A lot has happened lately, most of which is good. Let's start on Friday. First of all there has been a lot of talk about bumping up my responsibilities and possibly promoting me. Now, this was all under the table talk, until Friday. I was walking around my fund group wearing my raggedy khakis and playing with my yo-yo when the Unit Head of my department comes up to me. Here's how the conversation goes: Unit Head: Congratulations! ZEN!!!: Congratulations about what? (Knowing full well that I must have gotten a promotion) Unit Head: I hear you got a promotion! ZEN!!!: I did? Unit Head: That's what I heard. Didn't you? ZEN!!!: Well, I heard the idea bouncing around, but I really haven't gotten any notification or a piece of paper or any numbers stuck in front of me. Unit Head: Oh... ZEN!!!: But thanks for the heads up. Five minutes later Account Manager: I can't believe you told him! Unit Head: I thought he knew! Account Manager: It was supposed to be a surprise. Unit Head: Oh... I didn't know. Account Manager: I guess I have to go and tell him that he is getting promoted, but the paperwork hasn't gone through yet...
I thought it was pretty funny. I'm an asshole. I truly am. It's so much fun though.
After work, I ran off to go an try to buy some Tevas at City Sports. They were on sale and I really dug them. The would be twenty times more comfortable than my current Tevas which hurt my feet when I run/walk on them for too long. Unfortunately, they didn't have my size. I figure I'll go to one of the other City Sports locations to see if they have it in my size. I really hope they do.
After wasting my time trying on Tevas and Oakley sandals that didn't fit, I ran to the Galleria, bought Twister to bring to the Liberty races, ran home, and packed in 15 minutes including choosing CDs to bring. Everyone knows how difficult that is for me. I was planning on adding a few more tracks onto my driving MD, but I simply didn't have the time. It was unfortunate. From there, I flew to the T and caught a ride to Harvard Square where I was meeting Booch for dinner.
It was probably one of the dumbest things I could have done, knowing my time table, but I got lucky. I was supposed to meet Booch at five for dinner at Bartley's and I was supposed to meet Hulk, Sassy & Paddleback at Porter Square at six fifteen to drive to NYC. I made it to dinner at five fiteen, had a forty five minute dinner, complete with burgers, lime rickeys and intelectual/philosophical conversation regarding blogs. I was back on the T at six, and I made it to Porter at about six twenty. Good thing Hulk and Sassy didn't get there until half past. It was a relief to see that I wasn't the one that was holding everyone up. Paddleback was already there, so we just hung out for the ten minutes it took them to get there.
The ride to Shaft's place in Hoboken was rather amusing. I was tapped out from a hard week of work. So I passed out for a good portion of the trip. I played my mix which went over well, for the most part. I tried to read Last Night A DJ Saved My Life but I just couldn't concentrate. Traffic was alrigth until we hit NYC. The directions Shaft made for us were kinda sketchy and we got lost a couple of times. We went over bridges, under overpasses and around blocks and we had no clue where we were going. We finally arrived at Shaft's place at around half past midnight and were of no use for the rest of the night. I kinda wanted to go out to do something, but I was too exhasuted as well.
The next morning we got up at six forty in the morning to be at the race site by half past seven. I hate waking up early in the morning. I wake up everyday for work at around six thirty. Why do I have to do it on the weekends? It hurts. It really hurts. So we wake up. It's gray and drizzley outside. It wasn't hospitable at all. By the time the team was assembled at the race site and the tents were put up, it was at a light rain. It was like that all day long. It wasn't even close to Twister weather. Unfortunate. We had two 250m races and a 500m race. The first two races, we finished third and fourth respectively and in the 500m we finished third. Keep in mind, all of these teams are of invitiational caliber. No farm teams here. All of the teams travel to multiple races. All are winners. The competition was stiff. With three teams from Boston there, we had a real sense of comradery as well as a real sense of competition. The Dudley Team and our team, though friends were really competitive with each other, especially when we races against each other. Off the boat, all was well. That day I added music to our warmups. People my teammates really seemed to dig it and I think it got them pumped. I'm gonna try that for the next race. I think the rain really brought us together as a team. We were all huddled under the tents, not really going anywhere. We were all just chill. There was a lot of t-shirt trading too. Throughout the course of the weekend, I ended up with a LA - Killer Guppies t-shirt, a Schuykill Dragons tank and a Philly Police Dragon Boat team t-shirt. I made out like a bandit.
