Hey all,

Hope everything's groovy.

Here we are again, on a nother jeans day Friday. Good stuff. I ended up staying later than usual at work today (~6:00 p.m.) - I know, you're thinking poor baby, right? For one thing, it was a Friday. The other thing was that I'm usually home every other day of the week by 5:30 to 6:00 p.m. I was just finishing up some stuff, that's all.

So this afternoon I dusted off the good old golf clubs (2, to be exact) and went with Brizzai to the driving range. It was the first time I had swung a club in who knows how long. Probably the last time was whenever Geneman and I went, I think. I think. Like I said, it's been a while. With a mixture of being outside and my bad eyesight, I really couldn't see where I was hitting the golf balls once they left the tee. See, in the bubble, there's a dark backdrop, so I can see better where everything's going. I guess I can't really play a real game if I can't spot the ball outside, huh. I'll have to rely on my caddy or something. I've been kicking the golfing idea around for a while now - Just never got around to taking it too seriously because I didn't go to the range regularly enough. Maybe with Brizzai around, I'll be more regular in my practice. We'll see.

Next Thursday will be my 3 month anniversary at the job. Woo hoo!

Tomorrow I'm meeting Nichole in Rochester for lunch and some light shopping. I can't stay out too long though, as my dad's coming home Sunday morning. I kind of have to clean up some stuff around the house before he comes home. It's kind of wacky - I knew Nichole back when I was in grad school - She was an RA in the building where I stayed at. I lost touch with her after she graduated from her grad program at Michigan, so I never knew where she went. Well earlier last week, she e-mailed me out of the blue, and I found out that she was working pretty close by to the bank. Weird, huh. I guess she kind of lives around there as well.

I caught the end of MTV's Sex 2k special while I was treadmilling today. It was interesting. The people on the show were seeing I guess what you'd call "dating specialists / counselors." They were probably called something else in the show, but you get the idea. It's kind of interesting. I will try and catch the full show sometime on the reruns. I'm all about trying hard to find your soulmate and being in a committed relationship. I'm always envious of people who are in great relationships, but am secretly glad I'm single when I hear about not so great relationships. I've heard of doing the online dating thing, the speed dating thing, and the dinner for 8 type of deal (where they put 4 women and 4 guys with similar interests together and send them off to dinner). I'm always so curious to know if these methods work. I've been tempted to try them, but I guess I just haven't taken the leap yet. I dunno, I guess I just figure that the time will come when the time comes I guess. We'll see.

I guess I'm just content right now. I mean, it would be nice to be in a relationship now, but I guess I'm just not in a huge hurry at this moment. Things are going well in my very me-centric life right now. However, there is one thing I do miss. It's the physical contact. Not in the Christina Aguilera Dirrrty Dirrrty way ;) Heh. I mean just something as simple as say, holding hands. I think I probably miss that the most. Crazy, huh.

-Kirk

Good :)

I've finally done it - Come June 2nd, my old celly is going to be retired. It's put in almost 30k minutes worth of failthful service - I can't believe I've been on the phone for almost 500 hours during the 3 years I had it. Nutty. I don't remember how much I used the first phone (the one before the StarTac) though. I've been a Sprint PCS customer since 1997 - It's been quite a ride. Now I've gone to the other side.

Can you hear me now?

Hi all,

Hope you're doing well.

Switching phone #s is a pain in the arse. Hopefully I won't have to do it too often. I'm very reluctant to do it too - My current cell phone # has been with me for a long long time - 6 years to be exact :) Not that I'm a pimp and get calls on it super often, but I had a vanity # which I was unable to carry over. Alas. The new # seems to be working out well. I'm not getting crank calls or anything like that. Knock on wood.

Must go to sleep now.

-Kirk

One Word: Lovely.

Ugh. My throat now feels funny. I hope I didn't get sick from being outside :P

I am so impressed by the number of ringtones you can download nowadays for your celly. I can have Jay-Z's Big Pimpin' as a ringtone whenever you call me. Imagine that. :)

Hey all,

Hope things are well. Tonight, I decided to switch things up a little, and am now writing this blog not from the bedroom, but from the outside. Literally. I'm chilling (no pun intended) on this 50 degree (Farenheit) night outside on the deck. Pretty nifty. Had to put the sweats on, but it's all good. Just the right temperature actually. Nothing but me and the outdoors. In suburbia. Having my laptop be naturally cooled by the brisk breeze that sweeps by occasionally. Good stuff I tell you. All I need is ocean sounds to cover up the noise of the cars passing by outside, and I'd be in paradise :)

I got a chance to treadmill today. I watched the first part of Deuce Bigalo Gigalo or something like that. Since the main prime time seasons are pretty much over, I guess Fox is just killing some time before the next reality show. I saw a promo for it this evening as well. As usual, in the normal Fox fashion, I'm sure it'll not disappoint. And of course, they'll probably use that same damn soundtrack from Joe Millionaire.

