Home again.

Back in that land of working high speed internet, working phones (both land line and cell), working toilets, working sinks that allow you to brush your teeth, working showers that actually let you shower and weather that doesn't suck. Let's just say I'm glad to be back in Florida. I'm in a much better mood already, but I'm a little tired. It's been a long day of travel. Not good when you're circling Atlanta and you can see 9 other planes in the air circling with you. Die Hard 2, anyone?

Ok, this will be a test to see if my readership has returned or not. Particularly my female readership. I am going to tell a story and I need to hear what your take is, ladies. I guess the guys can join in with their guesses, but I get the feeling they'll be just as confused as I am. Anyway...

So I'm boarding the plane in Minneapolis. I am seated in row 11, so I'm one of the last on the plane since they start from the back and all. As I'm getting on, there's a very cute girl in one of the first-class seats. She's one of those girls with really big brown eyes, long brown hair, barely needs any makeup to look great, trim figure and, most importantly, not wearing a ring. Pretty much marking off more entries than normal on the "things Maki looks for in a woman physically" checklist right there. We make eye contact, I smile and she smiles a killer smile right back. This is good. Too bad I'm going to be sitting 4 rows back. Anyway, I don't think much of it until we get to Atlanta and I go to the gate for my next flight. As I approach my gate, who do I see sitting there, waiting for the flight to Jacksonville? After as crappy a trip as I had up that point, this was fate's way of tipping the scales back to me. I go out to the main hallway and make a few phone calls, waiting for the seats to fill in a bit. I know nobody will take the one immediately next to her for at least a little while since the rule of airports is that one must always sit every other seat until there are too many people waiting and it's time to fill the rest of the seats. Can't go too early, that's just a little too bold, at least for a subtle guy like me.

Once I figure the gate has reached it's passenger saturation point, I head over and ask if the seat next to her is taken. Of course it isn't. I mention how I passed by her on the plane from Minneapolis and get the conversation going. She's got one of those soft-sounding voices that's just as cute as she is. She's bummed the first class seats for this flight were all booked and she's in row 23 now. I joke about how I can strongarm whoever's next to me in row 11 to trade with her. She laughs, probably not sure if I'm serious or not. In all, we talk for about 15 minutes or so. I figure I'll stop by row 23 during the flight, or at worst, catch up with her at baggage claim once we land. Turbulence throughout the 45 minute flight makes the choice for me. I make it a point to (casually) run into her amongst the throngs of people waiting by baggage claim. We pick up the conversation, with her telling me how she wished she had taken me up on my offer since her seat in row 23 was wet for some reason. As we're joking about what the liquid might have been, her (presumably) mom and (presumably) sister show up. I back off, since I don't want to be weird pushy guy hanging too close during the family greetings and all. They say their hellos and then the mom asks, "so are you getting EXCITED yet?" And the sister says, "yeah, I mean, the wedding's only a couple months away!"

Hold the phone. WHAT?

"Yeah, I mean, the wedding's only a couple months away!"

Wait, what the hell? Wedding? What? She had a solid 20 minutes at least to mention this and never did? And where is the ring? Here I am figuring I'm about to get a super-high-potential girl's number and suddenly I'm staring the dreaded "W" word right in the face? This must be what it and NBA player feels like when he scores 50 points and loses the game. I immediately move into the first stage: denial. Maybe she's going to her best friend's wedding. Maybe she's the maid of honor. Nope, she mentions how she was just fitted for the dress but they need to make some kind of alterations to the train. Something tells me bridesmaids don't have trains. Dammit. At this point I figure I can lump all the other steps after denial into one group and take them elsewhere. I know it's not cool to just cut and run like this, but really, what other choice do I have? I slowly disengage, moving my way towards the baggage claim belts and the interminable wait for my damn luggage to come out. 20 minutes later it finally does. My last contact with her is a wave and a rather lame, "nice talking to you." My optimism balloon was completely deflated at that point. You can tell by how lame a goodbye that was. It was really the fitting capper to my weeklong family vacation of misery, though. Nothing worked properly, and my luck with women is no exception. Damn, I hate being me sometimes.

So, for all of those loyal readers who have put up with this long-winded story, what is your take on this? It's been my experience that married/engaged girls do two things within moments of talking to a man they've never met before. A) wear and flash not-so-subtly their engagement band/wedding ring, and B) casually mention fiance/husband within 75 seconds of the conversation starting. So what was the deal with this one? Let me know what you guys think. I need some perspective on this.

More to come to wrap up 2005... Promise.

Snow is better than ice.

Remember how I said how beautiful it was that first day and how much people were commenting on how nice it was?

Well, that's all over with now.

The temperature rose to just above freezing, the sun is permanently hidden behind clouds and because of that all the snow is melting. It's good weather for making a snowman, but it's also atrocious weather for driving in. Or walking out of the front of your cabin on. Or cross-country skiing, which we were going to try. Oh well.