That evening, I went to Brasserie Les Halles at 411 Park Avenue South (between 28th and 29th), which is one of Anthony Bourdain's resraurants. He's the executive chef there. I was so psyched to go. I had the best meal too. Spent major duckets. There was a total of ten of us including Paddleback and Shaft. For starters, I had sauteed fois gras (goose liver) with prunes. This was the first time I had ever had fois gras and it was amazing. The taste, the texture, the smell, it was all wonderous. I also had a bit of Paddleback's escargot. I hadn't tried it since I was four and my dad ordered it. I have to say it was damn good. I was thouroughly pleases. But the fois gras... Mmmm.... For the main course, I had Confit de Canard (Confit of Duck). This was also delicious. It was crispy on the ourside and juicy and flavorful on the inside. It was served on a bed of greens with little frites (french fries) sprinkled about it. Delicious. Shaft and I and a few others decided to split a couple of bottles if wine. One was a Pinot Gris and the other was a Riesling. Both were very good wine. They weren't too sweet and they weren't too tart. They weren't too dry either. It made me happy. I'm not even gonna tell you how much I paid for this dinner. Just know that it was a truly memorable dinner between the food and the friends and it was worth every penny. *sniffle* Why can't life provide more evenings like that?
Following dinner the lot of us split up. I went with my doctor friend who I met through swing dancing in Boston to Cache, a swing club outside of Times Square. It was a really nice venue, one that is probably better than any of the venues in Boston. Almost everyone there lindy hopped. The only problem was that most of the people I wanted to see there were in CT for the Summer Hummer (West Coast Swing weekend) or Beantown Swing Dance Camp. I did however meet a pretty cool chica. Since the venue was hot and the music was fast, I ended up sitting out a lot. We danced one and the we just started talking for most of the night. Really nice continuous conversation about everything from dancing to traveling to food. I really enjoyed my time talking to her so I gave her my card with my e-mail on it. I wonder if she'll ever e-mail. I hope so.
I returned by myself to Hoboken at around two in the morning and stopped off at Johnny Rocket's for a vanilla malt to-go. About half way through the malt I realized that it was a bad choice to get it. Dairy coats your vocal chords which will fuck you up if you have to sing or shout. My voice was already fuct, so this didn't help at all. But, I figured since I paid for the malt and I was already half done, I finished it. Who am I to turn my nose up at a perfectly good vanilla malt... with REAL malt powder? When I got in Hulk and Sassy were already down for the count and Paddleback arrived shortly after I did. Shaft ended up crashing at his new hubby's place. He came back to tell us and stuff. I found it rather amusing. It was almost as if he was asking our permission, which I know he wasn't but it was just funny. Just because he came back, I gave him some good ribbing. He's a good sport though. That's why we're pals.
In complete contrast to the previous day, Sunday's weather was AWESOME. The sun was shining and it was eighty something degrees out. We had music, we had Twister... Man, it was da BOMB. The team was getting along famously. I didn't air any grievances with my team's paddling. Our first race Sunday wasn't all that stellar, but I thought it was okay for the first race of the day. Our second and final race of the weekend was fantastic. I can't think of a race this season that I was more proud of. It was us, Dudley/Harvard, and the two New Jersey teams. Let's just say that we didn't finish first, but Boston went one and two by a good margin. Rock on us. We were together and we were a team. Everyone was pumped. I wasn't sitting at all during the race. It was good...until things got ugly....
After the race everyone was in good spirits, or so I thought. There is one girl on the team, we'll call her Princess-B, because she's a princess and she's a bitch. She was pissed because the first day of the races, we stuck her in the third to last row, a place where she believes all of the useless people go. Evidently she also thought I was picking on her in the boat when I would call "Eyes in the boat." I was yelling that at a lot of people. So we had a friendly little pow wow after the race and we went around the circle giving our opinions of the race. She said something about the rating of the stroke and how we could have won if we had slowed down the rating. I asked her how she knew we could have won/pulled ahead. Basically getting at the fact that it was a possibility that her head wasn't in the boat. The paddlers really shouldn't even know where they are unless myself or the steerer tell them. I was joking around. I was ribbing her. She took it seriously, gave me the finger, told me to fuck off and then stormed off. Some people told me to apologize, but I treated her no different than I did anyone else. She's seen me rib people. Then the group tried to "group hug" her and she stormed off spouting off about how if we didn't mean it, it didn't matter. So I decided to just let it go and let her cool off.
After that, we all took off and came home to Boston. I got home at around eleven o'clock and I was beat. I took a well deserved shower and hit the mattress with wreckless abandon. Well, maybe not wreckless abandon, but deinfintely some form of abandonment. Today, I walk into the office and check my e-mail only to find an e-mail from Princess-B to Hulk and myself. This was a mad bitchy e-mail berating us for being down all over her and not appreciating her in the boat. She made accusations of being in cahoots together to oust her out of the boat. Honestly, I didn't care if she was on the boat or off the boat as long as she was pulling her weight, which she doesn't. She's not a team player. She's always doing her own thing and it's always "Me Me Me" with her. So I shot back with another e-mail, trying my best to use proper English. There were some ZEN!!!-isms like, "I refuse to kiss your ass in an attempt to suck out the bug that crawled up it," and such, but over all I was rather civil. She comes back with another e-mail berating me and crying "Oh poor me!" Fuck that shit. If you can't hack it, get off the boat. If you have any more complaints, you can address them to the wall on your left. I was honestly going to tear into her and her e-mail, but Hulk convinced me not to. He actually asked me not to. So as a favor to him, I'm letting it go. I don't like it, but I'm letting it go.
