untitled.

Today I'm staying home because I'm supposed to get 3 different package deliveries. It was some clever delivery coordinating on my part. And I'm doing work, but mostly looking out the window too frequently to make sure the fed-ex guy isn't sneaking up to my door to leave a "missed you" note before running away.

I went to a concert with Rachel last night. It was alright. I liked the first opening band the most, and Lemonheads fans are all so weird. They're old and they get really into the music and dance weird. The music is sort of between softrock and hardrock so the audience doesn't really know what to do. And some of the people are just plain weird. Anyway, it was a decent time. I didn't drink any alcohol, just had one extremely overpriced coke. And I think I managed to go the whole night without saying anything mean to Rachel.

Rachel: You're cornering the market on Kates from Colorado.

Gunshots part 2

Regarding the last post: I am still alive. A off-duty cop got mugged and as the muggers were running off he started shooting at them. Then the muggers escaped in a "white car" and police are on the lookout. There was one black male with dreadlocks and one black male in a multi-colored shirt. Yep, that was the extent of the details provided by the offduy cop, which makes me think he was drunk at the time. I mean, even I could have given a better description than saying just a white car. So we've got a drunk cop shooting his gun in the middle of the street, just down the block from me. Awesome.

I was just thinking, it's pretty dark in space, right? I bet it's so dark, that the vast majority of the time you wouldn't even be able to see a space ship. Like in Star Trek, they always show the Enterprise and other ships maneuvering around space, but I think now that space doesn't have enough ambient light for you to see ships. It'd be like trying to see around at night when there's no moon out. All you'd see of another ship is a dark spot where it's blocking the starlight.

It's freezing cold in my apartment. Tomorrow I'm buying a space heater, we'll see if that helps. I hate being cold. Never again am I going to live in a cold apartment during the winter. This I vow. Maybe I should move south. It's getting up to 70 this week in Texas.

kate: I just don't want you to stress out about it.
me: Don't worry, I'm not stressing.
kate: Good.
me: I don't stress out very often.
kate: Yeah, that's because you don't have any emotions.

Gunshots

I'm feeling much more cheerful now, thanks for asking. My neighbor Whitney just knocked on my door to see if I was okay, "because of the gun shots." I was confused. What gunshots? You mean those fireworks? That's just kids being kids, and it wasn't even nearby. But no, she was certain it was guns and from just across the street, and she had already called 911.

Now (2 hours later) there's still a cop in a car sitting outside with the lights flashing. I'm not sure what he thinks he's doing there, maybe it's a show of force to deter any more violence. Maybe you'll read about my street in the paper tomorrow.

Quote pending.

Happy F***ing Tuesday.

Today I ran into the office 10 minutes after I was supposed to talk to an attorney on the phone. Oh well, he took it well. Sorta sad today. It was a great weekend of wandering around the mountains, but in the long run I think I'm going to regret it.

This is the opposite of the Christmas Spirit. I'm not going to see any of my family this Christmas. I saw them all a few months ago for an extended period in Hawaii and my sister's wedding, and Christmas was pretty much unanimously called off. All my sisters are visiting their spouses' families. I was thinking of going off with a friend for Christmas, but you know, the more I think about it the more uncomfortable that sounds. I barely like talking to my own family, how am I going to cope with someone else's family? It doesn't bother me, not seeing the family, but the fact that it doesn't bother me is starting to bother me. Maybe I have family issues I didn't know about. Mostly I'm just upset with girls, and, of course, myself.

Kate: dc seems like it has a lot of selfish people
(i'm about to conceed there are selfish people here, but they are also everywhere)
me: there are some selfish people in dc-
Kate: selfish people like you!

Illness and a poem

I've been sick for a while. Since like thursday last week. But I managed to briefly get out for a turkey frying at Eric's (which was fun) and a Brand New concert out in Baltimore with Rachel and Eric (which was okay). Probably the last time I'll see Brand New, the just get more and more pretentious and showey and less substantial with each tour. They didn't play a single song off their first album, and the lights were set to flash right in the eyes of the audience. I think the lead singer must have been having a bad hair day or something because they didn't once use lights from overhead. Oh well.

I'm watching a youtube clip from South Park, where they explain evolution (probably the funniest explaination of evolution I've ever heard) and one of the brilliant youtube users wrote a nice little poem in his comment. Is it a explaination of evolution? Refutation of evolution? Who can say, he left no other hints. There's something admirable in the poem's simplicity and lack of proper grammer at its conclusion, as though to say, "You are retarded." Not sure if the first line is a typo or intentional so I'm leaving it.

