Today I was on an errand for work, and was at the light next to Bunker Hill Community College waiting to get onto 93 South. There is one car in front of me, it was your typical “spanish car”…being a Honda with dark tinted windows. There is another car next to that one (diagonally in front of me). All of a sudden, the spanish kid in front of me puts his car in park, gets out, opens up the trunk, and pulls out an old aluminum softball bat (it was one of the bats that was extra wide). He then turns to the car next to him and starts threatening the guy with it. The guy in the other car just sits there smoking a cigarette as I wait for some big event to unfold in front of me.

But no….spanish kid instead tries acting all cool and tough, and walks back to his drivers side door, looking at the other kid the whole time, throws the bat in the car, and then gets in. He then realizes that he left his keys in the trunk, and the trunk wide open, so he tries pulling off still looking tough and cool as he gets back out to get his keys and to shut the trunk.

meanwhile I just laugh.

How friggin anti-climactic

yeah yeah yeah, I havn’t really been updating my blog lately. So shoot me.

So…I figured this would be as good an entry as any. For once I decided to take the “Constanza approach” from Seinfeld, you know, the episode where George does everything the opposite of how he normally would, and proposed to Aimee last night. All during a nice stroll home on route 3. It wasn’t exactly how I envisioned something like that happening, but that hasn’t been my style lately anyway. This must be more the “triple c way”.

Oh yeah, in cause you were wondering, she did says yes. So I didn’t have to fashion my belt into a noose like in Shawshank Redemption or anything like that.

I think that covers everything….

I think part of the fun of writing entries in my blog is coming up with titles. Anyone know where I stole this one from?

For the past 5 years or so, I have thought an aweful lot about why people do the things they do, how the progression of life and growing up works, and overall how people reach whatever destination (or destiny) is in store for them.

For instance, whether everyone believes it or not, virtually everyone is walking down the same worn down beaten path.
You go to school (k-12)
You graduate
You start life in a trade or
You go to college
You graduate college
you “join the real world” and start looking for the lifelong job
you save money
you buy a house
you get married
you have kids
you save for retirement
you turn 60
you retire
you move to florida and die.

This has never sat well with me. Why is it that most people look down upon the guy that started a trade? maybe a plumber or an electrician. Why does everyone have to go to college? why is it that everyone has to “pick their fate” and keep walking down that path?

Back in the day I used to watch Mad about You, mostly during school vacations and such. One of the charactors in the show, he was the neighbor or something, ditched his wife and took off, then like a year later, Paul Reiser runs into him in a diner in some other state. The dude was a bus boy. I guess he decided after he took off from his wife he would just “live life” and would go from town to town, state to state, doing whatever odd job he could find, not because he needed the money, but because he felt like it. For some reason that always stuck with me.

Why does this matter? I think it really stuck with me because at that point in his life, he finally broke free, he walked off the path and decided to make his own trail up the moutain of life. To me that seems like the best thing ever. He decided to give the finger to the world and their rules, and just did his own thing.

I think I have been fighting my own mini-battle against the world for that same cause. If 36 years from now I am doing anything remotely similar to my current job, I am going to kill myself, and demand my body be creamated and used in the rubber at a Nike factory. Who wants to have the same job, or even the same type of job for their whole life? is that even living? why is it that at 18, 21, 24 or any other age, your supposed to pick your fate out of book and put your hiking boots on and trudge up that same trail as the dude in front of you?

Now that after so many years the fog is starting to finally become a little less dense, I can start to see the new trail I want to blaze, but I cant help but feel like people keep handing me maps, and each map is secretly disguised to point me back towards that same damn trail everyone else is on.

What is obvious is that the uncertainty needs to go, throw away those maps, and I need to just stick to my instincts and do as I originally set out to do, and thats to blaze my own trail.

so its time to start packing my backpack, and set fire to the old trail

Does anyone remember heavy trash day?

Saugus used to have it once every year in the fall, basically it was a free for all, and you could throw out anything you wanted, regardless of the size, and the big thing at least with my weirdo friends at the time, was to go scouring the neighborhoods on our bikes looking for “cool stuff” magazines, hockey sticks, baseball bats, anything at all that looked interesting. It was like a flea market, only we were picking through peoples trash instead. Looking back, that is whole yearly event was really gross, but at the time, it was almost as fun as christmas.

Every once in a while you would come across the ultimate find….some guy would through out his collection of playboys/penthouse. It was like you won the lottery.

I’ll tell ya, damn kids these days, they have no appreciation for how lucky they are. Back in MY day we had to hunt for that stuff through the woods, now they just have to log onto their computer when their parents arnt home.

greedy bastards

to start off with, I am going to bed way too late, in fact, instead of sleeping, its 3:20 and I felt like writing this down. I just finished doing laundry…how do you like that? and I had to friggin fold 2 loads of laundry that doesnt even belong to me. It’s those damn freeloaders I live with.

I am rebelling by running the dryer this late at night. According to my mother it will catch on fire during the night and we will all burn to death, lets use tonight as yet another test.

Also, If I don’t get rid of this damn cough soon, I am going to start making my own remedies, which might result in the same thing as what happens if you run the dryer at night.

Now for the real post.

In case you didn’t know, we all live in a universe engulfed in a wall of fire. That’s right….a wall of fire.

