So I've been living here now for two weeks, and there's one little aspect of this house that absolutely drives me crazy.
The lightswitch in the kitchen.

What could be wrong with a lightswitch, you ask.
It's upside down.
Yup, that one little thing can drive one right over the edge of insanity. When it's up, the light is off, when it's down, the light is on.
How many times have I walked into a dark kitchen only to think that the lightbulb has burned out?
But, of course, there are two lightswitches in the kitchen... as any room with three entrances should have. But the one light MUST be in the down position at all times.
It's one of those little rules my mother made up back when I was 10... see, it's on a little control panal thingy that has 4 switches, and since turning on any outside light is forbidden (perhaps because they might find us) all the other switches are down, and it's all about symmetry.
So today I went into the old tool drawer in the garage (the tool drawer is part of a chest that was mother hand when she was a little girl, if I were to look at it funny it would fall into a million pieces), and got me a flat head screwdriver and fixed that stupid lightswitch.
Editors Note: Always turn the power off before doing even the most rudimentary of electrical work... trust me.
And did they notice? No! Not one word about "Oh, how nice it is to not try to flip the switch the wrong way before I remember it's backwards."
And they always get it wrong on the first try! You'd think they'd remember one or the other.

sigh
Oh well, it works better for me, and that's what really matters.

A Prelude to a Kiss

Well, it was inevitable, someday I had to kiss somebody.
It was the City of Hope bowling for charity thing my company does every year. It was my first year... why? Because no one in my old dpeartment believes in doing any extracirricular activities.

Nevermind the fact that my company used to choose a different charity every year to donate too, and after we gave bazillions to City of Hope, they did some nice things for us... so now we just stick with that one, what a rip off for those other, less fortunate, charities.

Anyways... dollar beer, free pizza, and free bowling... all for $25!
Back to the dollar beer... oh, and don't forget about the dollar beer... mmm, what I would give for a dollar beer... say, this dollar beer sure is good! Even my arch-nemesis, Jacki, showed up for some dollar beer.
I didn't bowl well, 138 was my high game (which was better than when I bowled when I went to Austin last year). But I had fun, probably because of all the beer.
Women were putting their hands in my pockets... probably because I had a playing card with a naked man on it in there.
And near the end of game three I turned to Fiona and asked her something that one should never ask of a coworker... that's when things got ugly.
I sucked in my gut and admitted I'd been defeated. I walked, hiding my shame by standing as tall as I could, to a different lane. Holding out my hands, I grabbed the ball shaped object in front of me... and kissed Carlos square on the lips.

To paraphrase Geddy Lee: Twenty bucks is twenty bucks.
But I will never again ask, "how much would you give me to kiss Carlos."

Well, since cutting down on Pepsi, I've begun remembering dreams again.
I dreamt that Buffy the Vampire Slayer died, and was replaced by one of my coworkers (who, apparently, was only about 4 years old).
I dreamt something about a large quantity of cheese.
I dreamt of being at a party (at my old home) with a girl, who I was really liking. Somehow she ended up sitting on my lap, and we kissed. It was the kind of a kiss that makes you just fall in love with the person... but I didn't fall in love, because my heart still belongs to another. And that is true, and now I wonder if it will ever be mine to give away again.

Well, here I am. Sitting in my new home, surrounded by boxes which hold my life.
Trying to fit an 34 years of life into one room is impossible, especially when much of the room is occupied by the lives of two other people. Much of the day was spent packing again, to take things out of the room that aren't mine and I feel like I've hardly accomplished anything.
Dump a box of my stuff on the bed, fill the box with other stuff, try to figure out what to do with the stuff on the bed. And there's still three distinct piles of boxes.
Two boxes of winter clothes I have no idea what I'm going to do with.
I think there's definately going to be a storage locker in the very near future. I was hoping to avoid that just to save a few bucks a month.

I'm beat, but have so much more to do. I just keep telling myself the truth: It could be worse, I could still be living with Debbie.

I must have been about 16 or so. I was sitting in a restaraunt with my parents eating dinner or lunch or something. A crowd was gathered around one of the window, pointing at something and quiet whispers flickered between them.
I just had to see what they were looking at, so I got up from the table as if I was going to use the restroom. As I passed the window I turned and looked...