For those of you who have known me a long time, this has peaked the interest of my little bloodthirsty vengeance demon that lives inside me. It hasn't come out to play in a while and this really pokes at him. He really just wants to tear into her and make her cry. Maliciousness run amok. Yessiree. If I see her at the Dragon Boat BBQ on wednesday and she tries to step to me, I'm gonna tear her apart. I will leave her an emotionally bloody wreck. I know people don't dig my evil side, and to an extent, neither do I, but I feel a certain satisfaction in attempting to destroy anyone who talks smack to me, let alone someone who makes it public by circulating e-mails written between three people and three people only. It just makes me angry. I know I sound extremely pissed off, but I have really calmed down. I just hope that she doesn't try something stupid. I'm like the Hulk. You wouldn't like me when I'm angry.
On a positive note, I had an awesome weekend. Unfortunately I didn't get to see PJ. I'll catch him on the next trip down. He was taking care of business this weekend, and you know business is business. Ya just gotta take care of it. Time to buzz outta here. Til the next time...
Okay, this morning, I came in expecting Boo to be here and Mumbles not to be here, but neither of them were here. I knew I was taking over Mumbles' desk for the time he was out, but I was kinda internally freaking when I saw that no one above me was here. YEESH! But I think I covered it up well. I handled the bid'ness to da best of my abilities and I think I did it all rather well. Boo did eventually come in. She came in just after nine. I was kinda relieved. WHEW! But anyways, everything seems to be going smoothly. I'm kinda happy about that. I even have time to write an entry here in the middle of the day.
For the past two nights I have stayed at home. Monday night I sat in front of the TV all night long watching... what was I watching? I think I watched the food network again. I think I also watched some pro wrestling and some Star Trek. I feel like such a goon. Who watches the shit I watch? I don't even know why I watch it. I think maybe I watched The Waterboy on USA as well. Quality, I tell you... Quality... All the while, I was recording CDs to MD for Shaft, a little gift for allowing me and my crew to crash at his pad. I hope he appreciates it. If not, oh well, I'll take my blank MDs back.
Yesterday night, I sat in front of the TV for the first half of the evening as I ate dinner. I watched Buffy The Vampire Slayer re-runs on FX. It was the one where Faith gets her ass whooped and the Scooby gang kills the mayor/demon with a buttload of explosives. Can I tell you how much I like Eliza Dushku, the girl who played Faith in Buffy. She was also in Bring It On. I have much love for the Eliza Dushku. She's from Watertown. Chances are that she's got a man though. After watching Gilmore Girls, I decided to retreat back to my room to go and start recording a mix MD for the car ride down to NYC this weekend. I had already seen the Smallville episode that was on and I thought that it was kinda dumb. I figured that if I were to watched I would get bored of oogling the two cuties in the show. So anyways, I'm making this MD and I'm reaching really far back with my music. Some old school tunes. I was kind of impressed. There's a lot of stuff on there so far that I haven't listened to in years. I only finished an hour and fifteen of the four hour MD. Maybe I'll get more done tontite after I have dinner with The Violent One and Stringbean. This could be the last time I see Stringbean for the next year. *sniffle*
Well, it's lunchtime. Gotta go. Check out some nifty pix that PJ e-mailed to me.
Doesn't PJ have long freakin' arms?
Okay PJ was being weird. He suspended his camera from a doorjam by its strap and some scotch tape.
This is the night that Hulk and I cooked for a bunch of PJ's palz. I finally got to meet the famous Tiff! Do I have to create a journal name for her?
Okay, I'm officially done being insane for now. When last we caught up with our hero (that would be me, of course), he hadn't eaten at home in almost a week and hadn't gotten more than six and a half hours of sleep in any twenty four hour period. He was exhausted, but he had to keep on pluggin'.
Friday night found me at Bear and Stringbean's doing away dinner. Bear was off to med school in PA and Stringbean will be going to China next week, err... or is it at the end of this week? Sometime soon regardless. The Violent One and I chipped in and got Bear an anatomy textbook that a person on my dragon boat team told me helped her ace her anatomy class. I thought it was a good deal. For Stringbean I got a bunch of plastic beans and a case so that she had something to do while on the airplane to China. I'm hoping that she doesn't drop the case in the airplane, because that would just be unfortunate. I can see it now. Beads go everywhere. Flight attendants slip, pouring drinks on random people. People going to the bathroom slip in the aisles and land so hard that they drop their load in their pants. It's no good. Maybe I should have gotten her something else.