Every 3,456 days I decide to read a book, but, I am not a big fan of fiction, so instead I usually read science/history related books. This time its this book called “Alpha & Omega: The search for the beginning and end of the universe”

needless to say I am not that far into it, mostly because I read like a page or two a night, but, supposedly, (to make a long story short) the big bang happened, or is still happening, and basically, the explosion that created the universe is still expanding…everything is flying outward from the center of the universe, and in front of it all is a wall of fire that has been slowly cooling down for 14 billion years. Its kind of fucked up if you think about it. Everything the book talks about is fucked up actually. I think I decided that everything I learned in school is a load of crap. But that will be yet another post, since apparantly I decided to just ramble on and on like I am right now, but…..before I go to bed….read this and think about it:

“Unfortunately, the combined nature of space and time make it rather confusing when describing something that happened very long ago or very far away. Recombination (part of the big bang) happened a little less than 14 billion years ago, so in a sense, it happened a long time in the past. But we are just getting the light waves from the era that have taken 14 billion years to get here, so in another sense it is a very real event that is happening right now, but very far away. When we look at objects very far away, we are looking backward in time.”

Now thats a real thinker…..

On pretty much a whim, it was decided on friday that we would spend the long weekend in Montreal. I went there once before a couple years ago, and it was a great time, so this time should be even better. We left friday night, and John volunteered to drive, which was great, because I really didn’t want to, so John, Janelle, Aimee, and I all hopped into the new Scion and sped away

I think we made it there at like maybe 12am? anyway, we stayed at the Econo-Lodge, because it had the cheapest rates around, and it was cheap for a reason.

The Room was decent, but the burn holes in the comforter was kind of gross, and the maids basically didnt exist, they managed to clean our room once. But that didn’t really matter because we were having tons of fun anyway. Pretty much friday night we just went to bed, woke up at like 11am on Saturday, and headed out on a cold filled day of fun. I think it was around 10 degrees the entire time we were there, and we did a whole lot of walking.

Saturday we spent a bunch of time in the big mall there, because it was freezing out. For some reason everything in montreal is 70% off, I don’t understand why, but pretty much everywhere was having the same sale. I bought a spiffy new jacket. Then later on we ate dinner at the hard Rock Cafe, then went back to the hotel to gear up for the night, and headed on over to a strip club called “Super Sex” it was a fun time, and they had this deal with if you got a bucket of beers (i think it was 6 beers) you got a coupon for a free lap dance.

Apparantly strippers don’t like coupons. John used it and I swear the stripper wanted to kill one of us, meanwhile, I was trying to get Aimee to stop laughing about the whole scene. It was an interesting time. Then we were going to go to this club that John and Janelle had gone to the last time they came up called “Dome” but the line outside looked extra sketchy. For one, there was a car parked next to the line with 2 people in it with a mugshot of a black guy up on their laptop screen, and they were looking through the crowd to see if he was there, then, a growing group of french speaking assholes kept eying us weird, and then to top it off, 3 or 4 black kids cut in front of us, and pretending not to care about it, so before a huge fight broke out, we left to find a better club. We ended up going to this odd looking industrial place. It had all kinds of fake pipes and exhaust fans all over the place, and had a pub type of deal on one side, and a dance club on the other. They also had a fog machine going too, so everything looked real hazy. Aside from me coughing incessantly the entire time there, it was actually a pretty fun place. Aimee and I tried dancing, and John and Janelle went off on their own for a bit, while Aimee and I got attacked by weird french people. I was going to die from all the smoke, so Aimee and I decided to head back to the hotel, and John and Janelle stayed for like another 2 hours. Then I coughed and snored my way through the night….being sick sucks. Sunday came around and John surpised Janelle with some money he saved up for her to get a new tattoo, and then Aimee decided to get one as well, so we went to the place Janelle got hers done at before, and they both got differant kinds of hearts.

Then we went to the peel pub and drank more, and ate a bunch of cheap wings. Aimee found a new drink she likes, so now she is up to Sex on the Beach, and Escastcy. We left there, hung around for a while, then ended up getting dinner at some Mexican place called “3 Amigos” where we all ate a bunch, and then drank a whole bunch more.

I just couldnt get drunk though.

Then we headed back to the hotel, bought some more acohol, and partied it up. I got a 40 of Wildcat 10%, which did nothing at all for me, and Aimee got drunk enough to call her father and tell him she got a tattoo. He threatened to kill her, then blamed part of it on me and wanted to talk to me. It was real fun….hahaha

Then monday came around, we ate at some pizza place….more pizza than you could ever imagine, and headed home.

John was real happy with the fact that Aimee and I fell asleep for most of the ride yet again… I don’t think he will ever drive again.

I was going to put tons of pictures in this, but instead its much easier to just leave the link to the whole photo album…..

So click here to see all the pictures

Okay, I don’t really consider myself a man. Hell, as far as I am concerned, I am still like 18. Maybe younger. In any event…..

So it’s friday, I was feeling kind of tired due to my inability to go to sleep at a reasonable time all week, and the weather sucked out anyway, plus I had some stuff to discuss with my parents/sister. So, after waiting in traffic because noone knows how to drive in the rain, plus it is friday, I ditched out at the last second from going to my drum lesson. I would have been a little late anyway given the traffic conditions.

the big plan for the night was that we were going to meet up with Cheryl, Stephanie, and her boyfriend Kenny. and go to the sunset grille in Allston. Liz has tried getting me to go there like 4,000 times and it just never happened, but apparantly this was going to be the day.

