February 29th thru March 6th, 2004

I went to the Blue Star Cafe and had a cheeseburger with Hortense Cremaster and Sgurch. Then I went home and DDRed, but might feet are now all a mess, so I stopped. Then Magicpants came over to chill for a spell. Then I went to that bowling tournament.

We won. Thanks to our really high handicaps, we won! After that was quartermania with Hikinsauce and her coworkers and their friends. I bowled well enough and had some giggles. And then Hikinsauce gave me two new rubber ducks! I am in heaven!

Finished reading Thief of Time. Good old Terry Pratchett. I still say these his later works are a little too slick, compared with the goofy lumpy goodness of the early ones. Yeah, like gravy, or mashed potatoes, are just better when they have a few lumps in 'em. But these are still good. Just The Truth and Night Watch left to go and I can read the latest one, finally, Monstrous Regiment. Or should I wait for it in paperback?

Ah but. Did not bowl so well tonight. Okay, actually, I did quite well, but we lost, buts its cool- we lost to a team the deserved to win. One dude bowled like 9 strikes in a row! Props to him, says me.

And then, super cool, I get home to find an e-mail from a dude I used to know back when I was at KU. Seems his students googled his name and found a short story I wrote about him. So he wrote to me. And that's pretty damn cool.

Okay peeps. My feet don't want me to DDR for a few days, so its some UT2k4 Demo online and then beddy bye bye.

This just in! HarperTorch DOES have versions of Terry Pratchett's Interesting Times, Maskerade, Feet of Clay, Jingo, and The Last Continent with the covers in the same style as the other ones I have. Hooray! If I can't find them at the bookstore tomorrow, I'll order them direct.

Serious Sam has been out for a while and is just another Duke-Nuke-'em-esque FPPS, where humor is the goal along with tons and tons of bullets. Pankiller's premise, near as I can tell, is you are a man doomed to Hell for sins large and small, but something has happened on Earth and now the Angels need you to waltz about the haunted landscape offing the undead with your stake-gun. I have no idea what the story arc entails, but I would be disapointed if it was something other than being sent straight back to Hell after ridding the world of evil, because that's the definition of damnation: there is no redemption (and even several days among the undead armed with a stake-gun is a vacation compared to the tortures of Hell, anyway).

Pobably Painkiller is hoping to ride on Doom 3's coattails, if and when it ever comes out. Unreal Tournament has a lock on the Multiplayer Deathmatch market, and so Doom 3 is goinng back to it's roots as a single-player experience. Painkiller looks to do the same thing, preferring mood over competition.

Also went to SBC for coffee with the clan and we ate at Thai Ocean afterwards.

Went and did the tutoring. She's 15, and pretty smart, but what 15 year-old who isn't a geek loves math? None of them. But she does well, and when I start showing her extra cool stuff to do with numbers, she gets into it. Like, I showed her this joke:

And she was delighted. So I showed her how binary could be used to count to 31 on one hand, and she thought that was pretty cool too.

Back at home, I DDR'd after not having done it for 60 hours. Ah, delight.

Anyone want to tell me what I want out of life? I am unable to think of anything right now. I have taken lots of tests on-line about my personality and my IQ and what kind of alcoholic beverage I am and what sort of hairdresser I could be. But I can't find one that tells me what I want. I need a passion. I mean, besides ducks, DDR, stand-up comedians... you know, my friends are my passion. I just love these people. Maybe what I want is to want something, since my friends fulfill so many of my desires... it bears contemplating, which I will do, in the shower, covered in soap (photo pending-- maybe).

Hooked up with Drally for a wander around Blue Ridge, then some Texas style barbecue from Manna BBQ, and a long in-depth conversation about the future of the internet. Propriety bars from reporting on the details of this conversation; suffice it to say, agnosticism applies to the future as well as matters spiritual. Perhaps this is why I tend towards meta-discourse and the contemplation of context: for while one can't know what the future holds, one can set oneself to recognize the flux and flow of patterns in order to negotiate the coming landscapes. Maybe.

On that note, I would like to note: I have heard and find to be more and more true that experience i.e. practice is way more important than talent. And this is encouraging, because it opens the door on a thousand endeavors one might have feared attempting before. Maybe I'll break out the keyboard and start racticing scales, just to see where it takes me.

The days activities: Met with Scurvypants for lunch at Tony Romas, a long overdo coming together. In the evening went to Queen Sheeba for Ethiopian food with Frez, D5V, Splim, and two of her friends. Wot! After they went to Chop Suey for some Reggae goodness while I walked to The Garage, did not have a drink, and left very soon after to drive to Larry's to buy some white cake to eat while reading a copy Of Wired. That magazine is sort of the USA-Today of tech, ain't it? I got it for the series of articles on Google. I shall wax rhapsodic on Google on another day.

I'm heading to Pike Place Market to get some Homies and some rubber ducks. Then I am going to Whidbey Island to witness a Christening. Then back in Seattle I'll be attending an entree construction collective, and who knows what after that.

Okay I am back from the duck hunt. Behold. 11 new ducks. The large one is not new; only his costume is new. Yes, I am playing dress-up with my ducks now. I got these at 5 different stores: Two "Simply Seattle" stores (the two green ducks and the Mariners duck), a place called "Pirates Plunder" (the costume for the big duck and the pirate duck in the soap), a shop inside Pike Place Market called "Golden Age Collectibles" (three small yellow ducks in front) and "Cost Plus World Market" (the three jelly-ducks and the duck in the bunny-costume).

Went out to that isalnd for that Christening. That is one fecund family. I sometimes wonder, when I am around them, if the hormones in the air are making my own fertility sky-rocket. I fear that I am going to accidentaly sit too close to one of them and get her pregnant. Anyway, the ceremony itself was just a ceremony. There was a day when I would have dismembered it's elements, another day when I would have replied to it's poetry-- now I just say its a ceremony,

After that was the pizza thing. And that was some good times.