Anyways, the dinner was at a pretty good Thai restaurant. Now, I normally don't like Thai. I don't go out of my way to eat Thai. I will eat it, but it is never my first choice. It was a pretty good meal. I got to see Dango!, Stringbean's roomie from college who came to Japan with The Violent One, Stringbean and I. Little was there, but it was okay I guess. I didn't say much to her. I didn't have much to say. I think the majority of what I said to her was crass. You know me, though. Or maybe you don't. Anyways, it was a good time. After dinner, about half of us went to the Good Life in Central Square for some drinks. It was really late by the time we got there, so we really only had one drink there. I had two because I'm "Hard-core!" I'm a lush, you know... I showed Dango! the pictures from Japan. It had been that long since we had seen each other that she hadn't seen my pictures. She had some for me too. I'm gonna have to work them into the album somehow. After drinks, we all went home and I got an iffy night sleep before practice.
Practice was at ten in the morning and I expected the majority of my team to be there. No such luck. We had maybe half of the team there. I was really rather pissed. Regardless, I worked them all hard as hell. Hulk said he knew he was going to be hurting the next day. I was kind of proud of that. I also invited those who were there to go to Special K's party that I was spinning at that night. I was hoping for more people to be there so that there were more people to tell about the party. No such luck. Rat bastards.
Following practice, I kicked it home, took a shower, went to the grocery store to get stuff for lunch and then set up my record bag to take to the party. I had an extremely hard time picking what tracks I was going to bring. As usual, I packed a lot of Faithless and a lot of Circulation. I had some Basement Jaxx and some poppy remixes in there as well. A strange choice was bringing two orm three trancey tracks that I surprisingly used. Anyways, while I was packing my record bag, Raver Girl called. She was in town and we planned to do stuff this weekend if we could synch up our schedules. We ended up making plans to have dinner that night at Fugakyu in Coolidge Corner.
I got to the restaurant a touch early, like twenty minutes. What can I say? I overestimated the time it would take to get there. Usually it takes me a full hour to get to The Violent One's place from my house which is four or so stops beyond Coolidge Corner. Alas, I was wrong. Maybe I just hit some good timing. The funny thing was that I saw Bear at Park Street station. He was on his way to pick up the U-haul that was to take him home with his gear before going off to med school. Dinner was fantatsic. The sushi was so good and it had been a while since I had had an Asahi Super Dry. I saw Raver Girls pictures of her hair cut and her time in Amsterdam for Dance Valley. She saw pictures of my hair cut and my time in Japan with the crew. It was one big show and tell. Also having dinner with us was her cousin and her cousin's man. Both pretty cool people. So I invited them to the party that I was spinning at. After dinner we split up. They had some stuff they had to do and I had to get over to the party. They said they would go to the party and they did. I was pleased.
The party was alright. I knew a fair share of people there, seeing as I invited about a quarter of the people there. It was small but adequate. For having not supun records in months, I did pretty well. I started rather down tempo and then went through some house, some 80s remixes and then played some big beat and trance. It was a good time. The beer was iffy but good enough to pass. Raver Girl came with her crew and rocked out to my tracks. I was really pleased. Carpenter, Hulk and Bombadier came as well. It was just a good time. The party ended at three or so and I caught a ride home with Raver Girl and her crew.
The next morning I had to be up at nine to be at practice at ten. I was cranky and not feeling very well. It wasn't a hung over not feeling well, but it was just a general not feeling well. I blew out my voice the day before at practice and it wasn't back yet. My voice was just tired. So I ran an EXTREMELY tough practice. It was hot and I could tell that the people weren't happy. I think I actually ran most of them into the ground. I wasn't satisfied with anything. None of them really talked to me after practice. I think they were all pissed at me.
For the novice practice, Booch and Bombadier showed up to paddle. Hulk was running practice while Hardcore and I were running stroke. It was a really easy practice. Extremely. Somehow it felt a little tiring, because I haven't paddled in weeks. A good time was had by all. So much so that I think Bombadier and Booch are gonna come back for more. Yay!
Following practice, Booch and I met up with Raver Girl and her cousin for a late lunch at the Otherside Cosmic Cafe. The service sucked, but the food more than made up for it. After a while, Booch and I were beginning to get tapped out from being in the sun and the heat for so long, so we bounced. I spent the rest of the day after I showered lying on the couch pretending that I wasn't going to fall asleep. Who was I kidding? I crashed like a drunk driver. I spent the rest of the night from around six to eleven or so fading in and out of consciousness while watching a night of Iron Chef. Trippy, man, trippy...
Well, I've ahd a shitty day at work. It's five-thirty and I want to leave, so I'm gonna go. More interesting ZEN!!! life in the next episode.
Me = Exhausted. Mofugga. I am as tired as a mofugga. I've been doing too much. Everyday this week, I've had something to do. Monday was laundry day, so I had to trek my shit to the laundrymat. That's 2 weeks of gnasty, dirty, sweaty filth that I toted in addition to the new clothes I've bought at Area: 2 and NYC. Tuesday was dinner with OMG and Bombadier. Wednesday was dinner with the wife, The Violent One. Yesterday was dragon boat practice and dinner with a sneezy Booch. Tonite is Bear's going away dinner before he goes away to med school. Tomorrow is dragon boat practice, possibly some time spent with Raver Girl, and then DJing at Special K's Party (think he'll flake?). Sunday is more practice and who knows what else. It's all so busy. I haven't had a good night's sleep in a long time. It seems that when I can go to sleep early, I can't fall asleep. So in all aspects of my life, I am just tired. I won't be able to sleep in until maybe the week before Glare and Totoro's wedding. I am going to take three vacation days that week so that I'll have ample time to hang with Japanaphile and other people in town for the wedding. It really does seem that I get the best sleep while sleeping late. I feel great when I wake up at noon or two in the afternoon. I love that feeling. Granted, there's not much left of the day, but I feel really refreshed.
