Caoine

today

i've been up since four am this morning, but given that i dozed off last night sometime around seven thirty [after having been awake for over thirty six hours] it's not really bothering me. i didn't actually get up until after five, when i started getting ready for work and then played a couple of rounds of ready 2 rumble boxing on the dreamcast with jamz0r. that game cracks me up, although crazy taxi is more addictive [it's crazy addictive].

i still need more desk toys. i have my spooky squeak toy from last week, which definitely kicks my ass [though i cannot speak for the asses of my coworkers]. but spooky could use some company. the only other desk stuff i have is a stack of cd's, a tin of penguin mints, various technical books and manuals, and printouts from my boss. i did stock up on jolt this morning, though, since i left home early enough to stop at the one store i know of in manhattan that sells it. what else should i get? star wars toys?

so i'm going to go see velvet acid christ & haujobb tomorrow night, yay. i have to get my ticket from spenz0r. gundam and jamz0r are going, too. i'm looking forward to it.

at the suggestion of a coworker, here's a quick breakdown of my caffeine intake so far today:

• cup of coffee acquired at a deli this morning before work
• venti mocha from starbucks, also before work
• coffee from the coffeemaker upstairs, once i arrived at work
• a can of 'go-go', this weird red-bull-like-substance i got at the same store that sells jolt [it's got a cute anime-esque chick on the can]
• twenty-ounce bottle of jolt
• coffee at lunch
• more coffee from upstairs

and yet, am i noticeably jittery? apparently not, if the results of a quick office poll are to be trusted. i do have to pee, though.

today

hey, how are you? long time no see. how was your thanksgiving? yeah? glad to hear it. mine was filled with familial warmfuzziness, maybe a bit too much wine, some tekken tag tournament on my brother's playstation 2, and yes, hepkitten, with pie. three kinds, even! normally the mere thought of such ritual clan gatherings, especially those lumped under the horrific heading of 'the holidays', is enough to fill me with the direst of dread. but this year wasn't that bad - everyone seemed significantly less stressy and self-conscious than they usually are. my aunt, upon whom the burden of orchestrating the event fell, was a little frazzled but even she seemed to at least be able to enjoy the bountiful feast she prepared. and bountiful it was - the sheer quantity of tubers that died for our pleasure is awe-inspiring, to say the least. i'm not even going to mention the yams.

jim and i ventured out to batcave on saturday. i had intended to wear my new geek shirt, but i ended up being in more of a vinyl mood. and when the vinyl begins its siren song, there's just no denying it. i ended up spending more time at the downstairs dancefloor than i usually do - while i'm not a fan of his, hellraver's spinning wasn't half bad. after getting immediately and thoroughly drunk, i danced till closing and had a damn good time. also livening up the evening was the fact that two members of depeche mode - andy and martin - were present for the night's festivities, which threw the promoter into a positive tizzy and resulted in all three dj's playing an absolutely obscene quantity of depeche. not that i'm complaining - i got to hear some mixes and covers and older songs that aren't played as much.

sunday passed in bouts of napping and gaming. lots of tekken 3 on my part, while jim was consumed with a star-trek-related title he acquired last week. i now have fully developed playstation thumb callouses, heh. and i have word from the boy that our household will soon have another addition - a little baby dreamcast to call our own.

my apartment is slowly undergoing a remarkable metamorphosis - spencer came over last night to pick up the last of his stuff that he wanted to save. there's a lot of trash that needs to be gotten rid of, and i have to finish fixing up the bedroom, but my place is actually getting to be rather homey. the kitchen is usable, the table accessible, the tv functional. we've got multiple machines [and multiple operating systems] going in the bedroom and a hefty stack of technical books just waiting for some shelving [it's on my list].

um... so yeah. right.

today

i actually have little eensy blisters on the tips of my thumbs from the playstation controller: that's how much tekken 3 i've been enjoying lately. and they're the kind of blisters that you can just tell are going to turn into callouses - to match the ones i have from lacing boots for six years, and from holding a pen [interesting side note: with the possibly notable exception of this journal, nearly everything i write is drafted on actual paper, as in written by hand. then typed]. as to tekken 3 - i'm getting noticeably better, though jim still leaves me sprawled unconscious at the end of a round more often than not. when i started playing this weekend, though, i was playing with a significant life advantage over jim, which i've since done away with and am still close to holding my own. cause, you know, i rock. i admit it.

