I'm taking this morning off to help make up for some of the ridiculous amounts of overtime I have done earlier in the year. I was hoping to sleep through most of it, but it looks like that isn't happening. Oh well, I do have chores that need doing, like laundry...

Also, my phone doesn't work. Pick it up and no dial tone. My DSL connection is fine though. So I called BellSouth and they say it will be fixed by noon tomorrow. We shall see.

Rock on! Terry Gilliam is set to direct a movie version of Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett's masterpiece, Good Omens!

Trivia blew big and mighty chunks. We were the Power Puff Drunks and threw up all over the second half of the game. There was Myra, John, Jenny, and later Stacy and Dill. Eh. Nothing new and exciting.

2 November

Hi. My phone still doesn't work and BellSouth have decided that they need to send a tech out here tomorrow. Buggery bollocks. I bet that they won't get things fixed, which will positively screw up my weekend. Such is life, I guess.

Fun site of the day to check out: Naked News, where you can watch a newsreader strip as she gives you the headlines.

I had a meeting this afternoon with a bunch of people from the UK office, Southern Company and a potential partner copmany. It was all very interesting. Afterwards, the Brits (and Scot and North Carolinian) and I went for a drink and then I came home.

This evening I have done some washing (of work shirts that need cold water), packed some more boxes, talked to Clair and done tried to work out what other exciting things I can do with my Thursday night. Jenny is supposed to be coming over later with boxes, but getting in the gate could be difficult with my phone line being out of commission.

3 November

My phone still wasn't working today, so I called BellSouth to harrass them, and Lauren pulled some strings at her end, and still nothing was working when I got home from work. Grrr.

After watching the Power Puff Girls, I had dinner with Clair at Raging Burrito, which was very tasty. Clair's burrito was huge - I doubt I could have finished the whole thing. I had a quesadilla with chicken, mushrooms and rice, and it was fantastic. While there we chatted with a couple of girls that had just finished their food. They liked my Power Puff Girls t-shirt - and they liked my accent. Heheh. One of them, Amanda, works for CNN, covering the Hockey, and in particular the Atlanta Thrashers. After finishing our food, we shot by the Highlander, as a bunch of people were going to be there, but there was absolutely no parking, so we went up to the Local instead.

At the Local we caught up with John and Linda and Steve (and, of course, Daniel and Stephanie and Colleen). A little later, Jenny showed up, followed by Wicki and Susan and co, and then Lauren made her appearance. It was all very fun and entertaining. Once we were finished with the Local, Clair went home and Lauren and I headed up to the Vault, via Buddies (for money and ciggies), Little Five Points Pizza (to see Jen - yay Jen), and Lauren's landlord (rent day...).

The Vault was pretty fun. We chatted with a bunch of people. Chason was back from Coast Guard boot camp, so it was good to see him. I danced a little, but not much. I had a couple of drinks. Lauren had a couple of drinks. The place really wasn't very busy. The DJ didn't have any Ramones, which was sad, but he did play Pixies This Monkey's Gone To Heaven.

Eventually we left. We did a drive-by of Waffle House and the Majestic, but both were looking pretty busy so we decided not to eat. We went back to Lauren's place to argue my atheism vs agnosticism. My take is this: I believe that there is no god but I cannot prove it the issue one way or the other. Lauren considers that I am therefore an agnostic rather than an atheist. Tell me what you think.

4 November

I crashed over on Lauren's couch and at about 7:30ish I got up and came home. Lauren was still asleep. She's going to Santa Fe today with her folks. All very odd. When I got home I discovered that my phone was working. Yippee!!!

I had to deal with a couple of phone calls that disrupted my sleep, but at about 11 o'clock I stumbled out of bed, pulled on some clothes, popped a couple of Aleve, and hooked my DSL back up. That worked too! I'm back in business.

So I checked my email, spent some time IMing Clair, did some work remotely, launched a crap game of CivII, and updated my web page.