You couldn't miss it. A gigantic, dark, triangle shape hung from the sky, it's form shifting along it's length. I felt my heart jump to my throat, climb out my mouth and run for the door.
This was the first, and only, tornado I'd ever seen. It's amazing how something miles away can be so frightening. A tornado can change it's direction and speed in a heartbeat, and the spot I was standing could have been carried thousands of feet away in less than a minute.

After moving several heavy boxes Saturday, I was resting on the couch watching (much to my shame) Saturday Night Live. The rain was coming down hard, and NBC was covering half the screen with lame tornado warning messages.
Then they cut in with a big weathermap. "...funnelcloud spotted in Bartlett... heading northwest at 30MPH..." Yup, I could be right in the path.
The rain picked up, and I could hear hail bouncing off the windows... hail's often a sign of a tornado. I kept watch out the window... looking for dark shapes in the sky with each flicker of the lightning. Several times I thougth I saw something, but couldn't be sure through the downpour. If I did see it, it was one of those thin ones... just as destructive, but a thin path.
I don't think I did see it though, the next update said that the tornado was over Northbrook. If it followed a straight path (unlikely) I couldn't have seen it out that window. However, a straight path would have put it right through Wheeling, the town that my friends Big Rob and Gay Nick live in.
I looked for them online... they were there. Nick had cowered in the basement, Rob was upstairs playing video games (not caring about a little bad weather).
I hate when people ignore things like this... nature can be more destructive than war, and people just ignore it. People are fools.

Respect the forces of nature and you just might walk away from any natural disaster.

Another storm will be coming this way again. I've been wearing earplugs to avoid Marty's constant nighttime whining. I think I'll risk being awakened every five minutes tonight... he just might be trying to warn me of something.

A terrible tragedy, indeed.

So I dragged more stuff to my new abode today. My folks are in Michigan taking care of my sisters kids while she's off galavanting around Las Vegas.
My father will insist on leaving there at about 2AM so they can "beat the traffic," because visiting his daughter for any amount of time is just too much work, I guess.

Since they'll be getting home at around 8AM tomorrow (far earlier than I'd like to get there for Mothers Day), I stopped and bought some flowers to have waiting for my mother when she gets home.

I got a few different kinds to make an arangement of my own. Yeah, I don't know what I was thinking either... I've never done anything like that before. But I found some really cool ones that were all glittery, with spring-like colors. I really didn't know glitter grew in nature!

So I had to cut the stems. Apparently my parents never had to do anything like that before. The sharpest thing they own is a steak knife (this doesn't include my fathers razor-sharp wit).
So, I got out the ancient cutting board (made in the 60s, still looking as good as new) and managed to stain it all different kinds of colors... shhhhh, don't tell my mother that I did it.
Cutting flower stems with a steak knife is harder than it sounds. It took a lot of work to cut down three bunches of flowers, on an angle no less!
Well, I guess I got a little careless.

*saw saw saw*
Me: Hey, I don't remember any of these flowers being dyes that dark of a red... Oh my god!!!

Running upstairs to the bathroom (tripping on the third step, of nine), I searched the medicine cabinet for hydrogen peroxide which I found easily. Peroxide thins blood nicely...
Then I searched for a Band-Aid or two (no Curad for this family!).
Took me about 5 minutes to find the box that was right in front of my eyes. This meant there was blood everywhere....

When I was in 7th grade or so, I was cutting open a golf ball. Why? Who knows, I was in 7th grade!
The knife slipped and I sorta severed my thumb... oh not completely, the tip of it was being held on by a sliver of skin. It was all flopping around and stuff. I found the bandaids right away that time, and fearing getting in trouble for doing something stupid, I told my parents I was digging through the"tool drawer" and cut myself a little bit.
Despite that the bathroom looked like a scene from Psycho, they believed me. After a few months, it healed completely with no visible scars. How cool is that?

The bathroom looks like another scene from Psycho now. Blood doesn't come off drywall very easily at all. And I didn't want to wear down the paint. So I'll wait and see if they have any of that paint left over from about 5 years ago.
I didn't cut my thumb nearly as bad this time, but it hurts like hell.
Someday the world will learn to keep me far, far away from knives.