I also forgot to mention that even though the pipes inside our cabin are all winterized, the pipes leading from the main line to the house froze, since they're apparently not buried deep enough. This means my family has no running water. Yeah. Flushing the toilet before consulting everyone else has become a federal offense. Brushing teeth with a glass of water has become a luxury. It's like a Christmas in the JU dorms, really. The side benefit is it gives me an excuse to log onto to the Win98 megamachine to check mail and such. This is not much comfort.

The rest of my cousins make it up here today. This is the part I'm looking forward to the most, seeing everyone at Christmas, exchanging gifts, all of that good stuff. It helps that there will be a veritable feast here. It hurts that the only physical activity I can engage in is pushups and crunches (of which I've done more than I care to count so far.) I get the feeling it's all downhill after tonight, since the only thing left to look forward to is getting back home. I love my family, but man, a full week with them without the comforts modern humans enjoy is starting to be a bit much.

I haven't even had a drink since I got here. I was on a full-on pace to give myself diabetes and throw my name on the liver transplant list now, but that all seems to have come to a screeching halt. Yet, somehow I have lots of cash in my wallet. Strange how that works, isn't it? I'm sure I can make a causal connection between the two eventually. Just not today.

That's enough rambling from me for today. Hope everyone has a safe Christmas. Stay warm.

Beware... I live.

Windows 98 rocks. I just want to get that out of the way right now. I blog forth to you from my aunt & uncle's rockin' computer sportin' a fresh coat of Windows 98. Awwwwwwww yeah.

Anyway, yes, I made it to the remote corner of Minnesota. Yes, it is cold. No, it is not THAT cold. It is absolutely beautiful and once I can get into town to get my laptop in proper internets working order, I will show some beautiful pictures of stuff a Florida boy is simply not used to. Like snow. Lots and lots and lots of snow, most of it untouched, which is rather cool looking. What gets me is the sparkle it has. It's like a field covered in glitter, that shines just a little differently depending on the angle you view it from. Very cool (no lame pun intended.)

To cover some things Matty and Mr. Frustrated mentioned in the comments for my last post, my beanie is black, not blue. We do not wear Nikes, we wear Coleman snow boots, since wearing anything else makes you want to cut your feet off by the end of the day. There is no Kool-Aid here. None. It's too cold for Kool-Aid. Sorry. I have only received one ticking present, but it's still early. Not that you guys mentioned it, but I want to: I love my PSP. When trapped inside because it takes 40 minutes to get dressed to go outside, it's pretty much all I have left that resembles my Florida life. Kinda sad, really. And since Holly will ask sooner or later, no drunk driving relatives. Yet. As I said before, it's still early. My iPod still rocks. But you knew that already. And yes Matt, milk was indeed a bad choice.

In other news: A long-time buddy of mine got engaged right before I left. Congrats to him and his betrothed (love that word, so much better sounding than fiance (I do not know how to make the accent on the e in Windows 98, sorry.)) You know what other word I love? VEGAS. I am saving up already. I won $33 in 20 minutes at the Mille Lacs casino last night, so I think I'm ready to step it up to Vegas level proportions. And I think we all know where we'd like to be in, oh, say, October or so. Damn right. Congrats. Now update your blog, dude.

Back to our regularly scheduled program: Cell phone still gets no signal whatsoever. I was going to text message some people on Christmas, but that may not even be a possibility. So let this serve as your Christmas greeting, oh friends of mine. Unless I get more access to the internets before then.

Merry Christmas, everyone! Even Jewish and Muslim and Atheist people, since you'll still get a day off of work. Hopefully. If not, re-evaluate your career choice. Seriously.

Christmas comes early.

Remember how I told you to hold off on buying Sin City on DVD because there was a better version coming out? Well, it came out yesterday.

Go buy it. Now. I'll wait.

Got it? Good. The first thing you notice upon opening it? It's got a full copy of the original "The Hard Goodbye" (Marv's story) graphic novel inside. Cool. After popping the discs in, you're treated to some of the coolest damn menus you'll ever see on a DVD. If you dorked out over this movie as much as I did, you'll get to find out exactly how everything was made. And I mean everything. How Rodriguez convinced Frank Miller to allow him the rights to the property, how he convinced Tarantino to do a scene shot on digital, how they convinced most of the actors to come work on an almost all-CGI movie, how they made the costumes and the props, how they filmed a movie where the actors were sometimes the only real thing in a scene, everything. Of course you've got the obligatory commentary tracks for the film as well. The only feature I would have liked that wasn't included was one that compares panels from the original comic to scenes in the movie. But that's a small request on a set as loaded as this. And that's just stuff on the first disc.