Eventually it was time to prepare myself for the world. I had a shower and shave, did some other get-ready type things and headed over to the Local. Tonight being Walt's last night, it was going to be a big one. And it was. Dinner was consumed (barbeque chicken, corn on the cobb, coleslaw) and drinking began in earnest. There was a good crowd, and everyone was getting royally trashed. Fortunately, John was not so heavily inclined, and at sometime around midnight, he, Linda and I went up to the Vault for a taste of Cyberia.

I'm not entirely sure who was out at the Vault, as I spent most of my time there on the couch talking with Michele (the one I met last week, not the one I've known for a year). This was very cool. I think I was going to ask for her phone number. I even might have. Either way, I neglected to get it. That's not such a big deal, since I'm out of town all this coming week.

John and Linda left (I told them I'd be okay finding someone to get me home) and then a while later Michele and her friends left. I recall talking to one of her friends about going bowling (he brought the subject up, not I). Bowling while drunk is reasonably fun; I haven't done it in about six months. Anyway, they left, so I managed to get a lift from Brad. Oh - I remember talking with Jen for a while around that point, too.

Brad and I popped over the Landmark Diner for a late night feed, and who should turn up but Myra and one of her English friends (sorry, I can't remember your name). They joined us and we had a grand old conversation about food, America, music, and other fun things. Eventually we bailed and Brad dropped me home before driving back up to Lawrenceville. That's just insane.

5 November

Another recovery type day. Once again, Aleve came to the rescue, but it was still a rough one. I started a new game of Civ which turned into a pretty good one. I am kicking severe butt.

Stacy and Dill gave me a lift to my car (at the Local) and I got some food. The rest of the day was just Civ.

Sarah called to invite me over to Alice's for food and Simpsons-watching, but as I wasn't sure if people were coming over to my place, I had to decline. As it turned out, nobody came over (if I had gone out, Bria, Jenny and Stacy would all have turned up). No matter. The new season of The X Files started (looks interesting, but I can already see plot-holes) and John came over towards the end of the Man Show. So we watched the rerun Simpsons, South Park and then Power Puff Girls. And then it was off to bed. Another weekend at a close.

6 November

Lunch: Vegetable soup and a salad from The Soup Garden. Very tasty.

This afternoon I flew to Boston. Well, the plane left about an hour late, so it was getting close to evening. The sky was getting dark, so it must have been evening.

Boston looked quite pretty from the night sky. Unfortunately I have too much stuff to do to explore. I was on the phone for an hour and half with NZ discussing the next revision of our software. I think Geoff and I are pretty much in agreement about things.

Then (21:30ish) I went and had dinner: Lentil soup (it was a day for soup) and Atlantic Salmon on sauteed spinach with mashed potatoes. Very tasty. All washed down with a Heineken. Very pleasant.

After dinner I returned to my room, checked my email and got into an IM conversation with Clair about the merits of wasabi and cold temperatures. He likes both. I like neither. Well, I can handle the cold in small doses, but I do not like sub-freezing temperatures at all. All the while I was listening to VNV Nation on my MD Walkman. That has been such a great investment. I've had it for two years now and it's just fantastic.

7 November

Today I had a meeting in Boston. After the meeting, I was given a quick tour of Boston and Cambridge. This is a really nice area; if it wasn't for the fact it's too cold for me, I could quite happily live here. There are twenty-something universities in the Boston/Cambridge area, including MIT, Harvard, and Boston University. I shall have to return here at some stage.

Then I flew to Nashville via Atlanta. Lots of fun. When I finally got to Nashville, I made it down to the Hertz agency to pick up a car, and the nice lady behind the desk gave me a free upgrade, to a Ford Mustang. Awwwwww yeah. It was nice. It was fun. Stuart took a photo of the mustang, and of me and the mustang.

8 November

Today is my Dad's birthday. Well, yesterday was, since yesterday was the 8th in NZ. Oh well.