It's kind of neat being outside right now. It's getting pretty dark - so I pretty much can't see anything except the laptop screen. But I bow down to the power of wireless. You can't beat that..

-Kirk

Today's nugget of wisdom: Lactose intolerance and a love for milshakes is not a happy combo.

Good evening,

Hope you're doing well tonight, on the last day of the 3 day weekend.

As usual, I got up pretty late, but I went to lunch with Steve and Elizabeth at Baja Fresh. I was going to spend the day with them, but I had promised that I'd take my mom flower shopping if her friends were going. They ended up going, so we took a small sidetrip out to the middle of nowhere.

Seriously, it wasn't to the middle of nowhere. It was just in a neighbouring county, it just felt like I was driving for a long while. the trip was good though. My mom bought a carload of flowers, and she was happy. It just made me realize that I just don't get out that much. There's much of my region that I have yet to visit and discover. It's true with the rest of the state as well.

So last night, Geneman and I were talking about why we blog. I would write stuff here whether I actually had readers or not, I think. I do know that one or two poeple read it ;) I guess it stems back to never having a diary per se when I was younger. I like being able to write some stuff at the end of the day - I think it's like closure or something. I haven't felt the need to go back and review what I've written - yet.. I'll write more about this later. too tired to get into it now. I need to go to sleep soon anyway.

I've recently had this continuous hankering for chocolate shakes. I think I finally got my mom hooked on them too. We were driving around today, and we had to stop at the McDonalds. She actually had the raspberry flavour though. Super good.

So much for going to sleep early. ugh.

-Kirk

Hey all,

I had to look at my blog entry from before to make sure I wasn't too incoherent (more than usual, that is). Why, mignt you ask? I was pretty much falling asleep with the laptop while I was sitting up in bed, I was so tired. I think the overheating of my lap was what woke me up enough to sign off, turn the laptop off, and go back to bed.

So yeah, Friday was pretty low key - I don't really remember what I did that night. I got some exercising in, and that was it I think. I think I was being nerdy (as usual) and just poking around on the internet probably.

Speaking of getting in shape, my brother, has all of a sudden gone on a major health kick. He's not totally hardcore, but he's done pretty well. He just started probably like a week ago, but he's been being pretty good about it. In fact, he's eating better and has started drinking DIET soft drinks. For any of you that don't know him, he is probably the last person on earth (next to me) that would break down and drink diet pop. I guess a while on an eliptical machine will show you how long it takes you to burn off that freakin' can of cola. Kudos to him though. I'm very proud. I may end up drinking diet cola as well. (shudder)

I forgot to mention - I am now on cell phone trial #2. This time, I went with the "can you hear me now" folks at Verizon. The network is CDMA (not GSM like AT&T next Generation was) so it's like my present Sprint PCS phone. No camera phone, but I did end up going with a color phone. I'm not too crazy about the trial sized talk time and standby time with the standard, but the extendo-battery definitely helps. Tradeoff is that the extendo-battery is about 5 mm thicker than the standard battery so it takes away from the phone's svelte look. I'll probably roll with the standard on a daily basis, and use the extendo on trips and whatnot. The standard battery gives me less of a bulge in the pants pocket too. ;)

On Saturday, my mom and I did some light shopping around town. Had to do some administrative stuff (prescriptions), but of course, I got some goodies like normal. But not a big shopping day for me - I think I was pretty tired from staying up so late on the phone the night before. I think I woke up at noon on Saturday when my brother called. I was dragging major arse the entire day.

Today was more of the same thing - just bumming around, driving around to different places of commerce as well. Nothing much to report, actually.

Today I promoted good neighbour relations by setting up the subwoofer for my computer at my condo. I wasn't going to turn my music up, but I like a little more punch on my low end, if you know what I mean ;)

I love this 3 day weekend thing. It's like extended time to play your favorite video game. And, as a bonus, your work week is shortened. It'll just be 3 more days till jeans day. Sweet.

Woo hoo! On to the bonus day!

-Kirk

Hey all,

How's it going? Well, I hope.

Let's see - the last time I left you, was the night before my photography class. I think my pics went over well. I think I'd like to get some photos printed, I think. My classmates had some good stuff as well. Totally good stuff. I think some people probably didn't need the class. But I'm sure like many other people, I had to go through a billion pictures to come up with 10 or so that I wanted to show :)

Wednesday was spent in Ann Arbor (for half of the day). Had to go see the fine people at the Kellogg Eye Center for a follow-up visit. Looks like I need new glasses again. But unfortunately, my insurance coverage won't start until next year. I may just get a cheap pair to hold me over until then. I'm kind of bummed though, as I've only had my current frames for like 5 months or so now. They were pretty damn expensive too. If I get cheapies though, I may have to do something wacky like artsy dude glasses or something : We'll see.

Thursday was watercolor art class in the evening. I finished up a painting that I had started on in the prior week. Once I filled my quota of one painting per class period, I took a break and read the newspaper. My mom is pretty much over her jetlag, so she was able to come to the class this week.

