Mundanity (Is that a word?) and Venting

Belting out from my speakers is the theme from “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly” while some coworkers go at it with Nerf guns.
This led to a discussion of the best westerns. “The Wild Bunch” is my personal favorite, although “Tombstone” was bandied about. Also, “Silverado” was a lot of fun.
So, for the second day in a row, I had simple Cheerio’s for breakfast. Yesterday I didn’t eat lunch, but had a decent dinner and two cookies for desert. Today, I stopped and picked up a strawberry banana smoothie for lunch with vitamins added in. I also walked next door and took the stairs instead of the elelator. (“not your elelator, my elelator.”) Yay me.
Was chatting with Kris a bit this morning, who shared that our community garden has been ganked and someone helped themselves to our vegetables. Who steals from a community garden????
http://backtalklakehighlands.typepad.com/back_talk/2008/08/werent-these-lo.html
That ranks right up there, as far as the annoyance factor, as our nightmare neighbors across the street. They are renting, and insist on parking in front of our house. I have asked them repeatedly to at least not block our mailbox. Yet again, on Saturday they had three cars/trucks in front of our house. I waited until 10:30 and very politely knocked on their door and asked them to move them so I could get my mail. The guy that answered the door wasn’t rude, but he looked at me funny but didn’t answer when I asked if there was an issue.
So when one of his roommates came and moved his truck, I leaned out the front door and yelled “Thank you!” to him in a polite way. He lit into me, cussing me out and calling me a childish asshole for bothering them and asking them to move their vehicles. I stayed polite and asked him if it was unreasonable that we be able to get our mail delivered. According to him, that makes me a complete and total asshole. He had his fists balled up and was quite a shade of red. I did ask if he was going to take a swing, but he held back-too bad-that could’ve resolved the issue quite simply.
It really made me miss our old neighborhood by White Rock, where we know everyone and got along so well with our neighbors. I did email the Richardson Police Dept. but haven’t heard anything back from them.
To finish my bitching, Jessica called last night to let me know that we are to pick Micah up from her house on our weekends after four p.m. as he is riding the bus now. I let her know, again, politely, that we would definitely take that into consideration, but that there would be days when we pick him up directly from school. She said that she didn’t have to allow that, although that really isn’t true. Between that and her refusing to let us switch weekends and take Micah out of school for a day to visit my dad (hasn’t seen in years!) really points to some serious control issues on her part, and just makes me angry. It is so amazingly selfish of her, and so shitty to put her icky little vendetta in front of Micah’s best interests. And, to top it off, now that Micah’s not in daycare, I can’t help but wonder how she’s spending child support…oh, wait, they now have a new corvette, a hummer and a mazda suv. For two people. I’m sure that she is putting away money for college. LOL.
So. How to get myself past all this negativity? It’s no fun feeling unhappy as much as I have lately. I’m going to go run tonight and work on sketches for the new lamp. And look forward to mountains soon. Maybe go to Glen Rose this weekend, sight in my new bow, do some hiking.
In the meantime, to listen to something light and perky, I’m going to download some Leonard Cohen-I listened to “Waiting for a Miracle” this morning and I was floored by what a great song it is. And, go relax away from the office for a while and enjoy my smoothie. Hehe.

NIN

It started off much like any other industrial concert...filled with angst, screaming guitars and some great fetish-wear in the crowd. We were reclining in the Staubach box watching things ramp up...there were a couple of other people from another company that has an interest in the box and, to my horror, found that one of them was wearing a "My Bloody Valentine" shirt also, although fortunately different tour/design. Phew. Fashion faux pas narrowly avoided.
The set was normal, at the beginning-lots of bright lights on the sides of the stage and some sort of LED backdrop. As the concert progressed, the backdrop actually separated and became two LED curtains. The band performed in front of both, in the middle of both and various height combinations were integrated as well. Visually, it was spectacular. In many songs, the display was set to visually represent and mirror the sounds, in a variety of cool representations. There was a very Ridley Scott/Blade Runner city scene, some very creepy decay backdrops and some great static scenes...at one point a guy came out and was shining his flashlight on the screen like a paintbrush, and it brushed itself black where he "painted."
The music ranged from good to astounding, featuring a sampling of almost every NIN album to date. Of course, nothing can top music from Pretty Hate Machine, but "Closer," "Only," and "Discipline" were quite well done. Great sound, extraordinary light show and some great music...
They played for two hours and really put out. Towards the end, Trent talked briefly about what a shitload of work it is to tour and how much of a pain in the ass it is, but how shows like this make it worthwhile...it sounded pleasantly sincere. At one point, both Curtis and I had our iPhones set to display a flickering lighter, without the associated burns and scars that a real lighter would evince.
Visually, it ranks up there with U2's "PopMart" tour. Damn fine show. Fun, fun, fun.

Birthday Presents!

As Micah's birthday is tomorrow, we found this at Target! It's tough not to bring it upstairs to work to "test" it out.

Tomorrow should be fun...hehe.
Allright, back to work. Almost.
In an unrelated issue, Cameron, an old friend from my high school years, found me on Facebook. He's still here in Dallas, and still does a lot of gaming. Through him, I got to catch up a bit with his sister, Kelli, another one of my best friends in high school. It's nice reconnecting with some old friends.
Okay, now back to work.

First Harvest

What a great afternoon and evening! It wasn't until Jerry welcomed us with "Happy Lughnasad" that I had even realized it was that time. Now, granted, it is rare that a weekend goes by that we don't get together with Kris and Jerry and have a terrific spread of food and good company.
There is something so appealing about the pagan holidays to me. Perhaps it is the simplicity or the reasons behind them-it seems remarkably valid to celebrate the first harvest, or the changing of the seasons.
Jerry had been preparing to bake bread for the meal and very graciously invited me to help. He had already ground up the wheat, so I basically kneaded the dough, then we added honey to the women's loaf and cinnamon to the men's loaf. There was a bit of added symbology that we attempted to carve into the top of the loaf, but didn't quite turn out as readable as we had hoped.
The bread turned out to be delectable. Um sent us home with some, and with a small bag of wheat to plant.