Another day spent in Nashville.

9 November

Another day spent in Nashville, followed by a delayed flight home to Atlanta. On arrival, I went home, got changed, met Lauren for sushi at Ru San and then went to the Local, where Lauren, Clair and I closed the place out.

10 November

Feeling a little tired after the recent travelling (it was the travelling, nothing to do with anything else...), nevertheless I got a bunch of stuff done for work. I also bought myself a licensed copy of Windows 2000 Professional to install on my PC at home. I'm on call for a week starting today.

After work, I checked the important software was going to work under Win2K and then began the install process. Then I went over to Stacy's to help her rebuild her PC under Windows ME. I DO NOT RECOMMEND THE INSTALLATION OF WINDOWS ME. Stick to 98 or go totally to Win2K. Stacy made me dinner (chicken enchilada things, very tasty) and then I popped up to the Local to see John.

I headed home before 11pm, and continued to work on installing a base configuration of Win2K that would let me fulfill my on-call duties. I ran into a few problems, but I did manage to get to a suitable level by 4:15am, at which point I went to bed.

11 November

I awoke around 10:30, and after fitfully trying to sleep, I got up and continued my Win2K installation. This time everything went on smoothly. Yay. I did some remote work, but ran into some problems, so I gave up and will discuss next week with the NZers. No big deal really. I hope :-).

I'll be heading to the Vault tonight with Lauren, although I expect I will have to leave early to respond to any pages. Oh well. Hopefully I will see Michele again (and hopefully I'll think she's cute/fun when I'm sober).

I did some more packing of boxes today. And some laundry. One week to moving day. And so much to do...

I eventually had a shower and headed over to the Local for dinner (chicken philly wrap - damn good) and a couple of beers. When Lauren turned up we went up to Cyberia at the Vault. Unfortunately either Michele wasn't there or I don't know what she looks like when I'm sober. Curious. Based on my description (which was kinda hazy), Lauren thinks she might know her, but the hair colour description seemed wrong. Well, she wasn't there, so who know.

There was a good turn out - heaps of people. I met a friend of Russ' called Jenny. She said we'd met before - I can't recall, but that's not necessarily unusual. I also met Ginger (not sure if this is Clair's ex-girlfriend or not), who is very attractive. Billy was there, and I was going to drop him home, but he disappeared somewhere when we left. Grace and Shawn were also out, as was Jenny, Chason, and loads of others.

After the club closed, Lauren and I went over to Stacie and Brandon's. Shawn also turned up and after other people started disappearing into bedrooms, we had a good old natter about things. The more I get to know Shawn, the more I like him. Interesting guy.

12 November

So I slept for a few hours and got up to continue the packing process. I'm tired. I played a few games of Civ. I also responded to a couple of work pages.

Midafternoon, I put on The Affairs of Anatol, which was interesting. Jenny stopped by to drop over some boxes and borrow my vacuum cleaner. In the course of my tidying, I found all sorts of interesting things: condoms (unused - please...), a journal (containing all sorts of self-pitying and drunken rants; in some ways amusing, in other ways just pathetic), a dollar, assorted maps, etc.

Tonight is the last Sunday TV at 252. John is in North Carolina and Stacy and Dill are otherwise engaged.

13 November

Monday. Ugh. I normally try to get to work by 8am on Mondays; today I was struggling for 9am. No matter, because the day pretty much sucked anyway. Mail was down, I got a huge new load of work placed on me (which I really should be doing now, but am not for reasons that will become apparent), and I had two additional tasks that just had to be done today. It also meant I didn't get a couple of other tasks I wanted done, done. But such is life.

I got a bit of a run-around from Mindspring trying to ensure that my DSL connection would be operative at the new address. It looks like it might take weeks to get it set up again. Damn. Actually, I had some problems with BellSouth transferring my phone to the new address - until it became apparent that John had given me the wrong address. So once that was sorted, BS were happy.