The second disc has the 4 stories separated into their own short movies. You get a few scenes here and there that weren't included in the theatrical cuts, but appeared in the original comics. Marv visiting his mom, more violent mayhem from Miho (and a particularly painful-looking end to Manute that was definitely not in the comic), stuff like that. Very cool, though I think the original cut of the movie will remain my preferred version. Another version of the movie is on this disc, the "All Green" version. It's the film without effects, only the actors and whatever live props were used (astonishingly few). It runs about 10x faster than normal, so it only takes about 10 minutes to watch. Very cool, and quite informative.

My favorite feature has been "Sin-chrono-City," if only because you learn so much about the characters and their motivations from it. It's an interactive map of Basin City, with Frank Miller voiceovers for every stop along the way. You can click on an area like the Tar Pits and find that it was created as an excuse to draw dinosaurs. Miho was a character at that location, so you can click on her to find out that she's not human, but actually a "good" demon in Miller's eyes. There's some absolutely fascinating stuff in here, like Hartigan being Dirty Harry if Dirty Harry was a cop in Basin City or Kevin being the "evil" demon counterpart to Miho's "good" demon. (Notice how neither speaks?) Miller shows that there's tons of stuff that proves that this wasn't a simple exploitation flick, but a movie with a LOT more going on thematically than its detractors would suspect. But you know what? I covered that ground already when I first reviewed it.

Not sure what else I can tell you, other than one of the best movies of the year got one of the best DVDs of the year. Sorry if you didn't listen to me and bought the barebones version back in August. Even if you did, this one is well worth the double-dip.

Ok, now where's our Kill Bill special edition?

Where everybody knows your name

Oh man, I had a weekend. I had such a weekend that it wiped me out into today. I had to stay home from work due to my throat deciding to swell itself shut for no apparent reason. I hate when that happens. Insert obligatory, "hah hah, Maki's throat hurts, he must be having gay sex" joke here. I'll wait. Feel better? Good. In the tradition of my blog as of late, you get my weekend update and then probably nothing else for the rest of the week. I know, I know. You're broken up about it. But I know you are just dying to hear about my weekend, right? Right? RIGHT? Sure you do.

So, heading backwards, I guess today counts as part of the weekend since I stayed home and didn't work. Because not working is awesome, indeed. So I played more F.E.A.R., in which one man kills lots and lots of people with guns and other assorted weapons. Then I began to watch season 4 of 24, in which one man kills lots and lots of people with guns and other assorted weapons. I love the Jack Bauer Power Hour. There's something about a show where all life's problems can be solved by threatening someone and then shooting them. Don't take my word for it, though. Go read Matt's fantastic post about it. Please come back, though. My feelings will be hurt if you don't.

Ok. Back? Good. So, yesterday was the finale for Survivor, in which my girl Stephenie completely botched everything by having some of the worst responses to jury questions ever. I mean, really, she knew they were going to grill her because nobody on the jury can ever keep any proper perspective and are all bitter hypocrites because that person beat them. Yet her answers were still garbage. Just tell them what they want to hear, dude. This is why I'd never be chosen to go on Survivor. I think their audition process consists of asking two questions. First, "have you ever watched Survivor before?" One must answer yes to this question or the audition is over. The second question would be, "have you learned anything from watching Survivor in the past?" The answer to this must be a firm no or you are immediately rejected. That's why I'll never end up on Survivor. Oh well. It's not like I won't watch the next Survivor, though. After all, I keep winning money off my parents every season, so that's incentive enough, I think.

I'd now like to take this time to mention that I hate Peyton Manning. I mean, seriously. I went to the Jags/Colts game (skybox seats, no less) and even if he's the nicest guy you'll ever meet, I still hate him. The guy just tore the Jags' defense apart. They've got one of the best defenses in the league and it was like he didn't even have to try. The game really wasn't as close as that final score indicated, either. They got destroyed. Trust me. At least the food in the skybox was good and the beer was free, so there's my silver lining for that game.

Saturday was party day. Went to a surprise birthday party for a former member of my department at Mongo's downtown. I love that place and I got to drink free margaritas and eat free mongolian barbecue and free cake and life was good. And for once, the person was completely surprised by it. Quite nice, and a good way to spend an afternoon. After that I went over to Holly and Brian's for a birthday/Christmas party, which was fun, except for one thing... I was literally the only single person there. Well, there was the 9 year-old girl, but, well, let's just leave that one where it is, shall we? Still, had a good time. Food was delicious, and they've got a really beautiful house, beating me in the Christmas tree department 3-0. Once I left, I then proceeded to head out to the beach to meet up with Matt, Steve and Co. at a bar called Your Place, then MacCouls later on. Lots of beer and shots were consumed. PK was supposed to meet up with us at MacCouls, but unfortunately didn't get there until about an hour after he was supposed to, but by that time we were leaving anyway. Next time, PK. Next time.

