Super Nintendo, Genesis, etc. It’s actually a relatively easy thing to do, since the emulators and ROMs for most consoles are readily available and work really well. I’ve been messing with Nintendo and Genesis emulators since college, and am really familiar with them. Cool thing is, the emulation machine and the StepMania machine mentioned above can be the same machine. Throw it all in a small-form-factor PC case and hook it up to my wireless network, and maintenance becomes a breeze. Anyway, the emulation and output-to-TV parts are already working, and I just need the PS-USB converter to make the StepMania portion work. Now all I need is a pretty frontend menu system to choose what games you wanna play, and it’s done! All in a couple days, not bad.

Well, I wrote a lot over the weekend when we got back from vacation – so I’m basically just cutting and pasting a bunch of paragraphs per day of pre-written blog. I do “proofread” it and add up-to-date stuff here and there, but for the most part it’s canned for the next couple days. Sorry this entry comes so late, but at least it’s here.

Dave out.

Posted on

uncharacteristically vivid

It's funny because it's probably true.
Wow! I have a lot to write about from yesterday evening to now. While I was writing yesterday’s entry, Dan and Sara stopped by to give my a belated birthday present. Hopefully you can tell what it is from the picture, but if not – it’s the coolest t-shirt in the world. It’s solid black, and in medium white letters on the front it says: “I’m blogging this.” I thought it was the coolest thing ever, what an awesome gift. Here’s a picture of it, although mine doesn’t have the URL on the back. Anyway, it’s a sweet shirt.

Yesterday I watched some New Year’s Day football, and then headed over to Anthony’s place to try the Dance Dance Revolution (DDR) game he got for the Xbox. If you’ve never heard of DDR before, I’ll try to break it down: it’s an interactive dancing game. There is a dancepad that registers your steps, and you try and keep up with the foot positions shown on the screen. There are varying levels of difficulty, and a bunch of different songs that suck. The first time I ever saw the game was in an arcade at a mini-golf place, and some little Asian kid was going crazy on it. I mean, he had a towel and everything. It was truly amazing to watch this kid jump and spin and shuffle around to the footsteps on the screen. Anyway, I’ve been kinda intrigued by the game ever since. I looked it up on the internet and found that they have championships and everything, but I never dared play it in an arcade.

So last night I was anxious to give it a go. Anthony assumed I’d hate it, probably due to my intense hatred of dancing, but man I loved it so hard. It was so fun. We started playing around 9:30pm and went until 1am. By the end, I had a towel on my head and was covered in a thin sheen of sweat from head to toe. That game is no joke, you get a little workout trying to hop around and keep up. At first I was terrible, but I started getting the hang of it about midway through. What a blast, I could play that game for hours? wait? I did. I am seriously considering buying it for our Xbox here so Sharaun and I can play it. She’s really good (of course), and tore us all up. Today my calves are tight from bouncing around on my toes so much, but it was totally worth it. I brought my camera and got some footage of us in action, so maybe I’ll post it later.

You would think that after a late night of DDR, the remaining hours would be pretty uneventful. Well all that aerobic exercise must have freaked my body out or something, because I had some seriously strange (and uncharacteristically vivid and rememberable for me) dreams during the night. At one point I even yelled the words “fucking idiot!” out loud, waking Sharaun. See, Sharaun, Melissa, and I were in the truck and Sharaun was driving. It was raining outside and Ben was standing on the sidewalk throwing Hershey’s Kisses through the driver-side window at Sharaun while she drove in slow circles around an intersection. He missed the car with one Kiss and it landed in the street. Wanting to get the stray chocolate, Sharaun simply opened the car door and stepped out. The car continued driving in circles, but came too close to a cement utility pole and scraped it all the way down the passenger side. It was at this point that I yelled my profanities at Sharaun, as she ran for the candy on the rainy street. What an odd dream, I bet Freud could write a thesis on the symbolism.

After that, my dream switched to me in jail. I was planning a breakout with some other guy who I knew in the dream but couldn’t name now. I recall the dream being very involved and detailed, but I can’t really remember it all now. The basics were that we busted out by digging a tunnel ala Shawshank, and headed towards some arranged spot. Once we got there we were on the riverbank, and we uncovered a camouflaged boat that was hidden and hanging on someone’s backyard fence. Another strange one for ya. I would have thought I’d have dreamed about dancing or football or something.

