So tonight I went to take a walk, and as typically happens with me I get bored with just walking, so I turned and went to climb the mountain.  I figured I would play it safe tonight and stick with the paths.  However I did not go out until about 7pm.  To indicate how long I was out, I have only been home for 5 minutes and It is now 8:21 and pitch black except for moonlight now. 

Even taking the path I choose to go way the hell up the mountain and again being stubborn decided not to turn back to make my trip easier but instead keep going over the various mountains.  So when I was finally on a downward path, it was dark.  I did not care, as I see very well in the dark and I was on a real trail, so no worrying about sliding into a cactus. 

Well one thing I hadn’t thought of was that the creatures come out at night.  I don’t blame them.  In my entire time on this giant mountain, there was only 2 other people I saw, as opposed to during the day where there are mountain bikers and hikers all over.  So as I was running down some rocks I all of a sudden stopped dead because out of my peripheral vision I saw a snake going down the rocks right in front of me. 

I am not scared of snakes and it was quite obvious that it was more scared of me, however It made me stop and think that perhaps I should be more observant.  So I took out my headphones to give me better sense of sound and my surroundings. 

To be honest I was told when I moved here that I would see snakes and scorpions all the time, and this is the first time I have seen one at all. 

I think in the future I shall go out before the sun sets, just to avoid situations like this.  Of course, It is much more comfortable to go out after sun starts to set here since It can get so bloody hot and it will only get worse in the next couple months. 

Oh well, damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

When I was in High School I used to drink a LOT of soda.  I mean typically 6 a day when I was done with school.  I drank it not for the “effect” everybody said you would get with it, but because I enjoyed the taste.  Well then one day I quit, cold turkey.  Of course I was just a stupid kid who did not realize that I was addicted to caffeine, so when I quit I got these really nasty headaches.  Of course once again I was a dumbass kid who didn’t associate the headaches to soda-withdrawal.

I mean I only quit drinking soda because my mother told me that either my friends (who were always hanging around my house) had to start paying for the soda.  I said no, I like to entertain, I will quit.  So she laughed at me.  I told her that If she bought one of those 5 gallon water coolers that I would quit.  She didn’t believe me, but I did it.  Of course my timing was shit, because she was just getting remarried and decided to take us with her to Myrtle Beach, since we had never really had a vacation… no joke…  

The day before we left I had just quit drinking soda.  Also I decided since we had to leave at 4am or some crazy shit like that that I would just stay awake and then sleep on the plane.  I had never been on a commercial airline before, but it seemed like it would work.  Of course we got to the airport and the flight was delayed, then it was delayed, then they delayed it, then they gave us some coupons for some junk food, then they delayed the flight some more. We were delayed for 13 hours.  During this time, I was overtired and at first a real crank-ass, but after awhile, I was so overtired that I started just laying on the escalators and spinning in circles on my side on the floor, to everybody’s amusement.  Finally we get a flight and end up where we need to be, only to start driving. 

My soon to be stepdad at this point had road rage, and he believed that he could invent his own traffic rules and that people who didn’t follow them should all be killed.  At this point I am so burned out and now have a huge headache coming on.  We finally get to a hotel and I sleep.  When I wake I am just annoyed.  I don’t give a shit about the ocean, it’s just blueish water.  I don’t want to drive anywhere with Tom.  I don’t have a computer to work on.  I don’t get along with my sister at this point either, and my headaches are like migraines now.

We ate a lot of good food, which also messed me up a bit, because again, our family had almost never gone out to eat.  Now we were doing it twice a day for the entire trip.  So I am annoyed, with pounding headache, and now I am shitting green…. oh sorry, TMI, my bad.

Hmm, I only went into that story because it was my experience in quitting caffeine.  I think I got off on a tangent there, but whatever, not everybody has heard that story.  Anywho, once I stopped drinking the soda, I realized that the soda had been actually making me tired.  It hadn’t been keeping me awake, it had the total opposite effect because I drank so much of it.  Now, I can’t even drink a can of soda unless it has alcohol in it.  Odd you say, well it’s actually the carbonation that bothers me and doesn’t seem to digest right. 