Friday was aiight. Pretty quiet at work, I'd have to say. Lots of people gone for vacation, or they left early to go. Jeans day and payday. Can't beat that.

Need to go to bed, I'll write more later.

-Kirk

Hey all,

Hope everything's groovy. I was going to fire off a quick blog entry before I turned in for the night It's late for me already.

Old habits die hard. Waiting till the last minute has busted me again.

As some of you may know, I'm taking a photography class. Tomorrow (Tuesday) I need to take in 6 to 10 photographs that I want to show during our last class tomorrow. The instructor will let us know how we can improve our techniques, etc.

So I waited until tonight - I figured I'd select a few, and then crank them out on the trusty inkjet that I have. Nothing fancy, just wanted representative samples, right? Unfortunately, I was not that lucky. My trusty inkjet had no trust today. Of the two color cartridges I had, one was missing yellow, and the other was missing cyan. So all the pictures that I was printing out looked like total crap. I could have played the "artsy" card, but nah, I can't sell stuff that well. So, I ended up doing an online photogallery / album thing with javascript and whatnot. It turned out pretty nice, I think. The presentation fills up a large part of the whole screen on an IE 1024x768 browser in full screen mode.

For all of my faithful blog readers, here's a link to the sneak preview. Just a note - this photogallery is not for the bandwidth challenged - I wanted to use minimal compression to get the best image quality, so the large images have huge file sizes. If I get a chance, I may post a more web friendly version, but I probably won't - a web presentation wasn't the original intent. :) You've been warned.

-Kirk

Hey all,

Hope you're doing well this evening, and have had a great weekend.

So where was I? I'm sure I'm not going to be able to remember as much as yesterday, but I was really in no condition to write any more - I was falling asleep - I didn't even go through my complete dental care procedure last night. I just brushed.

Just one quick thing about the $43k ring ($45580.00 after Michigan Sales Tax) - just for anyone that was curious, if you were go go by the traditional rule of 2 months salary, for this ring (without state sales tax) you'd have to make $258,000.00 a year post-tax. Pre-tax (if you're at the 33% tax bracket which you would be making that much paper) you're talking about $400,000.00 a year. I know, I rounded up, but hey, you have to pay for some of your benefits ;)

OK OK, so enough about the ring. Sheesh.

So at the shopping mecca, builders and the stores have built and furnished a 6000 square foot "house" inside the floor space of a vacant store space. We're talking really really nice stuff inside. It would be a Better Homes and Gardens / Architectural Digest wet dream. But it was weird. I felt like I was in some chateau. For some reason, the lighting felt really dim all throughout the display. So it was like being on the set of Joe Millionaire's house, but during a brownout. Hard to explain. We just walked through it pretty quickly, since we were kind of in a hurry. I'll probably go back sometime. After I walked out, I was so glad to be outside in the mall again, to be touched by natural light. As you went in the "house" display, there was this lady standing there. Just standing there. Not really greeting, I'm guessing she was just there to make sure people didn't steal stuff. She seemed so lifeless - I tried saying hi to her, but she was just so uninterested. I think the dim lights in the chateau were sucking the life out of her. I think she wished the brownout would end as well.

So yesterday, I also got a chance to do the 2 step wax process on the supaflyride again. A little cool outside, but I was able to wear shorts and a t-short to do the deed. Good stuff. I am really starting to see the value add of the 2 step process, especially at dusk.

Every so often I hear a song that I haven't heard in a long time - and I forget how good of a song it is. This time? Al Green - Let's stay together. Another good classic tune. Just in case you can't tell, I'm taking a hiatus from top 40 music again. I'm going through shite music overload. Don't get me wrong, there's some good tunes on the radio, but I am just not feeling the rasta man / reggae groove that quite a few songs have nowadays. Ugh.

I was on the phone pretty late last night with my brother - Till like 2 or so. So I slept in till 11 today...

My mom and I did some shopping around town (I was not very lucky in finding anything today), went out to dinner - it was nice. It's probably the first time she's been out an about since she came back from the homeland. She's diggin most of the the Gap mother's day gifts. Some stuff didn't fit, so we had to take them back today. The mall was quite deserted for a Sunday afternoon - wasn't sure what the dilly was with that. We need to buy more! :)

Tomorrow it's back to the daily grind. Woo hoo!

Talk to you later. I'm going to try to get to bed "early" tonite. Dunno if that's going to happen.

-Kirk

Hi all,

Hope you're having a good weekend. My cousins were here last night, and the left Saturday at 3 ish. Pretty short trip. Got some good food court food, did some light shopping, etc. Good stuff.

I had some interesting times at the shopping mecca though.

My cousin really likes to shop at Tiffany's. Can you blame her? Heh. Anyway, I usually never step foot in that store unless someone else that I'm with needs to go. You may have remembered that I went last Christmas with Jarretol. I usually seem to have some good stories to tell whenever I go there. This time was no different. I must of had my "I'm a really honest guy" game face on today.