Even though it feels like it was a month ago already, that leaves Friday. Friday was the best night of the weekend, I've gotta say. Saturday was fun, but Friday was one of those weird nights where most everything works out, if only by sheer chance. First, I met up with a good buddy of mine that I hadn't seen for a while, and we saw Syriana. Good, but not quite great. I'll have to review that later, since a discussion of the oil trade and its cultural and human impact really doesn't belong in a post about me drinking, now does it? Didn't think so. After that I headed out to the beach, as usual, to another irish bar, named Coulhanes (I think. You'd think I know, since I've been there like 5 times now.) I was supposed to be there to celebrate a buddy getting his degree. As I walk in, I see another one of my good friends, who also happened to have graduated that night and who was also having her graduation party at the same bar. Go figure. She's got a whole bunch of people there with her, so I hang out talking to them for a while. It turns out one of them is best friends with one of my friends in Orlando, so I talked to her for quite a while. She's taken though, so everyone who just perked up at that one can relax again. Sorry, kids. After talking to her for a bit I saw that PK's roommates and some of their friends (including maple syrup girl) were there as well. PK was supposed to show up also, but, well, he didn't. Next time, PK, next time.

Shortly thereafter Matt & crew showed up, bringing the percentage of people I knew at the bar to a conservative 75%. It was almost like hosting a party at my own house, but without all the cleanup and general annoyance of worrying about CDs getting stolen and someone having sex on your bed other than you and all that. There was even a live band playing. Life was good. The only downside to that is when you start buying rounds of Guinness and decide to start a tab. Big mistake. The short of it? I'm out of spending money until payday. Again. Once again, it was worth it, though.

I hope you've enjoyed my weekly weekend recap. I wish I had more for you, but this only posting once a week thing is really draining the creativity right out of me. I'll have to get back on the horse sooner or later. I'm thinking all it might take is a little motivation from a man with a gun and an anger management problem going, "WHAT IS YOUR PRIMARY OBJECTIVE WITH THIS BLOG?" And then shooting me in the leg. Because that's how things work on the Jack Bauer Power Hour.

The weekly post!

Um, yeah. So, I was going to post last night but Blogger just killed me on that front. You'd think with the power of Google behind them they'd be able to keep their servers running. Then I remembered that this service is 100% free of charge to me and I should just shut the hell up about it and take what I'm given. Fair enough.

So, this weekend was a really odd combo of partying it up and being really lame. As I briefly recapped in the comments on my last post, I succeeded in the inebriation department. This was a good thing. It was especially good since it had really been a long time since I had gone out and just drank up a storm. From the restaurant to the comedy club to the Irish pub afterwards, I don't think I stopped drinking the entire time. Therein lies the rub, though. But I'll get to that in a little bit. Dinner, drinks and some good laughs are about the best way to spend a Friday. Granted, I didn't go home with any phone numbers, but that was never really my objective for the evening anyway. Besides, I'm smart enough to know that women don't generally find inebriated fellows the most attractive, so it was for the best I stuck with my crew for the night. Regardless of what PK says.

Anyway, after awakening on a friend's couch on Saturday morning, I got the obligatory, "oh shit, where on god's holy earth am I," moment out of the way and began with a shower. I then borrowed a shirt that said "protect your nuts" and had a picture of a squirrel wielding a bat while standing in front of a pile of peanuts. Not my style, but it was that kind of morning. IHOP was decided on due to their proliferation of hangover food. It was there that I realized what nonstop drinking for an evening does to not only your liver, but your wallet as well. The short of it? I had $14 left. I had started the night with a little over $120. Granted, in New York or LA or London or any other big city that's par for the course, but to spend that much in Jacksonville in one night is fairly mind-boggling. You know it's a sad day when you're sweating paying your bill at IHOP, of all places.

Just as an aside, do IHOPs in Canada count as International? I've always wondered if the International House of Pancakes is like that crappy little international airport that runs a flight to Jamaica once a month just to claim they're "international." I don't think I've ever heard of a Lithuanian IHOP or anything like that. Is Lithuania even a country anymore? I can never keep track of any of those Eastern Bloc countries.

Anyway, I'm dropped off at my car and I proceed to drive the requisite 40 minutes home. From the moment I set foot in my door until the moment I leave for work on Monday morning, the doors to my house would not open again. This is where the lame part of my weekend begins. What did I do? I watched DVDs. I played video games. I did not, however, write anything for my blog. Once again, when given the choice between effort and lack of effort, the scales tipped towards the lack again. Sloth wins another round, and you get the late-Tuesday recap. Sorry, kids. I will admit it was odd to spend a Saturday night playing video games. It was like being in 8th grade or something. Pretty much the same, now that I think about it... $14 to my name and I'm at home playing video games. The more things change, the more they stay the same, huh?

So, now that you've read this far? Here's the short version: Friday=awesome, Saturday=lame, Sunday=lame. Thanks for reading.