The other night while I was having dinner with The Violent One, she asked me if I was still content with my life. I had to really think about that question. There are definite possibilities for improvement such as a more creative job, more sleep, more money, a girlfriend and more opportunities to travel, but how much can I really do about any of those things. I can start pushing my resume out there for people to see. I can quit all of my activities to sleep. I can rob a bank for the cash. I can pick up someone who is pathetic for a girlfriend, and I can pick up a backpack and just keep going, but really... How realistic is that? It's not. Most of these things are evolutionary things. They're things that will come in time or can be planned for later. It's not gonna be instant gratification for any of these things. Am I content? No. Am I complacent? No. Do I think there's anything that I can do about any of these situations besides be myself and keep my eyes open? No. So I am going to sit here for a while until something presents itself to me.
Along these lines, a few hours ago a headhunter called me. Somehow he got my name from State Street. He called the main State Street number and asked for the sales department and somehow got transfered to me. How strange is that? I don't even work in sales. Anyways, he was looking to fill a position in the sales department of a bank that was not State Street. Basically, this job would be to bring new business into the mutual funds department. I told him that I was keeping my options open as far as employment went and that he should send me more information on his company and on the position. It was kind of interesting. At first I was a little leery of this guy. I asked him what the name of his company was and if it had a URL. He gave me the name and the location of his company, but told me that his company had taken itself off of the web a couple of years ago because their competitors were using the information on the web page against them. So I got the company's phone number too and I checked it out. Sure enough the company was listed in the Chicago yellow pages online. So I have to figure out how I'm gonna play with the guy. I have to figure out where he can take me and if it would be a good thing for me to do. Hoprfully this isn't the only position that he is trying to fill. Maybe he's got something better.
Also along the lines of my life, I look at my whole women situation and I see that I have all of these girls just sort of dangling at the tips of my fingers. They're all crazy attractive, seemingly interested in me and I'm pretty attracted to them as well, but there's always something in the way whether it be a boyfriend or their own hang ups. I hate to sound egomaniacal, but I really do think that these women want to be with me in some form or fashion, but they're afraid to. They're afraid to leave their boyfriends, because I may just be a mirage of some sort or possible good opportunity, but really be a bastard. Who knows? All I wanna know is, where's the love? Heh. Hey, if any of those girls actually read this journal, take a chance.
Anyways, back to life, back to reality. Gotta finish my work and go home.
Has anyone realized what's missing from my blog? It's the pop-up ad! Ding dong the witch is dead, the wicked witch is dead! No more pop-up for ZEN!!! Finally worked. Yay!
Sorry I haven't had time to write much lately. After I got back from NYC I started working 10 hour days with no reprieve in the middle. Sucked. Royally. So I only have a few seconds to write. I finished my work work about a half hour ago and have been working on personal work and now I'm working on my blog. I have to get out of here by 4:30P, because I have to meet up with my wife, The Violent One, around 5:00P near my house.
I have to say, I had a grand time in NYC with PJ and the Jersey Dragon Boat crew. They're really a bunch fo fantastic people. Though I didn't have nearly enough time to do all I wanted, I definitely felt I made good use of time.
Something growing on my mind has been the "cloudy" outlook of PJ. We talked a bit about it while I visited and I really got a full picture of what was going through his mind. Makes me feel bad what kind of position he is in. All I can really do is hope his situation gets better and that he reaches some sort of clarity sooner rather than later. He's a good guy with a good heart in a bad situation with, from what I can tell, is a good person. Something that amazes me is that PJ and I haven't really hung out all that much in the past six or so years. He came up for the day on my birthday in March and I visited him for this past weekend, but that's pretty much it. Yet, somehow, we can fall instantly into a groove similar to that which it was in high school. It absolutely amazes me. He's changed. I've changed. Yet how we interact has not. Maybe it's because we both keep web journals so we know roughly what's going on with each other. Maybe it's the fact that I first met PJ ten years ago when we were in eight grade. Who knows? All I can say is that everyone should hope for PJ's happiness to come about soon. Give it a second of thought. Maybe mass positive energy can work.
Anyways... In other news, I feel like I'm digging myself deep into the politics of the Dragon Boat team. I'm not even a captain or on the board. I'm just the drummer. But somehow, I feel like my views on how the boat operates has been filtering in. There is the strong potential for people to start resenting me for my ideas. I fear this. I don't want to "rock the boat (ha ha)." I just want to compete a a level that I know my team can compete at. I'm kinda happy. Booch may be joining me for practice on Sunday. I think she would be a great addition to the team if she were to get into it. Plus she's one more person that is phun to hang out with.