I got out of work around 7pm and met Lauren for dinner at Waffle House, where we talked about her recent escapades. I tell you, her apartment building is turning into Melrose Place with each day. But that's her business.

After Wafflizing, I came home with the intention of packing more and doing some work and maybe heading over to the Local to have a drink with Stacy, Dill, Linda and Vanessa. But I decided to follow up a lead about Michele. And it turned out to be a good lead, and so I ended up spending the night IMing her. This was very cool.

Tomorrow I am going to St Cloud, Minnesota. This is what the weather is like in St Cloud. I find this very scary.

At Michele's suggestion I downloaded a new A-ha song off Napster, called Summer Moved On. This is first song I've heard from them in over ten years, and it's really good. Very late-90s Britpop in style. I like it. I might see if I can hunt down the album. I also downloaded a couple of Bomfunk MCs tracks. Interesting tunes that I might have to follow up on. Chances of finding them here in the US? Small, but that's why buying online is so much fun. Where are you Mr Amazon.com.

14 November

I hate being on call. Especially when I make modifications to the system that fail to run due to stupid operating system inconsistencies. Ugh. Anyway, it all started at 4:00am (or thereabouts), and when I got done with my last call at 6:30, I decided that I might as well just have a shower and go in to work then. And so the day began...

The day continued along in its usual manner, with things popping up interrupting the tasks I wanted to get done. Very frustrating in that respect. But I'm sure I completed some things. I think. Over the course of the day, Lauren IMed me a few horoscopes. I was quite impressed with some of mine; sometimes it would be nice if such things were true. Heheh.

At 3:50 I took off from work to head to the airport. It was good that I left then, as traffic was slow on the downtown connector and there was only hourly parking available at the airport, which required me to take a detour to the Park'n'Ride carpark. Sheesh. Oh well, I still managed to get to my flight on time. It's going to be cold. I've fallen into this habit of falling asleep when the plane pulls back from the jetway, and waking up once we're airborne. I'm not sure why, but I find it odd.

Once we get to Minneapolis-St Paul, we (Jason and I) have three options: go straight to St Cloud (a two hour drive) and find a bar for a couple of drinks; go to the Mall of America (the largest such beastie in the US) and then head up to St Cloud after having a quick nosey; or get a good steak and then drive to St Cloud. All three options are appealing, but I think the steak idea currently has more of an appeal to me. This reminds me, I should organise another excursion to Bones or maybe Chops for my birthday, much as we did last year, and as we do to Ruth's Chris' Steakhouse for Jesse's birthday. Dead cow is great.

Speaking of great, I'm listening to VNV Nation, Dark Angel as I write this. That is one hell of a cool song - awesome lyrics and great beats, simple yet effective. VNV are playing in Baton Rouge on the Saturday after Thanksgiving, and Lauren has suggested we go on a road trip to see them. This would be great, seeing as I missed them in both Atlanta andWashington, DC, in September. Wow, I've just realised that it was a year ago that I last (and first) saw them. Damn, time flies.

We ended up having Japanese Steakhouse, whereat we learned of a funky drink called a "sake bomb". Two-thirds fill a glass with beer (Kirin, Sapporo), place chopsticks in a V shape on the glass. Balance a cup of hot sake on the chopsticks. Now, hit the table hard: the chopsticks should split, the sake should bomb into the beer and you should be sculling the resultant drink. Very tasty.

After dinner, we drove for an hour or so to Saint Cloud, where we encountered snow. And quite a lot of it. The hotel was warm though, and bed was not far away.

15 November

A cold cold day in Minnesota. I took photos, one of snow and one of the Viking Coca-Cola plant. The meeting went okay, and then it was back to Minneapolis-St Paul International for an earlier than planned return flight to Atlanta. Woohoo!!

Tonight's plan was essentially one of drinking. I started at the Local and I continued at MJQ.

16 November

Late for work. Ugh.