it's really fucking cold out, and i'd like to emphasize the really fucking cold part of that. i don't know why this surprises me - i mean, it's almost december already - but it does. it seems like fall just started and suddenly it's winter. is it colder this year than it usually is? i can't remember when the weather got like this last year.

i'm leaving for boston tomorrow morning. really fucking early, i might add. i'm taking amtrak's spanky new acela thing, but it's not much faster because it isn't acela express. i get to south station at i think eleven am, where my dad is picking me up. the big thanksgiving shindig is at my auntie's house this year and it looks like i'll be getting to see at least one of my cousins, so yay.

jim and i did a lot of cleaning of my apartment last night, and i have to say even though i really don't enjoy cleaning at all i'm glad he's making me do it because the place is so much more appealing now. plus when it's done it'll be a lot easier to keep it clean than it has been to get it clean in the first place. there's still a lot that needs to get done, but the difference between what it looks like now and what it did, say, three weeks ago - there's just no comparison.

today

despite the fact that only constant vigilance on my part is keeping my head from hitting the keyboard as i doze off every few seconds, my mood this morning is unusually lightsome. at starbucks, the wait for my coffee was extensive enough as to indicate that they were not only brewing my beverage but also growing and harvesting the damn beans - yet ebullient i remain. not even the verbal equivalent of an unlubricated anal rape, administered by my boss when i arrived this morning, has managed to mar the shining surface of my sunniness. i have to say - this all seems rather ungoth, and ungoth it might well be, but i wouldn't call it unpleasant.

jim spiked his hair today. i swear, that boy could decide he's altering his wardrobe to consist exclusively of mcdonald's employee uniforms and he'd still somehow manage to be adorable, but this morning he was especially adorable.

i've been playing a lot of tekken 3 lately. i suck, but that's beside the point - it's just really damn fun. and after all, my suckage is excusable for the moment, given that i've enjoyed this fine gaming experience all of twice. i have yet to really decide upon a favorite chracter, but it has to be said that i'm fond of ling xiaoyu. she's so damn cute when she kicks you in the head.

gundam sent me some astral projection mp3's yesterday, and i'm digging them. wouldn't have predicted they'd be anywhere near, much less up, my alley [damn that sounded racy] but they're undeniably enjoyable. think i'll be seeking out more of the same.

today

i'm listening to skinny puppy right now - the singles collection that i picked up at generation last week. or the week before? something like that. i can't think of a better way to start a monday than with loud, stompy industrial. well, ok. let me qualify that. loud, stompy industrial and a disturbing quantity of coffee. i went to starbucks this morning, and they've gone all festive already - the holiday marketing season is in full swing, apparently. their cups are all red and snowflakey and they're pushing their christmas blend as though it were crack. maybe it is crack. hmmmmm.

in spite of my best efforts to ignore it, christmas has shoved its way into my awareness. probably because i'm going to visit my dad for thanksgiving this week, and thanksgiving is closely linked in my mind to christmas. now, i have no problem with christmas in and of itself. i'm not a christian, but christmas is about as pagan a holiday as you can get so that's not even really an issue. in high school i made a point of not letting anyone give me christmas presents unless they called them solstice presents, but that seems a bit much now. after all, i'm not a practicing pagan, either. there aren't really any agnostic holidays, heh. but so to return to my point [if i had one]: christmas is a perfectly good holiday as far as holidays go, but it's also quite possibly the most commerically whored one. i'd like it more if it weren't shoved down my throat starting the week before halloween. at least it's another excuse to watch the nightmare before christmas, though, and i just can't see that being bad.

so i went to sphere on friday, and i really enjoyed myself. the only thing was that it was such a fucking bitch to get there, at least from brooklyn. it would have been less of a herculean trek if we'd been going from manhattan, but i had to go home to get dressed first. it ended up taking about three hours, all told, and given that we only stayed for about three hours once we were there, it all just seems a bit excessive. that said, i did have fun. jim and i were a couple of sexy geek bitches [me in my chicks dig unix, he in his i heart linux one], and i got to meet gundam, who has incredibly cool hair.