Well, I have to get going. Bills to pay. Trains to catch. Music to listen to. Happiness to hope for. Remember. Do it... or as I think PJ would say, quoting Nike, "Just Do It."
I really do insist that there needs to be more time in the day. So far my time in NYC has flown by. I've raced two races with Jersey. I've cooked a decent dinner. I've had some beers and I've chilled out a lot. Shaft was supposed to call me. He didn't so I called him. He then proceeded to tell me that he was gonna call me after dinner. He hasn't called and it's half past twelve. Rat bastard. Oh well though. Such is life. Tomorrow I should be racing in two more races. I'm gonna go to Yellow Rat Bastard. I hope I survive. I'm tired as fuck. G'damn, I say. G'damn.
Finally met the famous Tiff. She's mad cool. Her friend was cool too. They both knew exactly what to say to me. We talked about the food network. They liked the cooking that Hulk and I did. Hulk made a mad good salmon and we roasted up some garlic. That's the only way to live.
Parents called today. We're now staying in the Swan hotel near the Boardwalk at Disney. This is The Violent One and I. We were staying at the Port Orleans, but my parents asked if we wanted to move over to the Swan and we said sure. Oh well.. Gonna go. TTFN from blog central.
It's 11:32P - Do You Know Where Your ZEN!!! Master is?
It's 11:32P. Just five hours ago, I was cleaning my room and packing a bag. Now I'm in NYC. Well, not NYC, but Queens. What is it? One of the five or seven boroughs? Anyways, I'm in Queens and I haven't seen royalty yet. Talk about false advertising. Rat bastards. Right now PJ is taking his friend home and I think Hulk is about to pass out. Zero7 is on the CD player and I'm typing at blog central. Blog-mo-fuggin-central. Yup that is where I am. I see the Ichiro bobbling his head at me as we speak. I have to say that PJ's apartment is a lot larger than I thought it would be with him being right out of college near NYC. I expected something the size of a footlocker. You know, when I came to visit, I would have to take the top section. But in fact, PJ has an apartment with four plus rooms. To make it even better he's upstairs from two produce markets that are still open at 11:40P. How much does that rock? Have a craving for a pineapple at 2:00A? Go downstairs. Feel like clocking someone with a kiwi? Go downstairs. Women, sexually frustrated? Go downstairs.
So I'm chillin'. I should be meeting up with Shaft either tonite or tomorrow and I want to get together with some other people as well. It's gonna be hard getting everyone in. Such is life. Can't wait til tomorrow. Gonna go nutz. Gonna see some dragon boating. Gonna see some sites. Gonna chill. Rock out!
Okay, a brief post before I leave work for the week. In a couple of hours, I will be off to NYC with Hulk to stay at PJ's place and to check out some Dragon Boat races. I'm nutz. Time to jam, time to party. Time to get my ass home so I can pack. Fuck! I hate being rushed. But it beats being at work.
So, I've had a rather eventful week. Wednesday, I cooked for my grandparents for once. They actually let me near the stove. They let me touch pots and pans and knives and cleavers and *gasp* cooking spoons (insert mysterious music). It was either that they let me or they were too tired to stop me. They had been out all day doing rather unpleasant things which I won't go into. They were tired and hot though. Furthermore, my crazy (and not in a good amusing way) second cousin came over to chat with them. So I told them that I would cook and they did little to stop me. I made grilled chicken with a ginger peach sauce from a Disney cookbook. I made rice and sliced up a cucumber and seasoned it with some salt and some vinegar. It was an altogether good meal. I was proud of it, although I would have liked to have had a blender or food processor to puree the sauce, but we can't have everything.
Thursday, I had practice as usual. I ran a really great practice though. I'm really proud of myself. I worked everyone really hard and pushed them to work harder and keep better form. We had a visitor from the Harvard team. The fact of the matter is that I don't like his kid. I saw him right before the Boston festival and I was like, "Oh, you were on the Dudley House team... You guys were really good." His response was, "Yeah... We were..." Fuckin' full of himself piece of shit. I say stuff like that with a joking manner. He was serious. Anyways, he was in the back of our boat on Thursday evening and he made a comment to Sassy basically saying that it was a really difficult practice and that on his team his drummer would never ask them to do things that I was asking them to do towards the end of practice and that I probably don't know what I'm doing because I don't paddle. Sassy turned to him and told him that I do paddle and when I do, nothing is different. We do the exact same workouts and I can take anything that I dish out. He was impressed. I was pretty amused that other people think I don't know what I'm doing or that I could be running my team into the ground, but my team knows better.
