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So, last weekend was my birthday – the medium-sized 3-1. Ugh. It’s taken me a while to post everything, mostly because I’ve been playing a game of catch-up since returning home. It’s amazing how far behind you can feel after only being gone for four days. But, things are finally returning to normal just in time for another weekend. MUCH less action this weekend, which is fine by me. I need some unwinding time. I do have to say, though, all in all, last weekend was one of the best of my life, hands down. My friends rock.

BurnoutZen started planning the trip a couple of weeks ago and we had only some loose structure to the idea – go to Austin, hit 6th street and have some fun, and take a trip to Shiner, all over the course of a weekend. Simple but brilliant. Brilliant! Slowly over the course of the following week and a half, the plan started to form a bit more structure. A timeline was formed: We’d drive to Austin, stay with LampLover‘s friend from college at her house north of town, meet up with another group of friends who were coming down to do some toobing on the Guadalupe, hit 6th street with them that night, meet up with my sister the following day to do something and then, before heading home on Monday, go to Shiner and tour the brewery. Rock!

It was one of those rare plans that managed to stay mostly intact and be very successful all at the same time. We ended up toobing on a branch of the river called the Comal (a branch of the Guadalupe), but the area was fantastic! (the “toobing” link will take you to the website of some person who I don’t know, but their pictures look similar to the ones I took – I should have mine by next week sometime, if all goes well – check back).

The portion of the trip where we did something with my sis was fun too – We got to tour a cavern to the Northeast of San Antonio – Natural Bridge Caverns. I had never been exploring through caverns before – it was really fun and pretty educational too. Afterwards, we went to the Riverwalk in SA and went to Hooters (yay!) and had drinks at a piano bar called Durty Nelly’s (DN doesn’t get a link, cause I’m mad at them – they put a hold on a large chunk of money from my debit card and it caused overdraft fees 4 days later. So, while they’re fun and it was a great time – you’ll have to google them yourself if you wanna see them).

A good amount of pictures from the outing have already been posted for your enjoyment. I went out and got myself a Flickr account, which seems to be pretty cool. If I start doing more pictures, I may have to upgrade myself to a pro account, but even that is reasonably priced. I’ve heard good things about the site from friends, so it should be a good investment. Anyway, in the meantime, I have a free account and you can see the photos. Just take a look on the left hand side of this main page, and you’ll see a little flash display of the photos. Click one and it will take you to the my area on the site.

I can’t thank BZ and LL enough (since they were the chief orchestrators and perpetrators of the weekend) for making it such an amazing weekend. They were generous to the point of martyrdom, willing to do anything I wanted to do (and cheery about it) and supplied their own great personalities all weekend, which turned the fun on the weekend up several notches. Thanks again!!!!

That said, another weekend is looming, and, as I remarked earlier – this one will be much less hectic. Last weekend, over the course of 3.5-4 days, we drove 1,000 miles and visited dozens of people. This weekend’s goal – 10 miles and maybe 2 people. Enough…time to veg!

Tonight. One night only. Appearing and signing copies of his new book at the Northwest Highway Barnes & Noble…..

THE Bruce Campbell.

*trumpets blare and awed faces sit slack jawed at the magnificence of the moment*

Oh yes. I’m gonna go get me Ash’s autograph! w00t! After a particularly long and crappy day at work, this might just be the thing I need to balance it all out.

That is all. Oh, and remember – Shop smart. Shop S-Mart.

The Fourth of July weekend was a fun one. I’m not a super-patriotic person, but I’d say I’m moreso than your average joe. I don’t ride around with “support our troops” stickers on my car, though I do. I don’t fly a flag at my apartment (would be tough, anyway), but I certainly love seeing when people do and I love our flag. As an American, though, I’d say I’m fairly informed as to what is going on the world, knowledgeable about our history and the events that have shaped this nation into the country it is today. I can tell you where Missouri is on a map and point it out for you (go ahead and laugh – it puts me in a small percentage of my countrymen). Yes, I’d say I’m relatively patriotic, but not overboard.

I think you’re required to be overboard to live in Texas.

There were roughly 12 firework shows this past weekend to celebrate our nation’s Independence Day. Think about that for a moment – imagine the money that was spent on the combined arsenal for these shows…it’s a little scary, but impressive at the same time.

LampLover and I settled on seeing a show close to home – the fact that it turns out Kaboomtown is one of the largest and best shows in the nation is all just icing on the cake. I called up BurnoutZen to join us, and we readied ourselves for fun. The town of Addison always does a great job on their events, but Kaboomtown is one of my favorites. They let you bring your own blankets, chairs, coolers, food and even beer to the event, and the admission is free. That’s a rare thing in these days.

The show was on July 3rd, so we had a day to sleep in and recover after a fun night of celebrating, and we prepared to take advantage of it! LL and I loaded up the cooler with lots of goodies (chicken from Popeye’s, Shiner and plenty of water) and prepared to brave the heat. We arrived at the park around 5pm, and the temperature was hovering right near the century mark. With the heat index factored in, I think we were somewhere near 105 degrees. A cool breeze teased us from time to time, but for the first couple hours, there was little to keep the heat at bay. We were very happy we had lots of water, in the end, since we would have been quite dehydrated if we hadn’t brought it along.