after friday night's excursion, jim and i didn't even get up till about three on saturday afternoon, and ended up spending the day lazing around the house. which was really nice, actually. we skipped batcave and stayed home working on our various respective projects. and then yesterday i managed to get myself out of the house and went to bed bath & beyond, land of the overpriced housewares. spencer spent obscene amounts of money on sheets for his new bed, and i snagged some more penguin mints and the fleur d'orange candles they have that i adore.

last night was spent lounging around in my pj's, talking to tycho and playing tekken 3 on jim's playstation. too much fun. i'd rather still be home doing more of the same, admittedly, but i'm actually in a fairly good mood, for a monday morning at least.

today

it's friday, and i've got a big-ass cup of coffee, motherfucker. not only that, this coffee is both overpriced and orgasmically good. and i really like italics, bitch. but seriously - a venti beverage from starbucks is a volume of coffee simply not to be trifled with. though topped by other such titans as the dunkin donuts large iced, the most gargantuan serving available from starbucks is still a hefty amount of delicious caffeiney-goodness. mmmmmmmmmmmm.

i didn't go to lbv last night, which means that - wonder of wonders - i'm actually not that sleepy this morning. i woke up at six thirty - well, to be more precise i got out of bed at six thirty - with remarkably little difficutly. of course i'd rather still be at home [preferably with my geekboy], but consciousness is not as unpleasant as it usually is on friday mornings.

i think i'm going to sphere tonight, which is a first. rich spins there, so that should be cool - i've never heard him spin. i'm not sure how jim and i are getting there, but i like checking out new events. sphere isn't exactly new, but i've never been there so it counts, heh.

today's penny arcade strip hits close to home, at least for me, as does this one, from a few months ago. i mean, i pretty much always enjoy pa, but these two are extra-specially close to the oddheart.

my nails are silver today. damn do i feel cool.

oh, one more thing: if you head to denouement on caoine, you'll note that i've re-done that page. why? because i like megaman, that's why.

today

on the train this morning, i had an extraordinary realization: i'm actually happy these days. life is good. i'm enjoying myself. i don't dread waking up every morning. this is not to say i'm normally just a great big ball of mope, but i wouldn't say that perkiness is exactly commonplace with me either. yet my mood has been undeniably bouyant of late: jim has a lot to do with it. i catch myself looking at him sometimes in just complete incredulity at my luck. i'm not going to question how it is that i arrived at this situation, though. it's enough to enjoy it.

and it's not just my geekboy, either. i'm enjoying my work lately - which may, in fact, be a first. actually, let me rephrase that. i've always enjoyed my work, as in web design. what i don't usually enjoy is my job, but even that's been at least tolerable [especially since i got my raise]. and today is my first post-raise payday. i'm off to cash my check at lunch.

i bought my train tickets for next week. i'm leaving ass-early on thursday morning and getting into south station at like 11. i'm looking forward to seeing my dad - i miss him, and i worry about him a little since he's living by himself while my mother is gone. i know he can take care of himself, but still. when i spoke to him yesterday he said he'd had spam for dinner three nights in a row and that just can't be good, can it?

it's gotten cold lately, and because i'm an idiot i left my coat in a cab last week. so i think at least part of this paycheck will be going towards a new winter coat, cause this sweater thing just isn't cutting it.

today

good god: thanksgiving is a week from tomorrow. i hate how holidays creep up on me like this. i have to call my father today and find out how i'm getting to boston next week. and how long i'm going to be staying. i guess i should leave next wednesday night or something; i get that thursday and friday off work. bah. i'm psyched to see my father and everything, but i really dislike travelling, especially when i'm only going to be staying there for a couple of days. i sort of wish my father would come here instead - neither of my parents has ever seen my apartment, and what with all the work jim has been doing and getting me to do it might even be worth seeing in the near future.

i'm out of penguin mints. well, at work. i have more at home. but it's really distressing to reach for the tin that's still sitting on my desk and find it empty. must remember to bring in my other tin tomorrow.