Another reason that practice was cool was that not only did we have a full boat, but both Dulcimer and Paddleback were there. Two cutie girls. I'm a big fan of cutie girls. Most of them have boyfriends or wouldn't be caught dead messing around with me, but hey, it doesn't hurt to look. Anyways, after practice, I had dinner at an Ethiopian restaurant in Central Square with the steerer of our Dragon Boat, Shutterbug. As we sat down to dinner, she asked, "So what's up with you and Paddleback?" "Nothing," I told her. "She's got a boyfriend anyways." "Well," she said, "It looks like she's a little sweet on you." "Really?" I replied. "Yeah... And it looks like you're a little sweet on her too," she shot back with. I told her that I couldn't confirm or deny that. Then she said, "So what's up with you and Dulcimer?" "Nothing," I told her. "She's got a boyfriend anyways." "Well," she said. "It looks like she's a little sweet on you too." "Ya really think so?" I replied. "Yeah... And it looks like you're really sweet on her too," she told me. I told her that I couldn't confirm or deny that either, but we all know the truth when talking about both of these girls. She also told me that she thought that if either of them didn't have a man, I'd probably be right at the top of the list of potential for them. I was flattered, but whether I believed that or not, who knows? Dinner was fantastic. Shutterbug and I get along well. She's wikkid cool and has a great sense of humor. I had never had Ethiopian food before. It was excellent. It was very flavorful.
Friday night, after an exhausting day at work, I took a nap and called Special K to see what was up with hitting up Avalon for X-Press 2. As usual, Special K flaked on me and I ended up going to see X-Press 2 by myself. I wasn't all that broken up about it though. It'd been a long time since I had been clubbing by myself, not knowing anyone there or giving a shit about anyone there. I was on the reduced list, so I only had to pay fifteen dollars instead of the typical twenty. I guess that paid for my first drink. I was realy psyched to see X-Press 2. See, they are three DJs who play simultaneously on six turntables. The leader, Ashley Beedle, like to talk over the music. It's pretty cool. It was a great show. They played remixes of Basement Jaxx's "Get Me Off" and Eurythmics' "Sweet Dreams." It was fantastic. I broke down and smoked a clove cigarette that night too. Earlier in the Dragon Boat Season, I told myself that I wouldn't smoke cloves during the season, because the yelling reeks havoc on my throat as it is. But I smelled the sweet smell in the air and I had to have one so I bummed one off of the guy who was smoking them. Going into the club, I told myself that I would leave around 1:30A. It made sense to me because I had to be up at like 9:00A to go and meet Carpenter, The Violent One and Bombadier in Porter Square at 10:30A to go to the Area: 2 Festival. That didn't happen. I ended up staying until the very end. I got home at 3:00A after walking all of the way home. It was a nice night. I felt the need to walk it instead of paying a cabbie. It was a good time.
Saturday was scorching hot. After buying groceries and getting grill supplies, we headed off to the Tweeter Center (aka Great Woods) to see if Area: 2 could compare to Area: 1. We go there around 12:30P or so and started up the grill. It was hot as an oven out there. We watched kids get carted away for underage drinking and saw dumb people lose their beer for not pouring it into plastic cups. Unfortunately and fortunately we didn't have any booze. At the time I could have done with a nice cold beer, but I'm sure later on I would have paid for it through dehydration among other things. We made our way into the Tweeter Center at around 3:00P and proceeded to walk around the venue. We checked out the merch, the main stage, the exhibits and the rave tent. We stayed in the rave tent for a while Dieselboy was playing. I was dancing. The other three were just sort of standing around. Drum 'n' Bass tends to have that sort of shocking effect on people. Many people can't move to it. I can dance to it, but only for short periods of time. Otherwise I feel like I got my ass kicked. It's so fast that it just kills you.
After haning in the rave tent for a while we left and walked around some more. Right when we go near the front gate, we saw my freshman year room mate, Oddity. Now Oddity and I weren't the best friends in college. In fact, I only roomed with him for a semester because he was too chipper. I found him extremely annoying. But regardless of our college days, I didn't think anyone should go to a concert by themselves, so I told him that he could join our group. Both Bombadier and The Violent One knew him from college and were friendly with him, so it was cool. After meeting up with him, we went back to the rave tent to go see DJ Tiesto. I had never seen him perform live, so I was psyched about it. He played a great set. I was thoroughly pleased with the set. On the other hand, the dancing in the tent wasn't all that good. The dancers this year seemed to really suck in comparison to last year. There were also a lot more meatheads there too.
During Tiesto, somehow Oddity managed to convince a guy running the PlayStation 2 booth to let us meet Carl Cox during the "Meet & Greet" at the end of Tiesto's set. So after Tiesto finished, the two of us got to go backstage to small tent and we got to talk to Carl Cox and got our pictures taken with him. I've seen the guy, and I've been close enough to see the sweat beading up on his bald head while spinning a set, but this time I got the chance to tell him how much I enjoyed the set he played on my birthday in March. When I told him that, he said to me, "You were there? Wasn't the energy in the room absolutely amazing?" I agreed with him and got my picture taken and that was that.