So that brings me to my next point.  As I have aged, though I still carry around a giant water bottle with me everywhere, I do not drink that at night anymore.  I seem to have replaced my “soda after school” with “beer after work”.  I am also about 95% sure that this is causing me to be really tired just like the caffeine used to.  I am going to bed really early, waking up tired, and not exercising consistently. 

It’s a downward spiral folks.  I mean when I was 21, I didn’t drink at home at all.  I also didn’t drink beer.  Then as time went on, my friend got me to start drinking quality beer.  That helped me out at the time because I spend less money at the bar because I could split pitchers instead of buying cocktails all night.  Time went on and I would occasionally have a cocktail at home, then I progressed to absinthe, but still only on rare occasions.  Still, though I had some beer in the fridge at this point, I would only drink it when friends came over. 

Well then I moved to Arizona.  I first lived with a cool guy who kept his fridge stocked with beer, and shared everything.  So I decided to help this and buy more beer all the time to up the quality of the beer.  Then I left there and moved in with the person who got me to drink beer in the first place… Now the fridge has beer all the time AND we frequently go out for more.  Also I am “known” at my local bar by all the staff and some of the regulars.  So I go there just go be known. 

I think I have replaced my large quantity of friends/acquaintances with beer.  It is now the only social activity I really have besides my website, and I often am not in the mood to work on my website, as you probably noticed over the last couple weeks. 

Problem is, I actually enjoy the taste of dark beer now, more than I ever did soda.  So I don’t think I can just kick it like I did with that.  Besides, what would I do with my friends?  So I have decided that I am going to ween my self off drinking at home.  I mean the other night Rob and I went to a bar with 30 beers on tap and 300 different beers in bottles that has a motto of “no yellow piss beer”.  The beer was excellent, though our food was a bit rare.  See I was hungry before we left, and was going to have an apple, but I didn’t have any, so Rob suggested I just have a beer instead, and I did so, and it was enough calories to fix my hunger and then I was able to wait till we went out drinking for food.  Hmm… Yeah, I am noticing a pattern…. Then we get home and throw a tv show that had been downloaded on and I barely stayed awake for that one show and went to bed at like 9 something totally exhausted.

My ideal is just to go back to how I was in Wisconsin, have the occasional drink of absinthe, disaronno, or e&j old fashions.  Just for inspiration.  But not where I am replacing apples with beer to hold me off before I go drinking…

The other night I made my first progress, I was going to go to the fridge to grab a beer, but instead went down the street to get a fruit smoothie.  I got home and told that to Rob and he said “ah, so you will just finish off the smoothie and Then get a beer….”.  I managed to go for water after that.  So one night down…

Part 2?  Where is part 1?  I wrote that in my mind nearly a week ago… geeze, pay attention will ya!

So as I was telling you in part 1, I was a bit over zealous going down South Mountain and slid into a cactus.  Today I noticed bumps on my legs and fingers from that experience still so I decided to stick it to the same mountain and conquer it so that It could no longer torture me.  So I went to the mountain and went straight up it.  On the way up I only once touched a cactus and that was just on my middle finger while gripping a rock….   Hmm… yeah…

Well I got to the top of the mountain and decided to go down the trail.  This would do 2 things.  1) My shoes suck for climbing down a steep hill.  They are thin, have no traction and are very flexible.  Great for running, but not climbing.  2) It was much further to go down the path.  The path leads away from my house and in going that way I would also have to go back once I got to the ground.

So I did that.  I figure by being “big enough” to not need to go after the same original path the fudged up my leg, I am there4 beating it, since I am no longer concerned with getting revenge against a cactus. 

Of course now that I am back I can say that my leg really is messed up.  I have lots of little itchy bumps on it.  I haven’t scratched them at all but it has not gone away in over a week.  If anything it has become more noticeable which is very annoying.  Oh well, I don’t think a cactus is poisonous so they will go away eventually. 