After work I continued to pack and then Stacy helped me take a load of boxes over to the new apartment. Then I took some photos (awaiting development).

17 November

Half day at work and then go home to prepare for tomorrow's moving excitement.

I dropped some more boxes round to the new place. I think I went out afterwards as well. Damn, my memory is going. I'm pretty sure I went up to the Local for dinner and that Lauren and I went to the Vault.

18 November

Moving Day! And what a long one it was.

I was up and about not long after 10am. I did a couple of loads, and then Clair came over to give me assistance. Unfortunately the movers were late. And the weather was crap - cold, sleety, windy, rainy. Ugly ugly ugly.

I won't go into the details, but we didn't finish moving both Sarah and myself until 9pm. Ugh. We were cold and tired and hungry, so we went to the Local for dinner. Jenny joined us (she had helped out by waiting all afternoon for the cable guy, who didn't show). Then Clair and I went back and we put together the entertainment center. At this point, I also gave Clair my spare scanner, as thanks for helping out. I really appreciated it.

Lauren then convinced me that I should go to Secret Room with her. So I did. I was tired, and three Absolut Mandarins on the rocks followed by a similar number of vodkas and Red Bull didn't do a lot for me. Oh well. After the club I crashed at Lauren's as my bed was not yet built.

19 November

Another rough day. When I finally got home I made my bed and started to sort out my room. Oh the joy of moving. I think I'm liking the way my room is going to work out. John came over (well, I went and picked him up as his car is dead). and we sorted out the living room. That's looking good. It looks like we've got a couple of ceiling leaks, which is concerning, but we should be able to get those fixed.

We watched TV, had dinner at the Local, and came back to watch more TV. I ended up missing the Power Puff Girls. Bother.

20 November

First night done in the new digs. Very cool. Went off to work, but had to leave at 3:15 to meet the BellSouth guy to fix the phone. It turns out there are multiple connections here, and hence there was some confusion. I think we'll be good to go soon. I'm not sure when I will sort my DSL out.

But I was able to get online using dial-up and had myself a chat with Michele and (to a lesser extent) Clair. Michele had to go make some phone calls before it got too late, and I went off to meet Sarah for dinner at La Fonda. Yay Paella...

21 November

What did I do?

22 November

What did I do?

23 November

What did I do?

24 November

Quietish night. Went to the Local for a while.

25 November

Today, Lauren, Brad and I went on a road trip to Baton Rouge to see VNV Nation, and they rocked. Supporting them was Cut Rate Box. I had skipped seeing this band when they were in Atlanta earlier in the year, but I actually quite liked their set. Snow was also in attendance, which was really cool since I hadn't seen her in many months (she is now living in New Orleans). She made sure we were aware that tickets for GothCon 2001 were now available...

We have pictures now: Before the show, Brad looking saucy, Brad on the bed, and Lauren's magic hair.

After the show: Lauren needs another drink and Brad doesn't need any more to drink.

26 November

Return part of road trip

27 November

Off to Nashville.

28 November

In Nashville.

Dinner was taken at Outback Steakhouse, an "Aussie" steak restaurant. They do have NZ lamb on their menu as well. I stayed with cow, though, along with a baked potato and a salad. Very filling. It was also two-for-one beers, so a couple or four Amber Bock's went down quite nicely.

29 November

From Nashville to a meeting at LaVergne and then back to Atlanta.

Dinner and Trivia at the Local with Myra, and then off to MJQ. Home about 2am and IMed Michele.

30 November

I'm taking on call for a couple of nights so I can won't be on call this Saturday, when I have several parties to indulge in.

John and I did more unpacking and sorting out. I loaded up my CD shelves and cleared some more boxes out of my room. Ten thirty suddenly arrived and I realised that I hadn't eaten yet. I had told Michele to call me after work, but I thought I could get food and get back within a hour, and hoped that if she did ring she would leave a message. That didn't quite work out.