After rubbing elbows with Cox, Oddity and headed back over to the mainstage where we waited for Busta Rhymes to take the stage after Blue Man Group. Well, we got there just as Blue Man Group was finishing, so we decided to go merch shopping in the interm. The Violent One ended up buying a wikkid cute blue and white Area: 2 tee and I bought a DJ Tiesto tee and a Area: 2 visor. I seem to be rockin' the visor a lot lately so I thought another one would be a good investment.
Upon returing to our seats, we found out that Busta Rhymes had cancelled. I was really bummed. As little as I like hip hop, I was really looking forward to seeing Busta. It turned out,as I found out the next day, that Busta had been caught in NYC/Boston traffic and was unable to make it to the show. I really wanted to hear him shout, "WOO-HA! WOO-HA!" That would have been great. Instead they started setting up fpr David Bowie's set. Suspended from the top of the stage was the name "BOWIE" made up in flood lights. When I saw that, I knew it was gonna be glam. Bowie came out looking dapper as ever in a three piece suit and told us that since Busta wasn't going to be joining us today, he was going to play a super long set, and he did. He played for about 90 minutes. His set included not only songs from his new album Heathen like a cover of the Pixies song "Cactus" but also old classics like "China Doll," "I'm Afraid of Americans," "Life On Mars," and "Let's Dance." I was psyched. I never ever thought I would ever get to see David Bowie sing "Let's Dance" live on stage. It blew me away. Until that day, I hadn't realized how intense some of his songs were. I was completely rocked by his performance. Yay, Bowie!
After Bowie, we left the main stage area, got some water and checked out the rave tent again. Carl was rockin the rave tent witha vengeance. I was kinda sad that I didn't get to stick around. I really wanted to hear the rest of his set, but I wanted to see Moby perform more. I saw him last year and he was fantastic and he doesn't come to Boston nearly as often as Carl Cox does. I have to say that I was a little disappointed with Moby's performance. It wasn't nearly as good as it was last year and the structure of his set was iffy at best. He chose to play "Go" as his second song, which I would have moved later. He played a fair number of songs off of his "18" album and off of "Play" as well. However, he didn't do enough of his old stuff for my liking. He did play "Feeling So Real" as his closing song, which I was happy about. I was rockin' out hard to that song.
By the time we left, it was around 10:50P. We were hot. We were sweaty. And we were hungry. So, we ended up snacking on our leftovers from our tailgating which included grapes, cherries, granola and Odwalla bars, bananas, Chex mix and brownies. It was a quality dinner if I do say so myself. I didn't get home until around midnight or so and I can't begin to tell you how great the shower felt. It was so nice to be clean and not sticky. But, hey, there's a price you pay for dancing your ass off to great music all day long.
The next day, I got up bright and early, at 7:00A to be at practice by 8:00A. When I got there, no one was there. I was like, "What the fuck is going on?" I was about 5 minutes late and the boat hadn't even been pulled from it's mooring. So I called Sassy. I woke her up. It turned out that practice had been pushed back to 10:00A and no one told me or I wasn't reading the e-mails close enough. I'll never know now, because I ususally delete the messages the day I get them. So, it would be dumb to go home for a half an hour and I didn't want to go anywhere, so I layed in the shade and took a nap. After an hour or so, the shade started to go away so I put on my sunscreen around my tank top and just layed out. It was a quarter til ten when the first people showed up. We started talking and somehow we got onto the topic of tan lines. I showed them my tank to tan line. There was a great white gleam that shone in their eyes. The consensus wa that I had to even out my tan so I decided to take of my tank top completely fogetting that I hand only put sunscreen on my body where my tank top wasn't. Can you guess what happened next? Yup... My ass got burned all over my chest and my back. I now have a sunburnt tank top on me. It sucks something fierce. I was out on the water until around 2:00P. So, you can imagine how bad I was.
After practice, I rushed home, showered, changed and headed back out to meet a bunch of the hard core dragon boaters to discuss coaching strategies and where and how we wanted to direct the team. What could we do to clarify goals, techniques, and reasoning? We were sitting at Uno's in Porter Square from 3:30P until about 7:30P. It was myself, Hardcore, Paddleback, Hulk, Sassy, Shutterbug, Ms. Teeth, and a girl that was a part of the club from it's conception but is going to Grad school in Dartmouth. It was a long, long discussion that took too much time. It'l be continued again later too.
After the meeting, I got together with Booch for coffee. We went to the Diesel Cafe in Davis Square. We seem to have some really fun discussions. This time we talked a bit about the new movie called "Blue Crush" which revolves around girls who surf and who have to fight to surf. She really didn't want to see that movie. She thought it was bullshit, because she, hereself, is a surfer and really did have to fight for every wave on her home beach. As she was telling me about it, I remembered a discussion we had a few weeks ago at dinner where she was telling me about how her friend drew her like she was Wonder Woman every time he drew a picture of her. As she told the story of fighting to surf at her beach, it really amde me see what he must see in her.
Anyways, I'm wrecked. I'm gonna go home and crash. I feel like ass. Work killed me today. Maybe tomorrow will be better. Til the next time.