Well, last night was the first time I'd played poker with my friends...
Just nickel ante stuff... nothing big.
We get together once a week, just us guys to hang out and usually play a game or 6 of something-or-other. Well, as soon as Chuck's wife found out we were playing poker, she had to join.
Now, I admit, I don't like her all that much. But it's rare when any of my friends gets a girlfriend (or boyfriend) that I would like them. Who know's, maybe I'm selfish and want them all to myself.

So we're playing dealers choice, and she starts playing games that just aren't poker... any game that requires over a minute of explanation isn't poker. Hell, if there's no pairs, flushes, or full houses it ain't poker!!!!
Oh, I looked this up online to make sure... the definitions in online dictionary's all say something like "a card game where one bets on whether or not they have the highest hand," and ok... her games fall into that. But each place I looked had a diagram of poker hands... and it had all the standard victory conditions, right up to the ol' royal flush. Ergo, she was not playing poker!

I introduced a game to this group which caught on, I think everyone ended up dealing it at one point or another. No peek baseball, is what it's called, and it's a fabulous pot builder. For those who don't know, baseball is a standard poker game where 3's and 9's are wild (for 3 outs, and 9 innings), and you get a free card on a 4 (4 balls to a walk, or free base). No peek is pretty much what it sounds like... you can't look at your cards.
The person left of the dealer flips over a card... badda-bing, they got the high card, and they bet on it. The second person then starts flipping over cards until they beat they have the hight hand showing... badda-boom, they bet on that, and so it goes around the table. The pot can get pretty big, and since I won most of these games... I ended up well ahead. That is, until the final game which was a $3 elimination round, I almost had it!

The biggest drawback to the game was Kevin. His idea of bluffing is to bet a huge amount when he's got nothing... well after two times of this, we all knew he didn't have higher than a straight, and some very big pots were won because of him. Although I think he was just surly because he lost a game of 5 card stud, no wilds, with three 6s... of course the pair of Aces thought they had that hand too... but there were 3 Kings out there too.
Three people with a "guaranteed victory" leads to a very large pot, indeed.

I'm a very competitive person. And when playing a "normal" game, this all comes out. But when playing poker, I have to act all cool and suave... tough for a guy like me to do, so 2 beers and a few shots of grapa (crappy home made whiskey) later, I was able to relax.
It's funny how, still, none of them think I can bluff my way with in poker... yet until that final hand I was the big winner, all of $3.25... woo hoo.
But poker's not about the money. It's about how well you're friends think they know you. And still they all think they know me far better than they really do... and I'll be ready for them at the next poker game.

My sister never liked the house we lived in growing up. Well, she was a sophomore by the time we moved to this place, I was only in 5th grade and never really had a problem with the place, in fact, I loved it.

That is, until my sister got married and moved out. I got her room... the big room, with two closets and more space than I knew what to do with.
A few months of sleeping in that room, and I got to the point were I was too afraid to sleep. I would be laying in bed, in the dark... and then I would hear it. A voice, seemingly right next to my ear, trying to talk to me.
All I could hear was gibberish. But every time my eyes would snap open and I would look around the almost pitch black room trying to see who was there.
This went on for weeks. And there I was, lying awake every night, terrified.

Then one day... I realized something.
If the source this voice was trying to hurt me, or anything like that... it would have done so already. And I was finally able to get some sleep.
But, of course, I could never sleep right away. It would always wake me up, tell me what it had to say, and then leave me alone.

This went on for... well, it was a long time. And then the gibberish stopped being so gibberishy, I could begin to understand the things that were said.
I beleive it was always a different voice, sometimes man, sometimes woman, sometimes child. Maybe I'd hear the same voice twice, but I don't think so.

I'd kept a log of the things that were said, the time I heard it and what type of voice it was. I could find nothing that indicated any kind of pattern. Sadly, I threw the log away, and my memory of most of what I'd heard has lost most of it.
Perhaps it would have been easier had the voices made sense to me.

"We're going to Grandma's house."
"Here comes Jobi."
"Whatch out for the trees."

These were just a few of the words I'd hear. Once, I decided to talk back... but I was tired.

Voice: Can you open this?
Me: What?
Voice: Can you open this?
Me: What?
Voice: Can you open this?
Me: What?

That was it...
But I knew I could talk back and they could hear me. Or, perhaps, I was completely insane. However, I never spoke back again.