Ok, so I decided this was funny, and being that it’s easter I figured that I would just stick the whole bloody episode on the site to entertain everybody who doesn’t get watch it on cable (or download it).

South Park s11e05 – Fantastic Easter Special

Need better quality? Just download the torrent

So last night I went to the Tilted Kilt to watch UFC for free. Now because of me blowing off Rob the other night I said I would pay for the next meal myself. No big deal right? Well at Kilt we have always purchased 80oz pitchers of Smithwicks…. Mmm Good beer. Well, tonight they said they got rid of the pitchers and got 20oz glasses instead. Obviously this is not the same, but we didn’t think anything of it, nor ask the price.

We were drinking slow, and enjoying the fights and the waitresses. Oh yeah, the money clip. That was my interpretation of our waitress’ change storage system. She had her little plaid bra stuffed on the sides with big wads of cash. She was also smokin’ hot, but point being… damn, what a great money clip….

Anyways we were drinkin’ slow and only had 6 beers total between us both, and then we had food too but just little $8 fish / burgers. Well she hands me the bill at the end of the night and I about shit myself. We were not drunk or even that buzzed, and yet I paid $71.05 for the bill, and that was with only a $10 tip. Yes, that’s right, the jacked the beer prices way up for those 20oz beer. $6.50 a beer for good beer, which if you calculate it out is like paying $26 a pitcher!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Considering a pitcher would of given us 2½ glasses each at the 16oz variety, I would have only paid $14 for beer, $16 for food and even if I had been more generous on the tip I would of only paid $8 or $9 on tip. Yes, less than $40, but instead it cost me $71.05!!!!!!!!!!!

Ok so the girls there are hot.… and the beer is tasty….. but had I known that I would of been drinking the “crown royal special” that night for $2.50 a piece, or some other lesser beer.

See what really chaps my ass is this prevented me from going to see my friends Punk Band perform. Well it only prevented me because I have a moderation issue and would of ended up spending at least $20 there as well, which I can’t afford until I get a paycheck again!

Yeah no joke, my insurance just got up and cost me $182 for 1 month, my rate sucks for 2 reasons: 1) everybody’s rates suck in AZ but it’s law to have it here so they don’t care and 2) That bullshit ticket I got because my father told the police officer I was there on a day that I “passed a school bus”, even though I did nothing wrong, it cost me $399 and destroyed insurance rates. …. So this check I paid for that, car payment, credit card, insurance, etc.. After last night I have nothing but the $60 in my wallet to get me through till paycheck. Bah.

Oh yeah, happy Bunny Day

Ok so the other day I decided I needed to stop into The Room Store. I had never been there and quite honestly I could really use a frame for my bed, so why not stop in and see what prices are running at.

Well as I would expect when I walked through the door I was jumped by a salesman who just wanted to try to be helpful. Fine, whatever, if I buy something I will come look for you, no problem. Well as he was walking me to the area we needed to go he decided to start qualifying me. That day I was in shorts, a t-shirt and a hat that says “I’m a Smart One” with a donkey on it (thanks ng66). So naturally he assumed me to be broke. The first question he asked me was “do you own your own home?” Seemed kind of rude to be the first question, so I told him yes. Then he said “oh that’s good, so what do you do for a living”. A little annoyed at this point I told him I was the owner of a chain of computer stores.

salesman: Wow, well you do look like a smart one
me: (wow, you subconsciously noticed my hat, but didn’t get the smartass out of it just the phrase). Yeah, it’s a living, I am considering franchising out to other countries so I can have an excuse to travel more often.
salesman: Ok so in that case this is the section for you, I’ll let you look around yourself but just find me if you want a quote.
me: will do Steve.

Ok, so I looked around for awhile, decided that one of the frames was nice, but that I could find it cheaper online, and then I went back to my salesman and started asking him unnecessary questions.

I started with “can I get this frame stained a different color?”. Nope
I followed up with a good ol’ “so you make a decent living doing this?” To my surprise he actually started talking real numbers about what he makes selling furniture…
I then, knowing full well I wasn’t going to buy anything had him write me up quotes on a couple different items, and said I would consider coming back then. I spent a couple more minutes feeding him some bullshit and told him he should buy his own furniture store since it’s much easier to make other people do the work. I then got his full schedule so that I was sure not to miss him when I came back, and took a stack of business cards.