My cousin was looking at a necklaces and rings, so me, with the short attention span, started to wander around the store. I'm always so amazed whenever I go into a Tiffany's because of the magic blue box, and the oodles of money you can drop there. All the sales associates are always well groomed, and wearing pretty formal types of clothes.

So there I was, in my $10 Old Navy long sleeve shirt (sueded cotton, of course ;) and my jeans (with a hole in the wallet pocket) just poking around the store. So I decided to go take a look at the trademark Tiffany setting rings. I wanted to see the trademark 6 prongs, right? Now don't get me wrong - I'm not getting engaged or anything like that. In fact, I'm very far from anything like that. But nonetheless, I like to look and take some notes. It never hurts to be prepared, right?

So I was seriously eyeing some rings in the display case. I was totally mesmerized by the sparkly diamons, and marvelling at how the displays were nicely done and perfectly lit. So every diamond sparkled like crazy whenever you walked by.

So one of the very triendily saleslady asked if I wanted to see one up close. I didn't want make a big deal (since I wasn't serious about the purchase), so I declined her offer. But we started to chat about the setting, and how I just wanted to see it. Anyway, she ended up taking a ring out for me to look at anyway. As she handed it to me, I almost dropped it (but I caught it in time). So I'm totally scoping this ring out. Again, the ice was just gleaming and sparkling to no end.

So she says, "Let me tell you about the diamond on this ring." As she does this, she reaches for the ring's tag. And this is what I heard:

"This is a 2 carat diamond, it has something something cut, something something clarity, something something something something-rty three thousand."

So during this time, I was like, "huh, 2 carat looks like a pretty good size, I think. I could probably roll with this." :) I don't really know all the ratings and whatnot, so I just kind of zoned out when she was going through all the technical stuff. But I tuned back in (a little late though) when she got to the bottom line. I think I heard a big number, but I wasn't sure.

So I took a look at the tag myself. $43,000.00. I was pretty shocked, and I think my face showed it as well. I couldn't really concentrate on the ring anymore, and gave it back to the saleslady. I could not believe that the ring was actually $43k. That is my BMW 3 series convertible compressed into something you can put on your finger. Sheesh. Craziness.

I don't know what was different this time, but last time I think I only got to see the $5k ring. Anyway, the saleslady assured me that not all the rings were that expensive ;) Good to know.

Afterwards, when I saw my cousin, she asked if I was ok, as I looked a little pale. Her husband said that I should have just taken the ring and ran my ass off ;) I guess that's one way to become famous in time for my class reunion :)

OK, I really have to go to sleep. My battery's almost dead anyway. I'll write more later.

-Kirk

Hey all,

Hope all's well. Let the weekend begin!

This evening, Steve, Elizabeth, and I went to go fulfill a couple of guilty pleasures (for me at least). We checked out some new cars at the local dealerships (Steve and E are in the market) so of course, I had to indulge in some window shopping for myself as well. Probably the highlight of the evening was the 390 hp Shaguar S-Type R. (sorry, no direct link because the site was acting funky and really really slow). Not a bad way to spend 62k.

My cousins are in town as well. They've gone to retire from their crazy drive down. I'll hang out with them tomorrow.

Other than that, not much to report. Tomorrow's the field session for my photography class. Hopefully I'll get some good pics. We'll see.

-Kirk

Special thanks to Geneman for keeping me in line with the html action - I left the italics tag open and it wacked out my whole page.

-Kirk

I think I may want to do some music stuff again. I feel the need to create and be creative. I dabbled in remixing a while ago, but maybe I'll take it one step further now. I'm thinking about a keyboard this time.

But then again, I still want to get the windows tinted in the supaflyride.

Decisions decisions...

-Kirk

Hey all,

Well whaddya know? That "Fresh Blogs: on the Blogger.com site actually works! Not that I thought iwas false advertising, just one of those things I was never really sure if it was really accurate or not. I happened to log in and Geneman had just posted, so he was the first on the list. Apparently, he was still at work doing powerpoint shite, when he posted - I tried calling him when I saw, but he must have just left the office - I got his voicemail.

Anyway, came home from watercolor class around 10 p.m. I completely forgot to record the season finales of the Must See TV shows (Friends and Will & Grace). Bummer dude. I didn't have anything to record on anyway - I've actually got a backlog of 2 or 3 weeks worth of Must See TV that I still need to catch up on. I'm not as worried about the season finale though, since the network will probably run them again before the next season starts. And we all know that Friends will be like the boxer that won't retire. NBC will probably milk that show until they become Senior Friends. Each episode will earn the stars 10 million each. Just watch :) I mean come on, how many times has it supposedly been the "last season?" Until NBC can find a worthy successor, we'll have Friends, I'm sure.