To make it even better, Cheryl wanted to take a taxi there, so none of us had to drive. So we go to Cheryls house, and call for 2 taxis. The first one comes long before the second, so Stephanie, Kenny, and Janelle get in that one, and me John, and Cheryl wait for the next one to come, why and I telling this? because John said the funniest thing ever (at least for the next week). When he shut the door for Janelle, john says he loves her to her.
Then, as the taxi pulls away:

Cheryl (laughing): You say “I love you”?
John (very seriously): Yeah…..I married her…..she isn’t a whore.

hahahaha, oh man it was funny.
(on a side note, it was decided later that you can in fact say I love you to a whore)

So we get to the Sunset Grille, and look at the beer menu (which had 112 beers on tap, and 400 bottled) I decided to find the strongest (alcohol wise) beer, so I asked the waiter which one was the strongest, and he tells me it is the Eisbock Kulmbacker EKU 28, which is supposed to be around 15%. He then tells me “but its really hard to drink” but I took that as a challenge. The beer comes, and at first taste, it isn’t that bad, but shortly after, its damn nasty. I let everyone try it and the faces people made as they recoiled in horror validated that I had definately made the right beer choice. I tried a couple other ones, we ate some food, then the bill came, and for all of us, including Katie (the girl on the party bus that was yelling at me for not remembering her name) and some friend of Kennys (which I already forget his name again for the 3rd time) both of which arrived later, the bill was like $112. That seems cheap to me since we had gotten a LOT of food, plus plenty of drinks.

Now the story should be getting a little better…

We then go upstairs to the big city (I think that was what it was called) and get some more drinks and play foosball. I have never played foosball before, and although we scored a couple times, John and Janelle kicked our asses. Cheryl was on my team. I went wandering around to find air hockey, because air hockey is the best thing ever created, and they didn’t have any! I went and looked for a waitress, and asked her what the hell their problem was….well actually I asked her “where are the air hockey tables” then she sadly said they didn’t, and we had a nice little conversation about how air hockey is much better than pool.

We then leave, but instead of taking taxis back, we all pile into Kennys friends car. I think it was a subaru station wagon type deal, but in the state I was in, I was lucky I even remember that I was in a car. For some reason, I volunteered to take the back, where there is no seat, and had to lay down so “the cops didn’t see me”. Next thing I know, there is no room up from with the normals for Kenny, so he had to stay in the back with me. It was a VERY small back, had Kenny been a girl, it would have been a sweet deal, but instead I got to basically spoon with a guy. I think I decided instead to turn around and be wedged face first against the back seat.

the car ride TOOK FOREVER. it never ended. I think we drove to Niagra Falls on the way back to watertown. Thats how long it took. Finally we get to Cheryls house, I sit down, and things drastically went downhill immediately.

The alcahol was now fully absorbed into my bloodstream, and my body was very angry with the choices I had made that night. First, in typical Mike fashion, I pass out, which isn’t the biggest deal, because I do that everywhere now, even when not drunk. I think I might have some kind of sleeping problem, or maybe its because I dont have a normal sleeping schedule?

Next thing I know, I am awake, and walking towards the door. I feel like its time to return the beer I drank to where it came from. The ground. It always comes down to the circle of life.

So I go outside to the back yard, and throw up. It was a real fun time. Then I spend some time trying to get at various windows, because I was thinking of the hilarity that would ensue if someone looked out the window and saw someone staring back at them. That plan failed, and I go back inside to go to the bathroom (which is upstairs). I come back down, and everyone is all suprised that I was upstairs, and amazed that I was even in the house, and John and Janelle were saying “oh, there you are!” like I had wondered off somewhere or something..

Apparantly what had REALLY happened, was that I passed out, John decided it was time to go home, and he woke me up, told me to walk to my car, and they were going to say bye to people then meet me there. Keep in mind it was raining out. So, I walk to the door as instructed, but instead of going to my car, I took a left and threw up in the back yard. Then was messing around trying to scare people in the windows. While I was doing that, John and Janelle had left and walked over to my car, expecting me to be sitting in it. When I wasn’t there, they thought that in my drunk state, I decided to go on an adventure or something, and so were trying to find me. Meanwhile, I went back in the house, apparantly unnoticed, and went to the bathroom (in the bathroom of course). When John and Janelle came back looking for me, as far as everyone had known, I had left. Then all of a sudden I was coming down the stairs. So we then really leave.

John obviously drove us home, since he tends to be the more responsible one when it comes to things of that nature, and I of course passed out on the way home. Apparantly my chainsaw snore started up, and made sure everyone else was awake the rest of the way home.

When we got to Johns house, I apparantly looked real content sleeping where I was, so John buckled me into the passenger seat, and they went inside to go to bed. I am guessing this was at around 2am.

Next thing I know..

I wake up
I am frigging real confused
I am apparantly in my car, but why?
Noone else is with me
I look at my phone, and its 4:00am
I have 5 missed calls, all from my house.

Now I start to process all this, and I come to the conclusion I am at Johns house, they went to bed, and I stayed out here for some reason. Which is actually really funny. When I talked to John on the phone today, I told him it would have been hilarious if he parked my car like in the sand dunes near his house and left me there. I would have woken up and spent a half hour trying to figure out where the hell I was.