i need some suggestions on what to do with my workspace. it's really dull right now; i just have this little corner with my technical books and stack of cd's and some printouts from my boss. there's a little plastic jack skellington figure that aimee gave me on her last day, but that's about it. what do you people have on your desks? i'm thinking i need some more toys or something. or maybe deadly weapons.

oooo. that 'toys for my desk' train of thought just prompted me to head over to thinkgeek - i should so buy some of their nerf guns and such. good for assualts on the sys admins.

i've decided i'm not going to redesign caoine.org right now. not completely, at least. because dammit, i like this design. i'm sure i'll re-do it eventually but it's been moved to a spot fairly far down on my list of priorities and i've decided to just tweek this layout instead. don't hate me. my new priorities are finishing disintegrate.org [yes, i am still aware of its existence] and redesigning my journal sitelette. i'm also working on a site for my father's [hella cool] sculpture.

jim [james, jamz0r, my geekboy] is, let me just reiterate, entirely too keen. i have to admit i've fallen for him in a pretty hardcore way. he's the best thing i never expected to happen to me that's come along in quite some time.

today

have i done some sort of momentously good deed recently and forgotten about it? did my inner girl scout bubble to the surface and prompt me to help old ladies across the street or produce delicious cookies for the whole family? i'm wondering, you see, how i can possibly be deserving of the boy who's asleep at my house right now - after, might i add, spending most of the evening yesterday cleaning my apartment. it went something like this: jim: hun, where's your broom?
me: my what?
jim: your broom. i want to clean for a while.
me: you want to what?
and so on. the end result being that my kitchen is damn near able to sustain human life at this point, as most of the atmospheric toxins appear to have been eliminated.

not only does he clean, though. nope. the wonders do not cease with that highly unlikely phenomenon: he's also a geek. be still,l my heart. he flirts in regular expressions and carries a java book at all times, his eyes lit up the other day when i wore my [amazingly atrocious] globix shirt, and last night he brought his laptop to bed. do i even need to say it? i'm keeping him.

my boss comes back from vacation tomorrow: i arrived at the office and the dread was already palpable. you can sense the despair descending upon each employee as he or she realizes exactly how much work needs to get done today to make up for all the quake we played last week. it's like we've all got the imperial march looping in the playlist of our collective subconscious.

we all know what i was doing yesterday, but here's what spencer got up to: the page o' linkage on caoine has been considerably spiffed up. what before was a mere list of entries, albeit a mighty damn attractive one, has now been broken up into sections by category. never again will you have to read about half a dozen fake hair sites to find that oed link i posted a month ago, all thanks to my other favorite geek. he's also added a 'posted by' line, which i hope is indicative of his inclination to add more entries himself: you can check out his fresh-off-the-text-editor review of the new evils toy album under [appropriately enough] music. do you love php? i hope so, because php loves you.

ok. it's just about time for me to pop another handful of penguin mints and get back to work. though 'back to' might not be the best choice of phrasing as it sort of implies that i've already been working.

today

yes yes. i am bad. i was late to work today and it kind of threw off my schedule, hence the late update. will you ever forgive me? i have a good excuse, at least - i went to long black veil last night with james [perhaps better known as 'quite simply the most fucking adorable boy in the world']. i mean, come on. but so that was entirely too much fun, especially for a weeknight, and as a result i overslept rather dramtically and didn't stroll into the office until about 10:45.

i'm needing a nap in the worst way - i actually did end up falling asleep at my desk for about an hour earlier this afternoon, but it hasn't made me feel any more awake [though the added hour nearly doubles the total sleep time i've accrued in the past day]. i've also been remarkably distracted for what portion of the work day has seen me both at the office and awake - a phenomenon for which that same james is partially [if inadvertantly] responsible, heh.

as i predicted, aim has turned out to have successfully torn to shreds and then ripped the shreds themselves into even smaller shreds what remnants there were of my productivity. but dammit, it's just so gosh darn fun.

i've been doodling today.

right, okay, so i'm just going to admit that i'm feeling extraordinarily lazy today and don't feel like writing anything else. but if i offer you this delicious aural tidbit, will you still love me? hope so. ta.