Woo hoo! Tomorrow's Friday! And as you know, it's jeans day ;)

My cousins are going to be in town this weekend. Should be fun. My photography class field session is going to be on Saturday as well. Plus, I have to get my place ready for an appraisal - I'm getting some refinancing action done to take advantage of the lower interest rates. I need to make the place look like it's worth a ton :)

-Kirk

Hi everyone,

Hope you're doing well tonight.

Just kind of hanging out - I got a chance to exercise, watch some TV, etc. Good stuff.

My brother's in Los Angeles right now, as I type this to you (I just got off the phone with him). I'm so jealous. He's at the E3 show / convention thing. I think I will go out there and hang out with him next year. We'll see. Hopefully I can swing more vacation next year, and I'll be set.

So I saw some dude cruising in his totally cool black s2000 today. It was pretty sweet. And yes, the top was down, so I gave him cool points. I was green with envy. I'd like to own that car one day.

I was parked next to a very well maintained bmw 3 series coupe today as well. I would clock it at a early to mid 90's model. In great shape.

My car needs to be washed badly. I'm embarrassed to be driving around in it it's so dirty. I'm tempted to just go get it washed before the weekend. Trying to fight the urge though. I think it's supposed to be nice this weekend.

Do you ever wake up in the morning, look at the truckloads of clothes in your closet and feel like you have nothing to wear? Sheesh.

-Kirk

Hey all,

Hope you're doing well. I got back from my photography class today, went upstairs, changed, and got into bed with my laptop. Now that's a good night ;)

Our field session is going to be this weekend at 9 a.m. Sheesh. That's early. But it should be fun. We're supposedly going to have the session come rain or shine. I'm hoping for good weather. I am not looking forward to taking my time and composing pictures in the pouring rain.

So one quick rant. It was a beautiful afternoon today. I can't really vouch for the morning, because I was inside for most of it. Anyway, I drove home with the windows down, stereo cranked. What is it about people with convertibles that won't put the top down? We're in Michigan. You have a very limited window of time to drive around with your convertible top down. We're talking part of spring (when it's not raining) and fall (when it's not silly cold). Otherwise, it's either super cold or frickin hot. So I saw some dude with a really nice Beetle convertible with the top up, and just the rear windows open. Lame. You should get your Beetle repoed, man.

I think the worst offenders are those individuals that drive their convertibles with the windows up, but the top down when it's nice outside. Don't be telling me it's too windy or you don't want your hair to get messed up. If that's true, then you belong in a coupe or sedan with a sunroof. Not a convertible. Please. Don't even get me started on drivers that have the convertible top and front windows down, but they leave their rear side windows up. What is the deal with that?

Isn't the whole principle of having an open top roadster the feeling of sun in your face, wind in your hair? How many commercials do you see where the drivers have the top down and windows up? I mean, come on, Celine Dion Drove All Night to get to you in her Sebring Convertible. She didn't have the windows up in her commercial.

So I'm listening to the radio, right? That Marvin Gaye Sexual Healing song has a great bass line.

-Kirk

Hey all,

Ugh, it was pretty damn cold today. Out of control, I tell you. It's like it's time to break the sweathers and crap out again.

So I just finished clearing out my hotmail inbox. I had over 300 messages, and I only found 1 that was legit - At least, I think I only found one :) I guess it's too late now. I'm strongly considering setting the email spincter on to really tight, and just allowing e-mail from addresses in my addressbook through. But I'm always worried that one day, someone's going to e-mail me out of the blue, and it'll just get flushed in my junk mail folder because I don't have their e-mail address on file. Alas.

My mom is back from the homeland, so I'm off the "my mom is away" diet. I'm trying to convince her to cook less, as I'm trying to maintain my girlish figure. I guess the deep dish pizza today didn't help either ;)

I got to exercise before watching Boston Public, so that's good. Tonight was the season finale, so now my Monday nights will be free again. Love the summers when there's re-runs on - I get to do more stuff in the evenings again :)

And no, TV does not rule my life. Heh.

I don't know what it is about new cars - I'm just so seduced by them. That and young ladies are my weakness. Anyway, sorry, back to the lecture at hand (remember that line?) - I'm a glutton for great marketing, I guess. The latest automobile that has caught my eye again is the Lexus IS300. I love how it looks, straight from the factory. Although, I'd still like to keep my present car (the supaflyride) and add a convertible to the stable. Oh well. Someday.

Better go to sleep. I'll catcha later.

-Kirk

Hey all,

Ugh, it was pretty damn cold today. Out of control, I tell you. It's like it's time to break the sweathers and crap out again.

So I just finished clearing out my hotmail inbox. I had over 300 messages, and I only found 1 that was legit - At least, I think I only found one :) I guess it's too late now. I'm strongly considering setting the email spincter on to really tight, and just allowing e-mail from addresses in my addressbook through. But I'm always worried that one day, someone's going to e-mail me out of the blue, and it'll just get flushed in my junk mail folder because I don't have their e-mail address on file. Alas.