So now, its saturday, I have the worst hangover ever (maybe not ever) and I had to wake up at 8:00 to meet up with my fathers friend (and my father) and his son to let them into my work to do the construction on the A/V studio. I woke up at 8:45 instead, and had to stop by the vets office, because some moron there gave my dog the wrong prescription, then get into boston, to make matters worse, the exit in the tunnel to get to my work was closed, and I have to go around the world to get to congress st. So, push comes to shove, I show up almost 2 hours later than I was supposed to, they were all VERY happy with me, I had a nice headache, was barely awake, and was capable or projectile vomiting at any moment.

I actually did throw up too, luckily I made it to the bathroom. On top of that, I had to call the buildings main office because it wreaked of natural gass outside the building, and in the lobby, and as far as I knew, the building was going to blow up any minute. So I had to stay conscious long enough for them to page James the maintenance guy, who then had to come in, and check it out, and then tell me “it was fine, and we had the gas company here before to check it out” so basically, something is leaking natural gas sleeper street, allegedly its not my works building, but those people that smoke outside every day might be in for a suprise on monday.

After that was all over, I took a nap at my desk (for once it was actually okay). I slept through them using saws, and a nail gun. Those nail guns are loud, they use basically real bullets to shoot the nail into concrete, so it sounds like a gunshot every time you use it. I actually have ringing in my ears constantly from me being stupid with one when I was like 10.

In any event, Mcdonalds is the savior of the world. After a nice puke, a nap, and a feast of horrendously bad for you food, I now feel once again like a hero

But once again I was saying the lies of every hungover man. While your puking, while you feel like puking, and as your head throbs, you always say why did I drink so much? I am never doing that again! I feel like crap! why was I so stupid?

But, who believes anything a drunk guy says? I guess we will find out when the next beer is near me.

I wrote another typical long post, but my browser crashed and laughed as it wiped away everythign I wrote. So here is my second try….

Today while at work, Kim mentioned to me that someone from Pantera got shot and killed at some show (she must have remembered I like Pantera). It didn’t really sink in until I got home for the night and read about it. I am not one of those people that is going to cry in my room with the lights off all night, or go to Columbus, Ohio (where it happened) to take part in the candlelight vigil. You know why? I don’t know “Dimebag” Darrell Abbott. I love his music, I love his bands music, and I love his brothers (Vinnie Paul) drum work. But, I do not know them. And that is what I am really writing about today. What is it that brings people to that level? to the level that you feel that you are so emotionally attached to someone you have never even met, or maybe even seen in person until that day, to go walk into a small club in Columbus , Ohio, filled with 200 fans, all of which are having fun but you, because you are just sad, depressed, anger filled man, then get up on the stage, pull out your semiautomatic baretta, yell at the guitarist for “breaking up Pantera” and open fire on him (Dimebag Darrel), shooting him multiple times until he died right there on the stage, then, still not happy, turn and open fire on random people in the crowd, then take a hostage, and probably would have killed more if some cop that had been down the street hadn’t rushed in and picked off the asshole with a shotgun.

Why does this bother me so much? because I just don’t understand what goes on in the heads of people like that. Like this guy for example, or the dude that killed John Lennon because of the “Voices in his head” or little Timmy McVeigh, who was upset about his taxes so he decided to blow the whole building up (I think that was the reason).

Anyone that knows me knows that I get angry at the most mundane of things, but the thing is. I just get angry. I bitch about it for a little while, then someone tells me to shutup and thats it. I have actually only been in two real fights in my life. Once in the 4th grade against Darren LaSota (obviously I won that one), and once with Eric Michaels/Oxley.

Then this whole thing got me thinking about how a couple months ago, the son of a long time best friend of my mother was at a party (he lives in wakefield, but i dont think the party was there) and some kid there got all pissed off that some other kid was talking to his girlfriend, so a little fight broke out, the pissed of kid left, then came back later with some friends (because noone can stick up for themself anymore) and started swinging at random people with a baseball bat. People not even involved in his stupid little fight. Then my mothers friends son, doing nothing wrong at all, got nailed right in the face, and got his face bashed in pretty good. He was in the hospital for weeks, and had to get reconstructive surgery to fix his face. All for some stupid reason. What is wrong with people?

Although I would happily be the first to say I don’t like MTV, they had a nice little section devoted to Dimebag Darrell (unlike boston.com, which put an AP story on the front page for a little while, then replaced it with a bunch of sports stories like they always do). They had a lot of quotes from various other people that knew him personally. The whole metal scene is extremely small in the whole scheme of the music world, and most of them are friends with each other, and usually hold each other in high regard. Also, for those that stayed true to themself and their sound, and didn’t go the way of Metallica, they all play at small clubs, and and tour constantly, because the music is their life, not their next appearance on TRL (which they wouldn’t be allowed on anyway). My point is that everyone that had a word to say about Dimebag, from Anthrax (whom I own every CD of), to Ozzy (I have some of his stuff) to Chimaira (I hear them often on XM), to even Korn (the OLD Korn was influenced very much by Pantera). These were all bands I liked, or do like. with the exception of Korn, they all place at cheap small clubs, and the shows are extremely close and personal due to the fact that its such a small crowd (200-500 i think is the average). Its not very hard to basically high five someone on stage if you wanted to.

