Saturday
After staying up until nearly 5:00 and getting up around 9:30, it’s easy to understand why I was ever-so-slightly tired this morning. I napped intermittently from 11-something until 1:30. In between, I caught snippets of the Scooby’s Laff-A-Lympics marathon on Boomerang. I flipped over to Cartoon Network and was drawn into the world of Duck Dodgers in the 24½ Century.

I half-heartedly pondered what to do with the rest of the day. Thankfully, Bill called. He was having the same quandary. We decided to head to The Gateway, get something to eat and wander around. Hark! We had a plan!

When he got here, we watched some of the coverage of the 2004 Summer Olympic Games. We saw Michael Phelps not only win a gold medal in the Men’s 400 Meter Individual Medley (swimming) with a time of 4:08.26, we saw him set a new Olympic record and a new world record (breaking his own record, if I understood the commentary correctly). And, he’s from Baltimore, to boot.

The Gateway was suitably crowded for a Saturday. We decided to try Samba Grill for lunch. It was a good, albeit expensive, choice. About 1/3 of the expense came from the Caipirinha drinks that we had; I had one, Bill had two. Very tasty. Very spendy. Especially for how small the glasses were. I also ran into a former manager and engineer from the REC while there. I was surprised to find out that they had gotten married since I had last seen them. I was also pleasantly surprised when Mike (the former manager) recalled some of the work that I had done under his watch and how favorably he looked upon it. What a nice change from the problems that I had with the last REC management team under whom I worked… I believe that I will be paying him a visit at work in the next few days – a reference/recommendation from him might be handy.

While wandering around The Gateway, we stopped in Z Gallerie. I’ve heard people mention how cool it is, so I decided to give it a shot. I wasn’t really wowwed by anything there. It kind of reminded me of an even more “upscale” Pier One Imports… but not. *shrug* I did see a couple of things that caught my eye, but they were mostly small novelty items.

We also stopped in a gallery (whose name eludes me) on the ground level. There were some nice pieces in there. The story behind the gallery’s inception can be found here. The proceeds from the sales were donated to the National Multiple Sclerosis Society (or Multiple Sclerosis Foundation or possibly both, I forget which). When Pino heard about this he donated more pieces. Other artists followed. The gallery still donates proceeds from sales to the NMSS or MSF.

We picked up Jess and headed home. We watched a bit more Olympic coverage before bowling. The USA men’s gymnastic team had a rough go of it. Blaine Wilson had a nasty fall from the high bar during his routine. But, he got back on it and finished. He then went on to compete in the floor exercise. He sat out of the pommel horse exercise, but did the sill rings. NBC ran a brief story about his background as he prepared for the rings… Wow. This guy has overcome a lot of hardships – including tonight’s fall – and has bounced back to meet and defeat them.

Bowling was good. There was a good turnout, including a visit from . Larry, Mary and I bowled ironman. I did all right (145, 115/130, 148/148, 164/138). Breakfast was good, as well. There were many conversations to keep track of and many laughs. It was a good way to end the day.

Stray Toasters

  • Confession: I missed JLU and Teen Titans tonight. I forgot to turn off the VCR so the timer would kick in. And I was looking forward to seeing tonight’s JLU. Fortunately, the episodes will be rebroadcast at 3:00 PM on Sunday.
  • I really don’t want to second-guess the motives behind Hal Jordan’s return as Green Lantern, but… *sigh* I really hope that it was something that was at least nominally planned ten years ago (when he went insane and then regained his sanity and then sacrificed himself) and not just pandering to the “We hate Kyle, we want Hal back” brigade.
  • Get yer banners that Nyx and I made for the 2004 write-in candidates!
  • I need a chainsaw. And a ladder.
  • Potential t-shirt designs (1, 2) from
  • Two 2x4s. Running. A police officer. Restaurant with confused/startled patrons.
  • I get my thing in action!
    Verb! That’s what’s happening!

  • The psychotic ex-girlfriends of friends. *sigh*
    (Although, I must admit that I’m glad that it’s not one of my psychotic exes causing drama).

  • Mom just logged on. I almost messaged her… then I thought about what her response would be: “Why are you not asleep?!” It’s amusing/comforting to think that I’m 33 – and two-thirds of the way across the country – but she still thinks of me as a little boy sometimes. I’ll call her after the sun’s up… and I’ve had some sleep.

Quote of the Day
Garnered from yet another chat…

[01:50] *Iso8* vollyball and beach vollyball are olympic sports? wtf?
[01:51] news to me.
[01:51] *Iso8* wtf is next? olympic frogger?
[01:51] so’s table tennis.
[01:52] *Iso8* 30 seconds watching was enough.
[01:53] *Iso8* they should only have the original sports in the olympics.
[01:53] *Iso8* chariot racing and shit like that. put these fuckers on wheels, give them spiked clubs and let them tulchuck the shit outta each other. then I’d watch.
[01:55] *Iso8* even better if they were made to wear clown suits.
[01:56] or school girls uniforms.
[02:00] *Iso8* in the original olympics, the competitors all competed naked.
[02:00] *Iso8* at least according to this doushbag on the history channel.
[02:00] so i’ve heard.
[02:03] *Iso8* they had a show where they dug up the body of one of the origianl olympians, and then spouted bunch of bullshit about how he would compare to modern athletes based on his bones.
[02:03] so what’d they come up with?
[02:03] *Iso8* they concluded that he could jump further because he was closer to a monkey.
[02:04] BWAHAHAH!! what?
[02:11] *Iso8* monkey = wrong

Namaste.