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April 2002
April Fool's Day is a Monday. And not only that, it's Easter Monday. The irony is probably lost on most people.
A bombshell at work: Warwick is resigning and going to work for a (semi-competitor) company. Oh shit. Oh shit. Oh shit. My workload just increased quite considerably. I won't really know how considerably until later in the week.
Went straight from work to the Local. Jenny was joining me for trivia. We didn't perform terribly well. Sarah and Alice were meeting one of Sarah's former classmates at the Local, also, and I don't think they did terribly well in trivia, either.
Bad Taste arrived in the mail today. I was most impressed and very happy. So I invited Lauren and Clair to come over and watch it. I fist popped out to pick up some beer and soda and something to eat. Excellent plan!
I decided to watch Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back while I waited for the kids to come over. I really enjoyed it. There are some really funny moments in that movie. Lauren and Clair arrived while I was watching deleted scenes, and Lauren said she wanted to watch the movie from the appearance of Dawson (James Ver Der Beek), so I watched the movie again. I wasn't complaining.
After J&SB, I went to load in Bad Taste, but found that the disc was cracked. I was really bummed. So instead we watched the Blaxpoitation movie that Amy had given me - TNT Jackson. It was pretty bad. The quality of the transferal onto DVD was poor, and the dialog was pretty silly. The fight scenes were hilarious, and the plot? What plot? Heheh, it was entertaining in its own special way.
Number one task of the day: get onto Amazon.com to investigate how to get Bad Taste replaced.
I bought some software online today, an upgrade to the graphics [ackage that came with my computer. It won't install. I think I'm going to have to reinstall windows. I don't really want to do that. It's a pain in the rectum to have to do that. Ugh.
Awake bright and early. A long day at work, although I never made it to the office, and then doing homework. Joy.
I had three meetings today, which involved me driving from Midtown (where I live) to Marietta (for CCE) to Midtown (for Coke North America) to Marietta (for a technology discussion) to Midtown (hometime). What a day. And in the middle we had a minor customer crisis. It all got worked out, but it made for a stressful day.
The alarm went off early, but I was already awake. I showered, grabbed my bag, and zoomed off to the airport. I was there in good time, checked in easily (no bags to check) and found myself some food. Next stop, checking my email in the Crown Room. Getting Crown Room membership is such a good plan...
The flight to Phoenix was appropriately boring. I did some work on my laptop until the battery died, and then I read some of my IEEE periodicals. When we landed, I still had a full day in front of me.
The day was spent with a partner company, who are doing some communications hardware development for us. It was interesting and time well spent, as it allow us to be clear on the understanding of the requirements. Very well spent day.
For dinner, we went to a nice southwestern-style restaurant called Roaring Bull. The food was excellent. I had salmon, whioch came with asparagus and roasted beetroot. Yum!
After dinner, which was earlyish, I was dropped back at my hotel and did a little bit more work before hitting the sack. Oh so very tired.
Didn't sleep very well, and was awake at my current, early Easter Time Zone times. Ugh. Oh well, I did some work and checked my emails. Then I had a shower and went to get some breakfast. After breakfast I did some more work and found when earlier flights headed to Atlanta. Finding myself in good position to get one, I headed to the airport.
I got back to Atlanta around 7pm and found myself having a long phone converation with one of my New Zealand-nased colleagues. That was very worthwhile. When I got home I got stuck in to some more work. John was trying to work on his taxes and finding himself in all sorts of grief.
Sarah and Alice called to ask if we were interested in going up to the Prince of Wales for a drink. We both thought that was a good idea, especially since we were skipping trivia (for work and taxes) so the girls stopped by to pick us up. I had received a number of boxes in the mail with CDs and DVDs, one of which, Legally Blonde, I loaned to Sarah and Alice. That's a great film.
We had three or four beers at the POW, and John and I got some food. The sausage roll there was not very good - it was a sausage wrapped in pastry, rather than sausage meat with herbs and onions and stuff with pastry baked around it. Very disappointing. The chips weren't great either. And they no longer had Newcastle on draught. Overall, a low score for the POW.