In addition to the sun, relaxing comfy chairs and delicious Shiner & chicken, there was great music to be enjoyed too. The first act, an army band from Oklahoma, played mostly marches and hymns, but they were enjoyable as I don’t hear them often. The second two acts were more in tune with my tastes – Five Times August, a local acoustical one-man band that is starting to get play in larger media (MTV’s Laguna Beach to be specific – I had only heard about the show, just reading about it now as I hyperlinked it – but apparently it’s all the rage with “The Kids”) performed for about 45 minutes. I really liked his music; his style is very similar to that of John Mayer (as LL aptly pointed out) but with a bit more pep to it. He was selling CD’s and tshirts, so I picked up a disk and got it autographed by Brad – he’s very young (just out of high school himself) but is very likeable; was very gracious to be playing in front of a large audience and thanked everyone he talked to. He’s playing again in a few weeks at some more local free shows, and I’m sure LL and I will be going again. After 5x August, the headliner of the show took the stage: Jackopierce. JP has been around for about 17 years, known mostly as a “college band”, but receiving radio play in smaller markets around the country. They were decent, but I wasn’t bowled over by their performance. Their set was pretty short, as daylight was running out, and after a speech by the mayor of Addison, the fireworks were set to commence.

The fireworks show lasted for about 25 minutes and was choreographed to music by one of the local radio stations, Jack-FM. It was a very enjoyable show…lots of oohs and ahhs, and with the enhancement of Shiner, was a lot of fun. My roomie, The Cheat, showed up with his girlfriend just before the fireworks began, and stayed for a while. After the fireworks, they put up a big screen and ran the last of what they were calling “Lone Star Drive-in“, a series of movies in the park. The last showing was Days of Thunder, which I had never seen. It helped to watch it on a big screen with good sound, otherwise I probably never would have seen it. All in all, even with many of the events being rated ‘so-so’ at best, it was a very enjoyable afternoon and evening.

I hate being sick.

That’s a stupid statement on it’s own, when I look at it. Who would actually say “oh, being sick? That rules…sign me up!” But, still, I am standing by my stupid, obvious statement. Being sick really sucks…especially when you have no sick-time built up at your job. So, I schluff off to work every day, loaded full of ibuprofen, acetaminophen and pseudoephedrin, sucking down gatorade and tea like it’s going out of business. This hasn’t provided the relief I’d like though. So, I may have to change tactics – tackle this on an allergy-level. LampLover seems to think it’s allergy-related, so I’ll take up her suggestion to load myself full of Claritin this afternoon. Hopefully that will help.

I get my little nutball companion back today (my diminutive pooch, Hunter). He’s been staying with my friends C & L (names left out to protect the not-so-innocent), and now that I’ve got my affairs at my apartment somewhat in order, it’s time to relieve them of their unrequested dog-duty and pick up the little scamp. I’m just hoping he adjusts to my having a roommate well and isn’t a true pain in the arse. I have serious doubts.

I’m currently uploading my music collection to my computer. I’ve been talking about doing it for ages, and I’m finally getting around to doing it. It’s pretty cool when you really get a good shuffle of your entire music collection going. Makes me crave the iPod that LL just purchased. Having all of it on a little playing card-size box would be ultra cool. But, to get to that point, I need to get all my music in digital format anyway. I’m a bit worried that I won’t have the space for everything, though. I’ve only uploaded about 70 or 80 discs so far, and I’m already at 3GB of music. I’ve still got about 450 more discs to load…..and I think I’ve got about 10GB of space…then everything is going to slow down. Ugh. So, I’m thinking about upgrading my laptop’s hard drive. Or, I could just wait and go with that Apple Mini I’ve had my eye on….oh, the decisions….*sigh* In the meantime, I’m just gonna keep uploading.

From the web: Ran across this story while FARKing today…was a really funny story of what can happen when a NICE person ends up with a celebrity phone number. Kinda scary when you think of it, really…someone gets your number and can really play havoc with your life if they want to be malicious. Though, I suppose you’re partly to blame if you’re not updating people with your new number…but then again, think of how many companies and people you give your number to without expecting regular contact with them…if they call and said Malicious Pretender decides to have fun with it…could be a weird situation.

I always seem to daydream about a new computer system…most of the systems I dream about tend to be quite out of reach. Because, hey, if you’re going to daydream about a computer, you might as well make it one of the coolest systems you can get. Besides, if you do actually purchase said system, it starts it’s journey to Obsolete City as soon as you escort it from it’s shipping box.

Well, that being said, I’ve found my new computer. At least, what I would *LIKE* to have as my new computer (contributions, anyone? anyone? …Bueller?). Check out the (relatively) new Apple Mini. They have packed quite a system into this little critter, and it comes with most everything you need, aside from a monitor…heck, I can find one of them. The system I’ve designed on their site gives me a 1.42 GHz PowerPC G4 machine with 512mb RAM, 80GB HD, Wireless Airport Extreme (802.11G) card, keyboard and mouse (Mac makes cool ones) and it still comes in quite a bit under $800. That’s IMPRESSIVE for Apple!

Aside from daydreaming about computers, I’ve been a busy little beaver moving. I got all of my stuff from storage this last weekend and am once again reunited with all my stuff (one fluffy little pooch aside…Hunter is still on vacation at my old place…THANKS C & L!) and moving it in was LOTS of fun. Thank goodness I had a great deal of help from BurntoutZen and Lamp Lover. I would have been up a particular creek without a means of propulsion trying to move a sleeper sofa on my own, if you get my drift. But, with their assistance, I got it all in…only to have The Cheat come back from Michigan with all HIS stuff on Tuesday….UGH! So, currently, the Pad is bit of mess. But, on the plus side there is plenty of stuff there. We will have to christen the Pad with a good party in the near future….tentative date is about 2 weeks from now. Yay!