On a completely unrelated note, I officially closed up shop on my cd trading hobby today. I mean, I haven’t actually traded in nearly a year – but today I actually changed my cd trading pages to reflect my non-trading status. It’s kinda sad for me, but nowadays I get most of my new tunes online, and there just isn’t that much rare Beatles material coming out anymore. At least, nothing that I’m slobbering over – I’ve grown tired of the endless hours of Get Back rehearsals. So, I’m done with it for the time being. I’ll leave the webpage up, and I’m sure I may get back into it one day… but for now it’s the end of an era.

Well, I guess it’s time to go. Sharaun and I are cleaning up the house and trying to reorganize some stuff that we haven’t touched since we moved it. It’s time to clean out and throw away a bunch of stuff we’ll never use. And, we’re gonna use our steam cleaner to try and de-funk the loveseat. May the force be with us.

Dave out.

Posted on

time and money

money money money...
Welcome to 2004 y’alls.

I think true economic freedom, from a personal finance aspect, has a lot to do with the decoupling of time and money. For me, money and time are still tightly coupled, and very much dependent on each other. At certain times, my money situation is rosy – other times, not so rosy. We’re never really “broke” like warming-by-the-fire-in-a-trashcan broke, but we do have peaks and valleys – which are mostly dependent on time.

Sometimes spending equal amounts of money becomes either acceptable or unacceptable based on when the spending will occur. That’s the difference between going out and buying $10 worth of pizza or burritos from a restaurant for dinner, or staying home and cooking $10 worth of pasta or meat that was purchased at the grocery store. See, the stuff in the pantry or freezer at home was purchased at a time when there was $10 to spend. Whereas it may not be the best time to drop the $10 for the restaurant meal. So yes, it’s the same amount of money being used – a wash as far as the bottom line is concerned. But it still makes a difference. Even tho it’s the same total monthly/weekly/daily pool of funds – the exact time of expenditure ends up mattering.

The coupling of money and time is used to fool consumers all the time. Car salesmen use time to distort the amount of money you’ll pay over the term of a loan. People who measure money only in terms of present-day output are relieved when the salesman tells them they can lower their payments by $100 a month, even though they’ve just bought thousands more in interest over time. In some ways I envy the ignorance of people who don’t realize that less money over more time is actually a worse deal. I mean, what would it matter if I died having never paid back my school loans. Other than the weight of my conscience telling me I stole an education, a debt on my head when I’m buried and gone means little to me.

When money is no longer coupled to time, I imagine we’ll be able to spend whatever we want whenever we want. But for now, it’s still very much cyclical. As we spend these initial years of married life climbing out from under the shadow of college debt, we’re still basically living paycheck to paycheck – the paychecks are just a lot bigger than they used to be. Perhaps that’s a sign of poor budgeting or management, I’m not sure. All I know is that we’ve managed to make impressive strides in reducing debt, while still managing to have fun and maintain a nice “entertainment” budget.

My approach to personal finance is pretty simple. Pay off debts, save and invest, and most of all have fun. I’ve also decided it’s important to realize that there’s no such thing as “extra” money. “Extra” money is always balanced out by “unexpected” expenses. If you find a $100 bill, chances are you’ll lock yourself out of the house and have to pay $100 to get back in. For all the time I spend worrying and thinking about money and finances and budgets and debt, I spend way more thinking about sunshine and music and food and nothing at all. So I think I have a pretty healthy handle on the whole money thing, and I’m not too terribly obsessive.

OK I’m going to publish this without even re-reading it. Sorry if it makes no sense and sucks.

Dave out.

Posted on

messages from your dead aunt

Ben if you're reading, it's back and worse. Help.
Ahhh? finally a “free” morning where we’re not running around. Kinda nice actually. It’s the day before we leave, the time seems to have gone so fast. I can hardly believe we’ve been here a week already.