My mom is back from the homeland, so I'm off the "my mom is away" diet. I'm trying to convince her to cook less, as I'm trying to maintain my girlish figure. I guess the deep dish pizza today didn't help either ;)

I got to exercise before watching Boston Public, so that's good. Tonight was the season finale, so now my Monday nights will be free again. Love the summers when there's re-runs on - I get to do more stuff in the evenings again :)

And no, TV does not rule my life. Heh.

I don't know what it is about new cars - I'm just so seduced by them. That and young ladies are my weakness. Anyway, sorry, back to the lecture at hand (remember that line?) - I'm a glutton for great marketing, I guess. The latest automobile that has caught my eye again is the Lexus IS300. I love how it looks, straight from the factory. Although, I'd still like to keep my present car (the supaflyride) and add a convertible to the stable. Oh well. Someday.

Better go to sleep. I'll catcha later.

-Kirk

Sheesh. Last blog entry, I promise...

Happy Mother's day to all the Mums out there. :) Thanks for being Mom.

Oh yeah, forgot to say...

On Friday, a coupla friends and I went to a gallery tour in one of the more toity parts of town. It was pretty cool. We had dinner at Cosi which was super tasty. The bread that they make is so tasty. The only thing that was kind of wacky was that all of the staff wears black. Like monocrhomatic style. I don't get it. Is it to add to the trendiness of the place? Whatever. I didn't feel any more trendy than I was.

On the opposite end, I was wearing my escape convict construction barrel orange shirt that I love. I was definitely visible, which helped as I haphazardly crossed the street as if I were in Ann Arbor again.

Anyway, I was impressed, as some galleries had food and whatnot. I had heard about stuff like that, just never actually thought I'd see it, I guess. Earlier in the night, the place was fairly busy. A good flow of people when the place started. But I guess when the after dinner hour came around, a bunch of the galleries were packed. So mental note - have food at my gallery tour. I'll have to turn people away at the door :)

I was ok with the earlier crowd. But as the night progressed on, I felt a little out of place, as the clientele seemed to get more pretentious by the minute. I didn't see any major deals go down (selling wise), so it seemed more like a social event (which was pretty much what I expected, I guess).

Now also, as the night progressed, there were more and more high school kids around. Especially crowded around the movie theater. I guess that's the thing to do or something :)

Anyway, all in all, I think I'd like to do a gallery tour again. The event got me to see more of the city than the main parts that I know, so that was good.

Have a good night!

-Kirk

Hey all,

I saw the nicest Porsche convertible today outside of my condo. It was dark blue, dark blue top, and very cool wheels. I don't know what it is about a Porsche. It's not as exotic as say, a Ferrari or a Lambo, but it's as close to a mainstream exotic car as it gets around here, I'd have to say.

Too bad it was shite weather today. It was raining off and on, and then it was super windy. The minute that I left the house to do some errands, rain started to sprinkle on my car. How nice. I was planning to get a automatic wash, since I was feeling lazy, but it rained the entire time I was driving around Oh well. I guess there's always next weekend.

So at last, I get to write a little somethin somethin from the comfort of my bed again. So nice.

Hope you had a nice weekend. Have a good week!

-Kirk

Hi all,

Hope you're doing well this weekend. It is quite windy today. A little chilly too. Highly doubtful on the car washing today, but we'll see. My car is quite filty from the rain that we've had the last week or so. I may just have a wash - it's supposed to rain during the week again as well too. Ugh.

OK, it's been a while since I've written. Mostly just been bitching about my wireless connection, and as Elizabeth pointed out, just talking about how much I like jeans Fridays at work. Let me tell you, it is a big deal :)

OK, so where do I start? Sometime at the beginning of the week, I was listening to my regular morning show (I usually flip between 2 and/or listen to CDs on the way into work) and they were doing this 2nd date update thing. It's a way for people to find out why dates that they've gone out with never call back. You know the story, the whole night went well, we had fun, the converstion was great, yadda yadda yadda... But now he/she won't return any of my calls. The responses are usually quite brutally honest. I take each one as a learning experience of what not to do. I've heard ones where a guy complains about how their date's bathroom is filthy, and another one was when some dude didn't like it when his date had to be in the restroom and take care of business (no. 2) and stunk up the place. Heh. whatever works. And a word to the lizadies that may read my blog - don't give it up on the first date. That's probably the most common.

Anyway, so I'm listening to this guy talk about his date, how things went well, etc. etc. The woman gets called up, and she says (without much hesitation) that he's too short. She was like 5' 10", he was 5' 6" or something like that. I felt for that poor guy. Anyway, so of course, the discussion leads to other desirable / undesirable traits of people. Ugh. See, I need to date a woman that's taller than me - It's going to be better for my gene pool. Seriously. Usually, kids are taller than their parents, right? I'm not making this up - from my sample size of friends, that's how it's been, I think.

But there is a silver lining. A good friend of mine that I used to work with told me, "we're all the same size lying down." Amen to that. Hopefully that line of reasoning will work for me someday ;)

Let's see, what else.