While we were there, Lisa and Barbara turned up. They had gone looking for John and I at the Local and the Imperial Pint and came here on a whim. Craziness really.
We think our waitress may have been a little bit stoned. Her eyes were rather squinty, which was odd considering the low light level, and she didn't seem to be all there all the time. Heheh...
Awake earlier than I desire again, so I got up and was at work by 8am. It's probably a good habit to be up so early, but not if I'm leaving later as well...
When I got home, I discovered among the mail an envelope from my immigration attorney. I opened it up and found that it contained, among other things, forms to fill out for my I-485 Change of Status to Permanent Resident form. Rock on. I was so happy that I called Lauren and left a message that I needed to speak to her and then arranged to meet CLair down at the Local for a bit of a celebration.
Clair and I had a couple of drinks and were joined by Jenn, and later by John and Lauren. It made for a very pleasant night.
VNV Nation at the Chamber
The day started with me waking initially at 6am. I did manage to get some more sleep before getting up and zooming up to see my periodontist.
You know, it feels kinda weird when you're going to see a medical person and everyone there is like "Hi Damon." I mean it's one thing for my periodontist to know me and say hello anmd so forth, but assistants who have only looked after me once? Weird.
Anyway, all is well with my tooth, and it should be ready for the final stages next month. Woohoo. After finishing with the periodontist it was time to go to work. Yee-ha
When I got to work, there were several boxes waiting for me: Bad Taste and three engineering books that I had ordered. Definitely a good day in the works.
I got out of work around 5:30, happy in the knowledge that I wouldbe back in at 8:30 in the morning to let some people in to pick up our multimedia vending machine. Joy. So I came home, and got online, relaxing and reading email, and talking to my mum, and starting back into updating my web journal.
A little after 8pm I pulled on my boots and zoomed over to Lauren's for a couple of pre-show drinks. Matt was there (of course), and Pete and Clair and Jenn stopped by. Jenn wasn't gong to the show, but the boys were. Woohoo!
We got to the Chamber a bit after 10pm and I grabbed a beer. There were lots of people I hadn't seen in quite some time (mostly my fault for not getting out to the club very much recently), and it was really good to see them all.
Haujobb were okay. I didn't really know the material, but they were entertaining enough. VNV Nation rocked. I jumped, I bounced, I danced like a mad bastard. It was great. A much needed work-out. It wasn't their best show, but it was still really good.
After the show Matt, Lauren and I headed back to Lauren's for a night cap and then I headed home, in the knowledge that I would not be getting a ton of sleep. Oh well.
Heheh, at the show, JSin of Secret Room said that he liked my mix disc and that he could set me up in the back room if I wanted to spin on Saturday night. The offer is very appealing, but I don't think I'd play what he expects me to play. And what CD is he talking about...? ;-)
Manny and Craig's party!
Amy and I had breakfast at Clark's. Fairly standard sort of even, really.
Today was a day of shopping, so we went to Evil Clown, where I bought $200+ worth of CDs and then at Chicago Comics I spent another $80+ on comics and a Power Puff Girl DVD. Rock on.
After shopping, Amy and I played a couple of games of Scrabble, with each of us winning a game.
Went to BD's Mongloian BBQ for dinner, with Lauren and Matt. I like that; it's yummy. Afterwards, we all went to Delilah's where they were doing $2 Old Grandads (that's a brand of whiskey). So I made the most of that deal.
Eventually we went to Neo for a while. We were all pretty hammered. It was a fun night.
It was a grotty day. When we finally got motivated we went for food at Eat-A-Pita. Mine was tasty.
Afterwards we went shopping for a jacket, since the weather was crap and I wasn't going to be "that guy" who wears the band t-shirt to the concert. Couldn't find anything that I liked AND fitted. Damnit.
The show was an early one, so we met up with the kids at 5pm at a bar in Lincoln Park. I had a beer and a vodka red bull. We moved off to another bar where we could see the line going into the concert venue (Park West). When the crowd was moving (ie after a beer) we went joined the crowd.
