Month: May 2004

Jon and Amanda are married!

May 23, 2004 /

Last night I went to my first-ever rehearsal dinner–pancakes at Cracker Barrel, followed by a leisurely visit and then a hesitant drive to the chapel out in the middle of Shelby County. It was hard to find, but deservedly so: it’s a gorgeous spot, and somehow entirely cicada-free.

I got to host Jon’s bachelor party, which consisted of coming back here with Ken, Chris and me and watching A Mighty Wind and laughing a lot. We throw some pretty wild parties.

This morning Ken kindly picked up Maria and me and drove us back to the aforementioned chapel, where we took pictures (one of Jon’s WWE-style entrance, one of Amanda’s, and then some less important ones) and waited.

Eventually there was a wedding. The bride wore flip-flops, and the reverend’s microphone kept fuzzing out. It was sunny, and outside, and butterflies kept zooming through the service. Amanda and Jon were very beautiful, and I’m so proud and happy that for this little while, I don’t even miss them.

May 21, 2004 /

The neat thing about a bathroom with no ventilation is that when you take a hot shower, you can doodle in the condensation on the ceiling.

This is the only neat thing about a bathroom with no ventilation.

May 20, 2004 /

Spring of my junior year of college, I played Hastings in our school production of Richard III, a fun role in which I got to chew scenery, wear an enormous bathrobe and get my head cut off. The guy who was supposed to take the mold of my real head for that last one bungled it pretty badly; he bought this fancy molding compound, let it harden before applying it, and ended up having to mold my head with really cheap plaster.

Regardless, it was my severed head, and I really wanted it after the play was over. The drama department denied me this, of course–they already had a longstanding tradition of crushing my dreams by then.

When we went to see Lisa’s show last Friday, I got to see Flora, who showed me his senior-presentation scrapbook. It was really nice work, and he was kind enough to give me a piece of it, something I will now treasure as if it were the real thing:

David and Brendan with Brendan's head.

Yeah, I told you it was a pretty bad mold. There’s a reason they kept it in a bag most of the time.

May 19, 2004 /

I’ve done a lot of work today, but I’ve also spent hours geeking out over my camera that I don’t actually own yet and can’t afford. This is silly, because I have no serious photography equipment or experience, and even if I did I’ll already be putting myself into debt this fall to buy or build a new computer.

Regardless, I’ve been looking at it for a year with absolutely undiminished hunger (so long the price dropped). There are two things I can think of on which I’ve geeked out this long and this hard:

  • The trip to Comic Con this summer.
  • A good camera with which to take pictures on that trip.

The former is rapidly becoming a reality, as I paid for the train tickets a couple of days ago. I hope the latter can too.

Once, the thought of a new computer would have filled me with butterflies. Now it’s more a hassle than anything–I can’t afford one, but I have to get one, because my current box is no longer capable of doing the work I need to do in grad school. The Digital Rebel has taken its place, I think. It’s a specialized technical hobby; it’s highly modular; the value of my investment drops very quickly; and it’s going to take me years to get any good at it, by which time I’ll cringe at the things I inflict on you when I’m starting out. Man, I can’t wait.

This is how boy geeks think

May 19, 2004 /

“Halo 2 is a lot like Halo, only it’s Halo on fire, going 130 miles per hour through a hospital zone, being chased by helicopters and ninjas,” explained Jason Jones, head of Bungie Studios. “And the ninjas are all on fire, too.”

Makes me kind of feel bad for the people in that hospital, or it would, if Halo 2 wasn’t a myth invented to tease hapless boy geeks in their sleep.

May 18, 2004 /

If anybody knows why TSQL has ten thousand date formats and the ability to guess how much two words sound alike, but no capacity to find and remove one character from a string, please tell me.