On Wednesday, I had to wake up pretty early to get out to Ann Arbor by 8 a.m. - Just this day wacked my whole sleep schedule. I haven't gotten very good rest ever since then, so I was in very ill spirits on Thursday. I was just dragging major ass, and I was not very motivated to do anything. So, I wasn't much fun, I don't think. I slept a ton yesterday - I think it all caught up with me. I will probably need to go to sleep early again tonite. We'll see if it actually happens.

Speaking of my eye appointment on Wednesday, I had the best luck in people that were examining me. So lovely. I go to a teaching hospital, so you can have a "technician" see you, a resident, and then the master doctor sees you. My tech was a lovely woman that smelled wonderful. And then, my resident was someone that I've never seen before. She had an accent like one of the Spice Girls. Many of you may or may not know, I have a huge weakness for the English accent. Love it. Anyway, I think she reminded me most of Sporty Spice. Except she didn't have the trademark Adidas pants on. Nonetheless, I was very mesmerized by her. Lovely, I tell you. Lovely.

After my appointment, I went to see some of my old friends at the network serfvice provider that I used to work. It was an enjoyable visit, as I got to see some old friends that I haven't seen in a long time. Anyway, while I was there, we were watching some dude unload a pallet (sp?) of boxed reams of paper onto the loading dock. We're talking about a truckload (literally) of paper here. All wrapped up in that saran wrap stuff to keep everything together. As the guy was maneuvering the pallet off the truck, I guess the paperbecame off balance, and the whole paper mass just fell over on its side. Half of the paper just busted through the wrapping plastic and fell a good 5 feet from the loading bed of the truck. It was a sight to behold indeed! Lots of the boxes were damaned, but I think the paper (for the most part) survived. Crazy. I apologize if you didn't find this story amusing. I guess you had to be there. Cleanup was not fun.

On Friday, I thought I'd go to Costco and pick up some goodies in preparation for my mom coming home. As I was checking out, there was this college-aged lady with her dad just buying a whole bunch of stuff. As they were loading stuff onto the conveyer belt, he just kind of looked at stuff with a weird look, and kind of shook his head. And I wondered, if I have ever have kids that go off to college, are they just going to come back home and expect me to buy them all they stuff that they need? Am I going to be the walking wallet? You know how when characters in a cartoon get hungry, they look at each other and see a cooked turkey or a chicken? Do kids look at their parents and see a big sack of money? I'm trying to think if I did that. Probably :) Just not as much, since I lived in the residence halls and whatnot.

So my mom came home yesterday afternoon. I'm glad she's home safe. I'm sure that she's happy to be home as well.

I've had the laziest weekend. I haven't done much at all.

-Kirk

Heh. I just finished reading geneman's blog. Of course, his is a little more fancy as it has pictures and more dynamic content. I'm jealous!

-Kirk

Hey all,

Free at last! Free at last! Wired connectivity is now an option, not a requirement for me anymore :) I'm back to passing my internet traffic through the air :)

I'm so tired. I need to go to bed. I will have more of a blog entry tomorrow.

-Kirk

Hey all,

Son of a... My wireless network access has suddenly decided to stop working. Grr. I've spent 2 nights trying to troubleshoot the damn thing and I can't get it to work. The card connects to the WAP, but doesn't get access out to the internet. What's up with that?

Anyway, I can't write much today. I have to go to sleep because I had to be in Ann Arbor by 8 a.m. today. So I'm really beat. I went to work afterwards, like a good corporate citizen. I'm a sucker.

-Kirk

Hey all,

The weeks go by way too fast. The weekends, even faster!

So let's see. Somebody called the wrong number this morning and woke me from my slumber. Dissed. I was up pretty late last night, so I was going to sleep in. Don't worry, I manged to get back to sleep after my rude awakening...

So I got up around noon-ish, or so. Opened up the windows, and I was just blown away by how nice and sunny it was outside. Unfotunately, I forgot to wash my car towels from last week, so I was unable to 2 step wax the supaflyride. I was intending on just washing it though. The key word is intending...

Anyway, I decided to get out my digital camera and try to shoot some pics around the house with some of the stuff that I learned in my photography class. Unfortunately, my digicam isn't as robust as a regular SLR, so I had to kind of make do. I am still resisting the urge to break out my dad's 35mm SLR. I guess I'm just trying to make it work with mine. We'll see.

So after much swearing and referencing of the manual, I could not get my camera to mimic the focal point adjustments that you can do with a SLR's f stops and whatnot. Kind of a bummer. And stuff that the camera said was in focus was definitely not. I know I have bad eyesight, but come on. So yeah, I think I lost a ton of time there. Oh well. Do I know my camera better? Ummm. Probably not. :)

But the teacher said that the only way to learn is to just use the camera and get practice. I'm glad I'm using digital - I don't feel as bad taking random shots and hoping that they turn out ok ;)

I also did some light cleaning today. Just preparing for my mom coming back home. I love the Clorox ready mop thing my mom has. I was going crazy with that thing. I was like Mr. Clean but without the bald head and the muscles and stuff. OK, so I was nothing like Mr. Clean :)

Other than that, it's been a pretty uneventful day.

