The Demonweasel Speaks

I’m watching the St. Louis/Carolina game right now and it’s killing me. Overtime, timeouts, field goal that they make to win the game, but there was a penalty, so they try again and miss, and now the Rams are going for it. I hate St. Louis *so* much.

But it’s really good football, so that makes me happy.

In playing with Madden 04, I started a Giants season with a fantasy draft (where you go 49 rounds of draft picking with all the other teams to get your whole team) and got Donavan McNabb at Quarterback, Ahman Green at halfback, kept Jeremy Shockey at tight end, and got Adam Vinatieri at kicker. I’m predicting it’ll be a lot of fun because it totally changes the complexion on the NFL, so we’ll see which teams end up being good and who isn’t.

The Rams are lining up for a field goal…pray.

Go Carolina! I remain…

Resolved for the New Year, I remain…

Thankfully, when I got home my ducts had finally drained, probably because my neighbor Brett (the same one who gave me the bike) came over while I was at worked and Shop-Vaced the water out of them, and then installed filters to keep the mold and crap out. I guess I need reminders like that sometimes that people aren’t just annoying massive tools all of the time. Of course, Allie is a great reminder of that too, and we had fun Daddy/Daughter time tonight, which always puts me in good spirits. She’s a nutty kid, so we’re a good match. I guess I need to just relax some in the new year (what’s new? Although I think I’ve improved in strides over the past couple of years). I guess I’ll just add that to the list of usual reservations for the year (more exercising, writing, etc.). Baby steps, I guess.

Part of getting used to work again is dealing with the jerks, which I need to learn to do better. Part of my vacation involved me getting irritated at stupid children, and coming in to find the pouring rains (and their wetness) had spilled down on to my bosses desk, drenching it and wrecking a bunch of stuff. It was an unfun first full-day back, but I guess you adjust.

Of course, I still stayed up late playing with my new toys, but hey, I was still adjusting from that wacky, evil, central time. When I was on my way to work, I figured I would ride the bike my neighbor made for me and gave me back in early December and hadn’t had a chance to ride yet since the snow started right after it landed in my hot little hands. Of course, by the time I got to work it was pouring rain, and after work I had a bunch of errands to run, also in the pouring rain. Needless to say, the rain was pouring and wet, and I got soaked. And I forgot how many muscles are involved in bike riding. I almost had a heart attack in the credit union from sheer exhaustion. In fact, it rained so hard this weekend that I woke on Sunday morning to the horrible racket of the heating vents in my apartment filled with water. Needless to say, even with the maintenance guy pumping some water out of the foundation, and digging a little trench, my heat was out for the rest of the day. Which meant it was time for the temperature to drop.

Flying home was a little bit more relaxing than the flight there, and I had a longer layover in Detroit. I read almost all of “Prayers for Rain” by Lehane, which was pretty damn skippy. I also finally got to listen to my Triumph CD (damn girlfriends and their anti-puppet dog policies, anyway), which is fucking *hysterical*. “No Rules in the Animal Kingdom” is a hysterical song. Truly, he is the funniest insult comic dog ever. In an effort to maximize girlfriend time, I had a later flight out of Moline, which meant (thanks to a small delay in Detroit), that I didn’t actually get home until after midnight late Friday/early Saturday.

Spending the holidays with her was a lot of fun (although I did miss my kid, something you do on every holiday you don’t get to see them). She got me a nice outfit for Christmas (I’m a Ken doll!), including some nice black shoes, something I’d been lacking. For shame, the Queer Eye people say, I’m sure. Of course, now I feel like some sort of Sultan because I have three pairs of shoes. Then I remember Toni has 15 or so. Men and women, I tell you. Anyway, I got some nice stuff from lovely people, and gave Toni an amethyst necklace that she rearranged her New Year’s outfit to wear. And, in more clothes oriented news, we went to a thrift store and I scored a pair of pants and about 5 or 6 dress shirts, which was cool. We made the mistake of going to the mall the day after Christmas and I also bought myself Madden 2004 and Triumph the Insult Comic Dog’s CD “Come Poop With Me.” Of course, Toni doesn’t have a PS2 and she doesn’t like Triumph, so these were gifts I had to wait before opening. Go fig. For New Years we went to a bar back in Moline and watched one of Toni’s favorite bands “Einstein’s Sister,” and I danced like a lunatic as they did a great set covering Rolling Stone’s songs (it helped that I was drinking). That morning, however, we watched the Iowa Hawkeye’s play (and kick ass) in the Outback Bowl. It’s cute teaching someone about football (to both the women in my life, now that I think about it). We stayed at the hotel again in Moline until it was time for me to say my farewells. Don’t worry Iowa City, I’ll be back.