Assemblage 23 played first - they just started as we got in the door. They were good, but without the vocal effects, the singer's voice seemed off.
Haujobb were just as boring as they were in Atlanta.
VNV rocked. Much more so than they did in Atlanta. I danced my booty off. I bounced, I sang, I shouted. It was great. At the end of the show, Ronan called the guys from Assmeblage back on stage to do a combined VNV/Assemblage 23 version of Naked. Fan-fucking-tastic.
After the show we went back to the apartment of a friend of Matt's, to chill out. I was pretty tired and wasn't ready to face more crowds, so after a drink there, Amy and I went home while the others went on to Spy Bar for the after-party.
Amy and I met Lauren and Matt at Ann Sathers for breakfast. Hmmm...steak benedict and grapefruit juice.
Came home from Chicago. John picked up Lauren and I and we dropped Lauren off. Then John and I went to the Highlander for dinner. Sarah and Alice joined us for a drink.
Also bumped into Sarah and Shawn and Rob a nd some others whose names I don't know.
John had confirmed his tickets to NZ.
Work and then stayed in. I spent much of the time updating my CD database and recording my new CDs to mp3 format.
Anzac Day, and Jesse's birthday
After work John and I went to Ruth's Chris' Steakhouse for dinner to celebrate Jesse's birthday. Also in attendance were Lauren, Eric, Lianne, and two of Jesse's other friends (Charlie and ??).
I ordered a couple of bottles of wine, but when they were delivered and I tasted it, something was amiss. The wine looked too pale (it was a pinot noir) and the flavour was definitely missing. So I looked at the bottle and saw that it was the 2000 rather than the 1999 that I had ordered. And so I sent it back. Wow. That was the first time I have ever sent back a bottle of wine. Damn it felt good.
The food was excellent, as always.
They were unable to suuply us with creme brulee for desert, so Jesse, John, Eric and I opterd for a glass of Lagavulin. In the end, the waiter brought out all of the deserts that they had left over (we appeared to be the last patrons) and so we had free deserts. Then, to top things off, the waiter came back to me with a glass of brown water and said, "because you've been so understanding about the wine and so on, here is a glass of Johnny Wakler Blue Label." Ugh. My jaw dropped. I was most grateful. And it was good. Rather fine, in fact.
After leaving the restaurant we met up again at the Local, where they had now opened up the back room.
Dropped Lauren and Pete home and then came back to the Local. Closed it out.
Work was hard.
Local for dinner, then to Rarity, and then back to the Local. Closed it out again.
I awoke earlier than I would have liked, but this allowed my to get my shaving done (yay for no-hair Damon), do a few round-the-house type chores and play a little Civ III.
When John got up we went up to Hi-Fi Buys to get John a new car stereo to replace the one that got stolen. I was aso looking for a Sony portable minidisc player that suported MP3s. I found one and bought it, while John got a new stereo.
Well, it turns out that the minidisc player does not support mp3s. You have to use the included software to convert everything into Sony's proprietary ATRAC format with some crap software - you can't just copy the files directly to the disc. This is NOT what I want. I'm not sure what I'm going to do with this player though. It cost me $190 including tax. Anybody want it? Make me an offer - it'll still do the trick as far as regular mini-disc playing/recording goes.
Also ran other chores, like picking up medications and dropping off drycleaning. Fun fun fun. And then I spent much of the afternoon playing Civ III.
John went up to Athens to hang out with Sarah and Alice and then go mountain-biking on Sunday. I stayed home to have a quiet night and to do some work-type work (writing up project status reports - fun). I had dinner with Lauren at Apres Diem, and then came home to work some more, read some more, watch some TV, and then go to bed before 1am.
In spite of my early(ish) night and desire for extended amounts of rest, I was awake around 7am. Bother and poo. So I read for a a couple of hours, and then got up and spent ten minutes on the exercise bike. Next stop - update the web pages. I must go out today to pick up a pair of khaki trousers so I am properly attired for next week's trade show. This must be done sooner rather than later, as this afternoon we have a scotch tasting.
Woohoo. 8:30am to 8:30pm. A nice wee day at work...