Rabbits look similar to squirrles
Rhinos look like hippos
Man looks like monkey

Wedding Photos

http://synik.myvnc.com:8008/~schell/pujas_wedding/pujas_wedding.html

The page is about 16 megs.

I might have said some somewhat inflammatory things about people. Rachel, tell me if I need to do some editing before wedding people see it. We did have some weird pact about sharing photos, right?

Puja and Sunjeev's Wedding

Puja's wedding was lots of fun. I had kind of a lame thanksgiving where I went to work and then afterwards played videogames. The next morning I flew out to LAX. My first flight was delayed because one of the flight attendants was running late. Very late. We were supposed to leave at 10AM, but by 11:30 the guy still hadn't showed up and people were pissed. Eventually one of the workers got on a speaker and said "We've receieved confirmation that the flight attendent is in the airport, it shouldn't be long now!" Then like 30 minutes later a guy in the a flight attendent uniform comes strolling down the walkway. Everyone was watching him and a bunch of people were standing but there were no cheers, just lots and lots of angry faces. I was upset too. This asshole thinks he can just sleep in late, he should be billed for my time and every other person on that plane. We were already highly irritated and this man's casual stroll up to the gate was not helping anything. I was about to stand up on my chair and yell "Lynch the bastard!" when saw him display some fairly feminine mannerisms while talking to his coworkers. That stopped me. Far be it from me to incite a possible hate-crime. Later we found out that he wasn't the originally scheduled flight attendent anyway. The original flight attendent got in a car accident or something on the way to the airport and just never showed up so this guy was filling in.

From LAX I picked up a rental car, probably wisely went with the GPS option and then tried to drive to the hotel. But the GPS was fixated on the car rental as a destination, so I did a large loop back to Avis and it told me I had arrived. Finally I did get to the hotel, but everyone was at Puja's night-before dinner which was somewhere else (I didn't know where) so I went to Jack in the Box and watched tv in the hotel room. Fast food isn't as good as it used to be. People got back from the dinner at like 11:30 and I briefly said hello to Puja and talked a bit with Rachel, and then went to sleep.

Puja, without prior warning, called our room at 7AM to come have breakfast with her. It was a pretty good buffet spread, so we ate, then went to Target and bought a bunch of random stuff people needed. Hmmm, oh, then I drove around with Rachel looking for somewhere to get lunch. I thought we were driving toward Disneyland because I had passed it on the way to the hotel the evening before, but apparently I got all confused and totally drove the wrong way. Oh well. Rachel and I were wearing matching "I survived Puja and Sunjeev's wedding" shirts, on the back of which said "Just Married". And we got congradulated by some random people on our new marriage. Rachel quickly corrected them :)

The wedding itself was pretty interesting. Sunjeev road around the hotel on a horse. Rachel and the other bridesmaids (wearing Indian wraps) carried candles around and weren't allowed outside to see the horse because they were women on the bride's side. Then there was a long series of blessings and symbolic actions. The whole thing took a few hours. There was an open bar afterwards and a pretty good dinner and some dancing (which I actually participated in and was having an alright time, up until the bar closed toward the end of the night and I started sobering up).

There was an after-party at Puja and Mehrnaz's room, where we played cards. F*** The Dealer (where I somehow guessed cards amazingly well, and got the majority of the cards on the first try, and pretty much all the rest on the second try, only having to drink like twice), Kings (Puja's old coworkers have no skills in the "Questions" event), and Asshole (it took me two hands to make it to president and then I only stayed there for two hands before getting ousted. But we were playing without the President getting any tribute and I think I would have done well if we had been doing that.) We had a truely atrocious selection of liquor. No beer at all. I drank rum and coke (horrible, foul stuff) until the rum ran out and then I started drinking tequilla and coke, which was exponentially worse.

I didn't get much sleep at all, and the next morning my rental car's GPS decided to take me in a nice circle several times before finding a gas station. Then getting back to the rental place was impossible, I circled around for like 30 minutes because the stupid thing said "Avis Rental on the left" but there was nothing on the left. Finally I used the rental place's address and just hunted it down the old-fashiond way. I missed my flight but got a standby flight about an hour later. Then I was unable to board 2 standby flights in Chicago, and they wanted me to wait until 6am the next morning! So instead I got a flight to Dulles and got in at about 4am. My baggage went to Reagan but was easily picked up later.

Photos coming soon.

(Much to Dave's disappointment, at Tom's wedding all girls around college age were lesbians)
Dave: They shouldn't be allowed to have lesbian bridesmaids! That should be a rule!