A lot of the time we spent watching movies in her tiny apartment. We watched (thinks): Free Enterprise, part of the HBO Angels in America, Dogma, Wet Hot American Summer, Waiting for Guffman, Evil Dead 2 (which she hated. A crime I say!), Pirates of the Caribbean (which I swore Iíd never watch, but she suckered me into it. I dig that monkey, though). It took us two sold out shows, but we also got to see Return of the King, and man, if that doesnít win best picture, itís a fucking crime. I also got her to go see ìPaycheck,î which was okay, and not as bad as she had feared. However, if I see one more ad for that fucking retarded looking ìTorqueî movie (with the motorcycles, doing ridiculous stunts and fighting) Iím going on a kill-crazy rampage. That and the ìButterfly Effect.î Thanks for playing, Ashton, you can go home now.

But Iowa City is nice, though. Also flat, but nice. It was weird, but after a few days of being there I realized that I hadn’t been in a metropolitan/city environment for longer than an hour for the past 3 years or so. Very odd. I’m gettin’ all country-fied. And it didn’t help that Toni would call Yellow Springs “Green Acres” every now and again. But it’s a nice place, small as far as cities go (from what I remember, and my city-feelings are skewed, what with being an almost-native New Yorker). And, of course, the University of Iowa is huge, making Antioch look like a day care center (hmmmmm…). Everyone we ran into (and we ran into a lot of people, because she knows everyone, and everywhere we went there would be people, and I’d be introduced [if she remembered their names]) talked about how quiet it was without the students in town, making me wonder what kind of rowdy devil’s brigade goes there. Of course, everyone was excited for the Hawkeye’s (the football team) Bowl game appearance New Year’s Day, and it amazes me the amount of University apparel there is at schools with sports teams (and of course I went to all the bookstores in town, because I like to check them out and steal ideas. I went to Prairie Lights, which was a really cool store and found the next Dennis Lehane book in that series (and in reading the blurb for the back kind of ruined the end of the one I was still reading. Rotten luck, I tell you).

Of course, with all the running around and packing, that meant I had to get up at about 6 to get ready, make sure I had everything, and get to the airport for my 10am flight. I took some extra time getting ready too, getting all dolled up. I even wore a tie, and it was the first time I ever tied a knot in a tie on my own. God bless you, internet! Yes, this means I went, found a website that told you how to tie a Windsor knot, including pictures. I got it on the fifth or sixth try. Me am so grown up. Flying was fun, and I think skirted most of the major holiday traffic, and made it in just before all the alert level increasing bullshit. I almost got bumped off my connecting flight from Detroit to Moline, but my own ignorance saved me. I flew into Moline, IL, which is the closest good airport to Iowa City, where Toni lives (but she grew up in Moline). Sparing me a long drive after an early morning and a flight, we got a room for the night at the swanky Motel 6 by the airport, and dined like Rockefellers on Taco Pizza. After that, it was up and attem to Toniís tiny apartment in Iowa City. Iowa and western Illinois, it turns out, is very flat. Go figure.

My last week at work was just the epitome of no fun, as all the last weeks before anyoneís vacation always are. Truly, it is ìteh suck.î It doesnít help when you are chomping at the bit to see your girlfriend and you lack the ability to make time move faster. But, yíknow, time marched on, like it always does, and after a frantic night of packing, I was ready to go. I stopped by Dark Star looking for some good reading material for the plane. I was gonna grab an Elmore Leonard novel, but I remembered after seeing ìMystic Riverî I wanted to read something by Dennis Lehane (and I didnít want to read ìMystic Riverî because I wanted something fresh). So I picked up ìGone Baby, Goneî by him, which was cool until I realized that it was something like the third book in a series, and I hate jumping in the middle of things. However, it was still good stand-alone, and it recapped well (so well I may not be able to read the earlier books for a little while, *sigh*). I knew more than halfway through it that it was damn good, and Iíd be getting more from him. For those interested, ìA Drink Before the Warî is the first book in the Patrick Kenzie & Angela Gennaro series. ìMystic Riverî is a stand-alone book. I havenít read it yet, but the movie was fucking amazing, and Lehane is going on the list of writers Iíd trade a nut to write like.

So yes, Iím back. I had a glorious two week long holiday extravaganza in scenic Iowa City, Iowa, with my lovely girlfriend, Toni. This, Iím sure, will be one of those horribly long entries, as I feel the need to get every little thing down while me memory is still fresh, and Iíll feel lame if I donít do a recap entry (and if I do another entry before the recap entry, itíll never get done). So away we goÖ