Interestingly, any time I'd spend the night away from the room, I wouldn't here the voices on the next night I did sleep there, sometimes for two nights.
At times when my grandmorther would be visiting from Las Vegas, she'd stay in my room... I wouldn't hear the voice for at least 3 days, often as long as a week, after I was back in my bed.
Once, my girlfriend spent the night... well... it was almost a month before I heard them again.
Did I make them angry or upset? It would become difficult to sleep without them...

When I moved out, I told myself that if I started hearing them again, I was crazy. I haven't heard anything since (I did see a few things there when I'd visit, but that's another story).
Years later, I started getting along with my sister, and we'd talk a lot. I found out that she, too, had heard things when in that room. Though to be honest, she's afraid of everything, and was convinced the dog said "yep."

Ok, so if she heard things... maybe there really is something there. The house was only two years old when we moved it. No one had died there, so it must have been built on an ancient indian burial ground, right?

Well, I have no idea who or what could possibly be there. And I still think it was all in my mind.
In two weeks I'll be back there, given enough time, I may here the voices again... or maybe the source has left. I will probably never know what I'd heard... but hopefully I'll hear more, and find out what it's all about.

So I went and saw X2 (ie: X-Men 2) twice. I didn't think it's quite as good as the first one, though EVERYONE seems to disagree with me. Thier argument tends to be that since it's a sequal, they didn't need to work on character development and "junk like that."
Of course, they don't even mention how the big fight seen at the end was just two people standing, unmoving... and one guy kinda-sorta cowering. Wow, talk about excitment!
But, still better than Mission to Mars... blah blah blah... go see it, it's probably going to be the best movie this year.

Afterwards, we snuck in to see Identity. This was my idea, and whenever I have a bad idea, people tend to go along with it. I thought of it years ago, what with the theaters with 500 screens you could live in a theater for a day. It's got entertainment, food, and restrooms. Everything you could need, and they have no way to watch everyone. 30 screens for the price of one.
I'll admit, I wouldn't sneak into a movie I'd consider paying for. But I didn't think Identity would be worth $9. Turns out I was right.
Sneaking in was easy, staying awake through the whole movie was not. Sure, they give away the big surprise halfway through the movie... but I knew what it was from the commercials. I'd hoped I was wrong, I wasn't.
There's another "surprise" at the end of the movie... but it was a bit obvious. Honestly, I just wasn't impressed with it after all the good things I'd heard about it. Nah, I wasn't influenced by other people's hype over it. I don't do that anymore. I only get influenced by my own hype (which explains my opinion of X-Men 2, which I'd been looking forward to since the closing credits of the first one).
I can see where some people might like Identity, but not me.
Go and see it maybe you're one of those people... and if you've ever seen Mission to Mars, you'll LOVE Identity.

So after seeing these movies, Rob spoke of his beliefs about theater seating (and I quote him verbatim): "There's a stigmata about sitting in the back row."
This made me and Nick laugh for... well, I had tears I was laughing so hard... imagining all those poor folks in the back row bleeding from their hands shouting over the soundtrack about how Christ died so they could talk on their cell phones during the movie.
We never did find out exactly what he meant to say. We didn't care because he'll never live that down.

It's not terribly often that we get massive rainstorms here. But when we do, they sure are fun. Driving home tonight was fun, pavement was little more than tiny islands where the little hills of the road crested, and where the road dipped was a vast pool of water. I could have hydroplaned most of the way home, and since I was the only person fool enough to be out there, it would have been (mostly) safe.
I love driving in that kind of weather. When you're no longer sure if you're on the road, or if you've managed to cross over onto the high school football field.
I love to watch the lightning and listen to the thunder. Watching the telephone poles shooting jets of white hot fire up into the sky is a fabulous, though rare, visage.

The storm is still strong, though the rain has slowed up a lot. The retention pond behind this place is quite full. I'm looking out the balcony as I lay on the couch, waiting for lightning to come into view.
It's wonderful.
I tried photographing lightning once or twice. It's very difficult, even using the "surefire" tricks of the trade.
Maybe once I'll move, I'll plant myself on my parents roof during a thunderstorm, of course I'll need to surround myself with lightning rods.

Gods, I love this weather!!
Even if it's just to make the warm and sunny days seem better...