I guess I bored the lady that was trying to IM me yesterday. She hasn't contacted me since. Maybe she was reading my blog and got scared away. Dissed.

Tomorrow it's back to work!

-Kirk

Oh yeah, just one last thing. My brother is doing well - he's now on the road to recovery. So far so good. Let's hope it continues that way.

Peace,
Kirk

Hey all,

Hope you're doing well.

Today was a pretty big shopping day. I set out this morning on a mission - to get my mom a mother's day gift. She comes back next saturday, which is just in time for the special day. I went to a few places, poking round, finding nothing much of note. I checked one of the main department stores, but left quickly because I have no idea where anything is (other than men's clothes). Of course, I had to look at stuff for me while I was there :)

Anyway, I didn't find much either... Until...

The store of the familiar navy blue square with white lettering. The GAP, of course.

I should have thought to go there in the first place. Duh. Once I entered the store, I knew that if I wanted to find clothes, this would be the place to get them. So I did the one stop thing, and loaded up on all sorts of goodies for her. I just hope that I got the size right. Otherwise, the gift receipt is going to get quite the workout :)

I did buy a shirt, but that was about it. It was a pretty light day for me at the Gap.

I had to stop by at Target to pick up a raincheck - they had this nifty tv stand on sale this week that I wanted to look at. It looked pretty good, but my local store didn't have it in stock. Yipee for rainchecks.

So I did end up buying some new speakers as an impulse buy. I didn't even know that I needed speakers! ;) They sound very good - the sub really pounds. It makes the stuff on my walls and desk rattle. Good stuff. I'm going to move my older Altecs over to the condo - I don't think my neighbours would appreciate the new sub as much as I do :)

I need to start cleaning the house soon - I don't know how much time I'll have next weekend before my mom gets back.

-Kirk

Hey all,

It's the weekend! So glad.

So I got the new tyres for the supaflyride today. And man, I absolutely LOVE the smell of new tyres. So intoxicating. Like I have my own store whenever I walk up to my car. It's like the new car smell that I love.

It's kind of funny how certain smells trigger certain memories, or how some random smells smell good to us. For instance. Sharpened pencils. Another fun smell. I once talked to a lady that liked the smell of gasoline. Now that's kind of wacky. I am not too fond of the gasoline. I got it on my hands once, and I smelled that damn smell for like a week afterwards. That's scary stuff.

So let's see. There's a bird that keeps on trying to make a nest in the mailbox at my parent's house. I guess if I was a bird, I may choose a mailbox as well to chill in. It's a pretty good shelter, and you just have to "move stuff in" to make it cozy. So in my parent's neighborhood, they've got little "mini house" looking types of structures that house 3 mailboxes each. And depending on who forgets to close their mailbox all the way, you get random sticks and grass and whatnot in your mailbox every day. Thanks, birds. I'm always paranoid that one day I'll see a few eggs in there or something. So I try to just nip the situation in the bud and just clear the sticks and junk out every time I get the mail. I don't know what kind of parasites and whatnot may be in there. Ugh.

Oh yeah, I got a wedding invitation in the mail a few days ago. My good friend Helen is getting married in June. Getting invitations are always so bittersweet for me. I'm very happy for my friends that are getting married, but at the same time, it just reminds me that all of my friends are growing up. (sigh) Do I feel pressure? Kind of, I guess. Just in the respect that, you know, "everyone's doing it." And no, if people were jumping off a bridge I would not feel like I should to it too ;)

Tonight, some lady I don't know IMed me out of the blue. We talked for a few minutes, but that was about it. I get these requests to chat every once in a while with a stranger. I'm always caught in a dilemma to write them back. I've had some bad experiences (stalker) and well, just ho-hum (fizzled out). So I usually just not answer, but the hopeless romatic in me sometimes wonder if the person that I just clicked away is "the one?" I know the chances are pretty much slim to none, but I guess it never hurts to wonder, right?

-Kirk

hey all,

Just a quick thing...

I had promised before that I'd give geneman's blog a shoutout when he got his going, so here it is...

http://twinkiethekid.blogspot.com

Don't forget about me now ;)

-Kirk

Hi everyone,

Hope you're doing well. Oh yes, tomororw is Jeans Day! Woo hoo! I cannot wait.

So I got the jingle jangle from my brother's doctor during work. Everything went very well, and everything's groovy. Hopefully the recipient of his bone marrow will be doing well too.

I'm hoping to talk to him tomorrow.

I was supposed to have my watercolor class today, but we got dissed. The teacher's still out of town, so I guess we'll have to wait until next week. I ended up going to get chinese food insteadwith Steve and Elizabeth. My fortune cookie was wacked - the fortune inside was either defective, or I just didn't understand what the fortune was. Hope that's not bad.

-Kirk