Then I left, never to return again.

Look people, this isn’t sales. You don’t try to qualify people. That is just shooting yourself in the foot. That’s why I felt compelled to ham it up and give the guy hope. If I had wanted to buy something from there I would of come back on his day off.

Ok, so I decided to take a quick nap today.  I had it worked out, it wasn’t 5pm yet and I figured I could rest a bit, get up, exercise, take a shower, have some dinner, and then, well whatever.  Of course, plans rarely go as you plan them.

Seems that my body decided to keep sleeping until 10:30.  This is when I normally go to sleep so that I can get up in the morning and go to work.  Alas, now I am awake.  I suppose this is probably for the best since I just finished the post that I started on 3/26.  In finishing that, I am now writing this.  At the same time I am catching up on tv shows.  Prison Break just hit it’s season finale and The Dresden Files is getting pretty good.

My laptop hasn’t been working, well since yesterday as far as I know, but that is a long time for somebody like me.  See I was having trouble booting.  The system would freeze.  Couldn’t get into safe mode on 2 different OS’s.  Also could not start an install cd.  It would freeze during the “setup is starting windows” thing.  This was very consistent on multiple cd’s so it had to be hardware.  I was in no hurry so I 0101′d my HDD.  It didn’t help.  So I did a bios upgrade.  Finally I tore out my wireless card.  It has always worked, but once removed, setup worked.  So I setup XP, then I stuck the card in and the system froze.  Tried to boot ubuntu and other things with the card in, and that wouldn’t work either.  I only have one PCMCIA slot, I know… odd.  Don’t have another card to test to see if it’s the slot, so I am going to just guess that it’s the card.  For now I am using a USB wireless device that I just happened to have laying around (actually it only cost me $9.99 a few months ago, and I haven’t had a use for it yet).

Once I got the system working, I decided to say screw it and I stuck Ubuntu on my laptop as it’s only OS.  It’s not a perfect solution.  The refresh rate is low (though strangely It has a higher more proportional resolution for the wide screen).  This is my only complaint right now, and mostly because  my own site loads weird.  Otherwise I think I will be ok with using linux for the laptop.

So the other night I needed a burger. So Rob told me of a place he hadn’t been yet but had heard of. Lucky for us, it was only a couple miles away (like everything around here). It was called Heart Attack Grill, and if we didn’t like it The Tilted Kilt was just down the street (another personal favorite and in a similar genre).

So we pulled in and it was kind of a hidden little dive. You go in and there was some guy playing acoustic guitar and a girl in a sexy little doctor’s outfit greets you at the door. You walk up to the bar and see 3 more girls in little nurses outfits who also greet you. They point at the wall and the couple pictures on it and say “That is the menu, that is all there is… if you want something else you are not going to get it”. See all they had was single-quadruple bypass burgers, Heart Attack fries (fried in pure lard), beer, and cigarettes. This was the entire menu. I decided to get a Single Bypass a Kiltlifter and JUST because I thought I should try them, some Heart Attack Fries.

Delivery of the items comes quick and as to not be outdone by the food the girls bend over to deliver the food (interesting building design causes this).

Well I managed to eat most of my burger and about 1/3 of my fries, and well… I am a big hungry guy. Rob and I converse about how people could possibly eat a Triple/Quadruple Bypass Of course the quadruple comes with “free wheelchair service” to escort you out to the car.

Upon finishing we left full and I drove less than a block away to “Tilted Kilt”, Another fine AZ establishment, here the girls are wearing little plaid skirts and tiny plaid bras and tied up white shirts. See this bar has other advantages as well, like high quality beer selection. So we get a couple pitchers of Smithwicks and enjoy the atmosphere.

After that, back to the house to end the night with well… more beer.

So the night gets done and well… I’m full. I can think of very few things (realistically speaking)that could have made the night better.