This morning I had the house to myself, so after I read some in my books and made a nice bowl of leftover spaghetti, I sat down to watch some TV. That show with that dude who talks to dead people was on, you know the one where he does “readings” for audience members? I have mixed feelings about that show, it’s amazing to see how hard some people fall for his junk. So part of me feels bad, like he’s tricking these poor people into thinking their dead aunt is communicating with them. It’s like he’s taking advantage of these peoples’ weaknesses. On the other hand I think, what’s wrong with it? I mean, if he were telling people to go on a killing spree maybe it’d be bad – but what’s wrong with telling someone their dead father is watching over them from beyond? Some of the people were so happy and relieved to “hear” from their departed loved ones that it made me at least think he’s doing something a little nice for them. I dunno. He’s feeding the dementia of these people, so that’s probably not the best – but he’s also giving some people some kind of happiness. Either way, he’s a straight up fake – but it’s fun to watch him.

The weather here is so nice. It makes me want to get out and do something. I had this idea that I was going to drive around town and take pictures of all the places we used to hang out. Pictures to go along with all the stories I have. But, I didn’t really get the chance to do it. I stopped and took some pictures of a couple old haunts, but nothing more than that. I’d really like to go back to Astro and get some pictures, if anything remains to be photographed. Doesn’t look like I’ll make it down there either tho.

What I do know is that it’s high time I get spontaneously rich. Preferably within the next week or so, making it so I won’t have to return to work. It’s not that I hate work, I actually like my job a lot – but I would much rather not have to work. Owell, I guess that’s the dream of most. As Drew Cary said: “You say you hate your job? I’m sorry to hear that. There’s a support group for it, it’s called ‘everybody’ and they meet every night at the bar.” Well, I don’t “hate” it, but I would much rather be independently wealthy and not have to do it. I’m just waiting for the idea of a lifetime to come into my head, so I can quietly collect my riches and retire at 30. I’ll letcha know when it happens.

Well, I gotta go take a dump, and I’m tired of writing. Hope everything is well with all of you. Tomorrow I’ll be on a plane bound for home, and then I have a few days off before I have to return to work. Hopefully we’ll get some time to relax and maybe do a little work around the house.

Dave out.

Posted on

newcastle?, you mean bud?

Mr. and Mrs. Frank Davis
What a busy past few days. I’m glad I don’t write over the weekend, because I’m not sure I would have had time.

Friday night was my brother’s wedding rehearsal dinner. It was very nice, just casual and laid back. A nice time to chat and further get to know people. At the bar before we sat down, I was again reminded that we were in FL. When I asked the bartender if they had Newcastle, he gave me an odd stare. When I followed up by asking for Guiness, he almost walked away from me. Finally, I ordered a Michelob Amber Bock and was done with it. I think he sensed that I was just some dumb yank who doesn’t worship at the alter of Anheuser Busch – and took pity on me by suggesting their darkest and most exotic brew.

When Anthony visited Florida recently, he came back having noticed a few stark differences between California and here. Firstmost, he noticed that foreign cars are nearly nonexistent here. He also noticed that from supermarkets to restaurants, you can only get the most generic, US brew beers. Both his observations have proven true by me. I never really noticed before, but you really have to go to an Irish pub or specialty beer bar to get anything other than Bud and it’s not-so-distant cousins. Strange, but I guess you only need to give ’em what they want.

Saturday was my little brother’s wedding. Man, what a crazy site to see the kid you grew up with standing in front of you getting married. It was a nice ceremony, and the reception was held to only a mild level of crunkedness (thanks Steve), despite my bro’s hoodlum friends. One thing I did think was awesome, they called my bro Frank throughout the entire wedding. The only time they referred to him as John was during the legal vows. Otherwise, even the guy marrying them called him Frank. It said “Angela and Frank” on the napkins, the DJ called him Frank, and even his wife calls him only Frank. I was so proud of my nicknaming abilities I stole a couple napkins so I could keep them for souvenirs. If you don’t know the Frank/John story, check out the bro’s entry in the Cast of Characters page, this paragraph will make more sense then.

Aside from the wedding, we’ve visited with a whole mess of people we haven’t seen in a long time. I drank some beers on the deck of the Cocoa Beach Hilton with a couple guys I haven’t really seen since high school. We visited Sharaun’s grandfather, aunt, uncle, cousin, and others. I finally met Jeremy & Jess’ new little boy, and got to hang out with them for a while. So we’ve been making the rounds.

Well, I’m off. Today we visit more grandparents, more old friends, and have dinner with Bob from FL. Seems like another action packed day to keep us busy.

Dave out.