Had that show been in boston, I could have very easily have been there. I could have been the 1 innocent person in the crowd that was killed, or I could have been one of the 2 other people in the crowd that was injured. Or even worse, what if I convinced one of my friends to go? and they got killed? all because some loser was upset that he can’t buy another Pantera CD because the band broke up.

Everyone knows that at some point or another, shows and bands come to end. You can either stretch every penny, song, or episode as you can out of it (like Metallica is doing) or you can close the book, and say hey, this was a great ride, but its done. and Let it die on a good note. Thats what Pantera did, and I have nothing but respect for the doing that. What is even the though process behind this guy? “Hmmm…Dimebag left Pantera, now Pantera doesn’t exist. I should kill him…..yeah, that will fix everything”

What I wonder is this, how many Pantera songs, or any music for that matter, does he get to listen to from 6 feet in the ground? Maybe the maggots play stuff. I hope he enjoys them.

The last thing I have to say, is how odd it is how well this coincides with Johns post from yesterday, because the water really must have washed over that club.

So this weekend, I had things to do pretty much at every moment. This means sit down and get ready to read a while. I placed certain key phrases throughout this post, and at the end you win a prize, so make sure you read everything.

On friday, I book it out of work as close to 5:00 as I can to make it to my drum lesson at 6:30. I break a few seed records on the commute home, and managed to get to my house, pick up everything I forgot to bring with me in the first place, burn a CD with a song on it I wanted to learn, and “speed” through rush hour traffic to get to Daddys Junky Music where my lessons are.

Although I am not a big Foo Fighters fan, I heard “My Hero” on XM like on Monday of last week, and it had been stuck in my head all week. Coincidentally enough, I got a drum transcription book for I think christmas last year of all the good Foo Fighters songs, so I spent a little while here or there learning it, but my drum teacher makes it a lot easier to pick up. There is no relevance to this part of the story, but I felt like writing it down, so fuck you if you didn’t like it.

Now for the slightly interesting part. As you may (or may not have read) I am real insane about Christmas stuff, and although my brother is the easiest person on earth to buy stuff for , since if it is something I would like, chances are he would too, I though it would be cool to get him a not-piece-of-shit acoustic guitar, since he doesn’t have one, and just has his electric guitar. I figured maybe i could find a used one, or maybe find a generous soul, so while after my lesson, being in essentially a used guitar store, I figured it would be a great place to start (even though they are a bunch of communists, and on top of that rip you off on EVERYTHING). So I go up to the moron behind the counter, and say this basically exact line: “Hi, I am looking for a not too crappy, but not too awesome USED ACOUSTIC ELECTRIC guitar for a present for someone, what type of price ranges do the ones you have run?”

the dip shit tells me this: “well, you’ll probably find a much better deal getting a new one, we actually have a good deal on a blah blah with a case for $199″ At this point I was so overwhelmed by his stupidity, I had to find out what he was talking about, because he was making no sense, so I ask him if its on display anywhere. He shows me one that is “just like it, but the package he was telling me about didn’t have the electric pickup on it”

what?!!?!??? huh?!?!?

Lets see. I asked for:
1) a used guitar
2) a userd ELECTRIC ACOUSTIC guitar
3) a cheap one

Now, I know in the scheme of guitars, $199 is real cheap, but I had already looked around the store, and had seen some guitars of various forms new and used, for $199 and less. But that isn’t the big problem. He completely ignored everything I said, and showed me some random shitty guitar that he probably gets a commyission on. The guitar was on display right next to the door.

dumbass! nevertheless, he is now in my trunk to provide my tire traction for when it snows.

On to later friday night……..

As soon as I left Daddys Junky Music, I meet up with John/Janelle at their house, and we go get food at fuddruckers, because that place is great, and we can all laugh at Puccia because there is no Fudds in Colorado, AIR FORCE BOY! mwahahahahaha. Can’t fly your plane with a nice juicy Fudds hamburger now can you? Then we headed on into Boston to go to the Harp, which is one of the only bar type places we ever go to. One of the reasons we went there was because The Zoo was playing, and they are normally a fun time. They also decided to get the stupidest domain name imaginable. http://zoozoo.cc who actually buys a .cc name?

Anyway, we left super early since if you get there before a certain time, the cover is free (it ended up being $5, which is cool enough) As I have probably wrote before, I HATE the T for a number of reasons:
1) it reminds me of when my license was suspended because Massachusetts is run by insurance companies.
2) The T is a germ filled diseasefest, and I was sick enough this week. The though of accidentally touching one of those slimy gross polls makes me want to puke right now.
3) I hate being on someone elses clock. Why wait for a ride, or have to make sure you don’t miss the last train when I have a car?

so, we drove in and figured we could find a spot somewhere…of course we didn’t expect that huge building with the words “Fleet Center” on it actually being used for something, and there was no spots anywhere. We actually went a long ways away from The Harp and still couldn’t find a free spot, so, even though in a driving induced haze, John was considering the idea of parking at Wellington Station and taking the T in, I decided to give in and pay the $25 to park in one of those stupid garages. I said I would pay the whole price because it was my decision to park in the garage instead of going on the DiseaseTrain, but that didn’t work out at all…

We get to the harp, and I forgot to go to the ATM, but I remembered there being one inside, so I ask John to spot me the cover charge. So that was his first chance, and he wouldn’t take the $5 back after I went to the ATM. Then he goes and gets the 3 of us beers, and won’t take my money for that either, so I was trapped! it shouldn’t matter, but I just don’t like people paying for me. I feel like an ass, that might be just more proof that I am mental though.

So now, we got there damn early, and the place was pretty empty, and I stupidly wore my light jacket, which now needed to go away, because as always, I was hot (both in the looks and the temperature dept) So I go downstairs to “check my jacket” since I was pretty sure I remembered them having a place to do that, and, to go to the bathroom.

Whenever I go to a public bathroom, inevitably there is some horrible and/or funny event that happens, and this was no exception. I noticed some girl was waiting outside of the bathroom by herself, and I go inside. I don’t see anyone inside, and go along with my business. Mid-stream I hear a real pleasant sound from coming from one of the stalls. Obviously some guy had some taco bell before he came, and lets just say it wasn’t coming out real clean. I laughed to myself, washed my hands, and got out before the cloud came towards me. So this is the real funny part. The girl was still waiting outside, and the only people in the bathroom was me and Shit Break. So that means that the girl was waiting outside while her boyfriend took a massive dump….hahaha….hahaha. Its nice to be me on occasion. That was one of them. Then I head over for what looked like the coat check counter, which is after the pay phones. When I get to the pay phones, some girl says loudly “Mike?” in a voice like, oh look, its mike, I havn’t seen him in years!. I turn around to see who it is, and its someone that doesn’t even look vaguely familiar. She is talking on a cell phone, but is looking at me with smile. Now, I stand there, and think to myself, she either:
a) recognizes me from somewhere, but is on the phone
b) just called a Mike and is happy to hear him

fearing option B, but hoping for option A, I think I looked at her, probably made a face, and said me? or something like that. I got no reaction at all, and decided to bail, ditching the plan to go to the coat check counter. I might have even ran back up the stairs. I go back over to John and Janelle, with a look on my face that was a combination between the bathroom scene, and the random girl scene. I tell them it all, they laugh at me, and then John says, hey, look, Heidi Nelson is here, and points to the girl coming up the stairs. That was the girl that said Mike when I was downstairs. The funny thing though, is that I havn’t seen Heidi Nelson probably since she was in my CCD class in like 6th grade, and she obviously looked real differant now, but still, I have no idea if she was talking to me or not. So I decided to pretentd it never happened, so we continued to drink a bit, and wait for Suzanne and the friends she said she gathered up. The Zoo started playing at around 10:30, and I had my normal conversation with Katie the Bartender, pretty much as I have every other time I went there. I got a free drink though, and thats always great. Suzanne never ended up showing up, we had enough at like 11:30 I think, and we called it a night.

I was wide awake when I got home, finally cleaned up my drumset so I could get it out of the way into it gets moved into the new practice space in South Boston I am supposedly getting into, watched the Born Identity, and then watched Rocky IV for the 300th time well, most of it before I finally fell asleep.

Then onward to Saturday…

Saturday was Christmas tree day. I pushed my family to make sure we went early in the day because I was going to try to go to connecticut later that day to see Ashley and her apartment. So right at 12, all of the Devlin family except for Bethaney piled into my fathers truck (including my sisters boyfriend) and headed up to some place in West Newbury. I guess one of the years I didn’t get to go with my family they went to this place, because I had never been there before. It kind of took some of the fun out of cutting down your own christmas tree, because guys on tractors and 5/6 wheelers were patrolling around carting people and trees around after they cut down their tree. You didn’t get a sled, and there was no snow on the ground…so…it still doesn’t feel like christmas. We had get 2 trees, one for Alissa/Her boyfriends house, and one my our house. Her boyfriend brought a tape measure with him, which made me laugh, because basically, everyone would say look at this tree. then I would come over, say the thing sucked, pick out all the flaws, and meanwhile he would be measuring how tall it is. I am really insane about the trees, and try to find the perfect one, so everything sucked. After Alissa and her boyfriend found their tree, I said I would cut it down, because I am weirdo, and hacksawed away. I somehow managed to cut the truck almost below the dirt. I think I should have won a prize. Then the psycho on the 6 wheeler drives up, grabs the tree, makes a crack about how I forgot to use the “pull start” on that saw, and then put his hand way too close to my crotch to make sure I got his crappy joke. Then we split up to find a tree for our house. Me, my brother, and my sisters boyfriend (who is also a Mike) went off looking, and Eric found a tree and says “how about this one?” it it was all retarded an mutilated on one part. I was in a good mood, which is an oddity when I am with my family and said to Eric “that tree is crap! what is wrong with you Eric?!?” then Michael said the same thing and Eric started to get sad because he picked a crappy tree. It was way more amusing than it should be. Meanwhile, far away in a section we had already deemed as crap (the joke was that they were all irridiated since they were under these massive high power lines) the rest of my family found a tree, and some weird guy and his family wanted to have a “bidding war” over it. Alissa, being the wierdo she is, said to him “how about we fight over it instead” and put her hands up and probably would have backed her words up if the chance arose. The guy obviously walked away, and after I spent another 10 minutes trying to find a better one, I cut that sucker down and we headed down to pay for them. I made sure to eat as much free fruit cake and hot cocoa as I could. Its my little way of making their profit margin a little smaller. In my head they lost like $1 just because of me. Then we headed home.

for “timing reason” I wasn’t “allowed” to leave towards CT until I received a call giving me the go ahead. So I had a couple of hours to kill, and decided to try to make a power adapter for my awesome radar detector. The power adapter broke a while back and I never ordered a new one. So I go into radio shack, buy a phone cord, a wire stripper (my old one broke), and a empty cigarette lighter adapter. I figured I could make it work, because it my head, the radar detector used a phone cord type plug. So I sat in the parking lot in my car cutting the phone cord apart. I had to use a pocket knive I forgot Ihad in my glove box (thanks John for refusing to let me buy one at Galyans) I rigged it together, plug it in, and BAM! nothing. I failed. the detector didnt even use a phone connector. It had 8 pins in it, so it must have been like one of those PBX phone connectors or something…i dunno. Then I went to newbury comics and bought some weird stuff to listen to in the car. I am getting sick of all my old CD’s.
This is what I got:
1) the new CD my Diecast. I hear them on XM occasionally, plus they are a Boston based band.
2) African drum/percussion music
3) a string quartet’s tribute to Slayer
4) a random Iron Maiden CD.

By then Ashley called me and gave me the go ahead, and I headed off.

I went to burger king to get some food, started up my GPS thing, because I am a loser, and then made sure all my directions were in order. I printed out directions from maps.yahoo.com, because even though they are the same directions shitty mapquest gives. Yahoo reformats them so that they make some sense. I also had directions from Ashley over the phone, but I wanted to be sure. I’ll tell you, its real odd hurtling into boston towards the mass pike listening to a bunch of people playing violins and cellos do their own rendition of bloodline, and 9 other Slayer songs. Anyway, I make it to Hamden without any problems or wrong turns, and end up taking the right one street before hers. Damnit, i was so close to making a perfect trip!

Now for the fun…

I get there, and its a whole house! I don’t think that was ever mentioned before, but it was pretty awesome, so I get a tour of the place, and meet a couple of her rommates (there are 5 including her, but 1 wasn’t there that weekend) and I had my normal problem with not being able to remember anyones names for the life of me. Luckily no situations came up where specific names were needed. there were plenty of rooms there, plus two levels, and then I saw the most horrid sight imaginable. part of the house was a two car garage. an empty two car garage! I shed a tear for John, who still has his VW in his parents back yard under a tarp tent, and spent 3 years in the blistering heat and the freezing cold trying to get the car done, granted I did too on my truck, and didn’t have a tent at all, but my truck wouldn’t fit in a garage that size anyway. But a 1984 Buick Regal could have! ahhhhhhh! the car could have still lived! all I have left is pictures, and the smell of burnt rubber. But alas, what can you do but hold your head high and move on. Now I had heard that someone else had visited their place, and said one of her roommates rooms looked like a daycare center (I think that was it) and Ashleys looked like a bedroom in a porn movie. Her roommate has a big fixation on that Spongebob Squarepants dude, and there was posters and stuffed versions of him everywhere. Ashleys room had the darkest red paint I have ever seen, wall to wall too. and it had a zebra stripe carpet. It definately did kind of have a porno type of feel, but there were no naked chicks anywhere, so it wasn’t official. It also kind of reminded me of an art gallery. There was cleverly placed portraits and photographs everywhere. I think the guys on Queer Eye for the Straight Guy would be proud…..not that I ever watch that show….ahem….. It really made me laugh because My room has white walls, completely bare with the exception of a photo of earth from space, and a probably 5 foot long wooden painting of a whale about to anhiliate 2 small boats. I scored that from the building the Naked Fish on Rt 1 is in. Way way back before it was the Naked Fish, it was Unos, and before that it was some lobster place I think, and when Pizzeria Uno bought it, my father worked for Unos and I forced him to bring that home. why? I don’t know. so back to the house. Ashley gave me a brief tour of the schools campus, which looked like a miniature town, because apparantly the town of Hamdem is run by worse old ladies than Saugus is, and they won’t allow any of the buildings to be over 3 stories. so instead there is a million small buildings and dorms and townhouses and stuff. Also, the packy stores in CT close at friggin 9pm. What is that? I thought 11pm in MA was bad. I hadn’t even planned on drinking, but once that was on the table… luckily there was other stuff there.

So we head back to the house, and one of her roommates is in this Dance Company thing at the school, and her parents where there. I was warned in advance, but we walk in, and its not just parents, there was like 8 people there. Like 4 adults, some kid (maybe her brother?) and some other girl too. They were all talking about drinking and getting wasted and throwing up (conversation that I would dodge at all costs with my family, let alone my parents) then it switched over to the family talking about what to do for christmas eve, and it some how got to “Naked mini ball bowling” the Parents were loving it. Especially since noone actually ever sad naked, but they were laughing like it was great. I felt like I was in bizarro world and everything was opposites. I call 10-pin bowling “Big Ball bowling”. and they called Candlepin bowling “mini ball” and I also think “mini pin”. It was just kinda funny. I just stood there trying to become part of the wall because I am a paranoid weirdo and naked/drinking talk with my parents and siblings its reason enough for me to move out. Later on they left, then some people came over. I think it was one of the roommates boyfriends, and his brother, then 3 or 4 other people came later, but I don’t remember who they knew, but there was like maybe 11 or so people there? we all played beer pong, which I am not sure if I even heard of before.

I guess that is what I get for going to a shitty college with a bunch of weirdos, and also dropping out after a semester. I am assuming everyone reading this isnt as out of the times as apparantly I am, so I am assuming everyone knows what it is. While they were setting it up/playing the first game, Ashley was showing me what alcohol there was, there was like maybe a little more than a shots worth of some kind of vanilla smelling vodka, and a bottle of “99 apples” I decided against the whole mixed drink deal, and filled my cup (I think it was one of those really big plastic cups you get from like taco bell, but I thought it was the best thing ever) maybe 1/3 full with the rest of that vodka, and then the 99 apples stuff and just drank that. I think it somehow smelled like Isopropyl Alcohol, but it didn’t taste that bad. So then I watch the game. Ashley played with her roommate against the 2 guys next, and the guys where really good at getting the ping pong balls in the cups. Somehow it ended up that basically every time they got a ball in a cup, and Ashley was supposed to drink the beer that was in it (they were standard red keg cups, but only like a quarter filled with bud light) she would hand it to me and I would drink it. Then next game I played against the 2 guys with her roommate (Jackie) I could remember her name only because whenever I hear that name, I think of Boston St, and my next door neighbors niece that was always there (named Jackie) buying coke and i think whoring herself out, so that name is ruined for life. So its unfortunate for this Jackie, because thats immediately what flashes in my head, but she was cool, and seemed hospitable too, also we wern’t at boston st. Noone was snorting coke, and there wasnt a bunch of losers on stage mutilating really good 80’s songs, so its all good. Anyway… As with most things I sucked at the game I think I got the ball in maybe twice that game, but most likely once, so there was a lot of drinking for me yet again. Then I go and make myself another drink, this time it was “99 apples on the rocks” I come back out, and this magical big tin of popcorn was there. It was one of those things that has like a 3 part divider in it, and had like caramel popcorn, regular popcorn, and maybe chedder flavored popcorn. I was eating from it, and I guess one of the guys there who’s name was “Rich” reached over to get some popcorn, and according to him and everyone else (I found this out after I left) I said to him, probably in a slurred voice “oh you want some popcorn? here…have some popcorn” and I shoved the whole container at him. I don’t remember doing that, but it seems like something I would do. He might have been the kid that was wearing gold sneakers, but I am not sure.
So then I decide I want a rematch at this beer bong game. So Jackie for some reason decides to be on my team, and we play against her boyfriend (is that Rich? I don’t know) and his brother. One of the rules of the game is that if they bounce the ball, and it still lands in a cup, you have to drink 2 cups, but also, if they bounce it, your allowed to try to grab/block the ball. Jackie keeps yelling at me to “do something” because I really really did suck at the game, and I wasn’t even sure if she was really getting mad, so I had it set in my mind if the chance came, I was going to frigging nail that ball. Thankfully we were doing so bad that we only had 3 cups left on the table, because of them decided to bounce the ball, and then everything went in slow motion. I saw the ball coming, I saw Jackie wasn’t going for it, i reached in and swung at the ball like the world was coming to an end. I don’t even think I made contact with the ping pong ball, but I did managed to make contact with all 3 of the remaining cups, making them go flying everywhere. Everyone laughed, almost completely at me I am sure, but it was a good time. Especially since apparantly because of my “awesome” beer pong skills, and my life and death attempt to save the game at the end, Jackie actually pee’d her pants from laughing. hahaha. Like I often do when I am drunk, I decided to sit outsite for a little while and get some fresh air, then Ashley came out and i am sure I made an ass of myself a little bit more, but its all good. It was a really fun time there, and I am jelous of the fact that I don’t have a big house with a two car garage on the END of a long road with only 1 neighbor, of which is also college kids.

shortly after that, people either left or went to bed, and I slept downstairs on the spare futon there, but! I managed to not pass out the whole night, but I was given a blanket, so its nice that even when in a differant state, there is someone to fill in for Janelles duties of making sure I have a blanket and make it to a couch.

Apparantly I also “snore like a chainsaw” So I am sure that the rommate that also sleeps downstairs (behind a walls of sheets, like in the Brady Bunch movie) was real happy with me. I think she is the one girl there I can’t remember the name of at the moment. Sadly, she probably suffered the most….hahaha.

Also, to keep my record of sleeping through atomic blasts, and anything else that happens, Apparantly at around 5am, I think it was Jackies boyfriends brother maybe? I dont think any other guys were there then, but he while sleepwalking, stripped down to just his boxers, went into I guess it would be Ashleys other roommate Kerri’s (the spongebob girl)? room, and fell asleep on her pillows. so there was this big commotion to remove the almost naked guy from the room. hahahaha. thank god that wasnt me.

I am sure other things happened too, but I can’t remember them all, and I think this post already by far surpasses all my previous mega-posts in size. But, to end the trip to CT, here is a chart I generated on my computer from my GPS showing my driving speed on the way up and back. You need to click on it to read it, but take special note of the speed next to the highest peak on the way back (The second half of the chart)

By the way, in case you thought you actually could win a prize…..I lied.

for the records, I think I spent 2 hours writing this, and my keyboard is fucked up, and if I use any punctuation, weird stuff happens, and none of the arrow keys work.