I've arrived back from my brief vacation into Tahoe. It was enjoyable except for when it wasn't. Sometimes I think that I will never grow out of arguing with my sister. Thankfully my directionally dyslexia got back at her for me. That'll teach her to get directions from me. The great part is that I got her to go the wrong way twice. I swear I didn't mean to do it, but I had to laugh like hell.
While we were coming back from Tahoe (the wrong way) I was explaining why to my sister, who lives in California, why Nevada is way better. One thing I mentioned was that we don't cut off alcohol service. Ever. California stops you at 2. My sister said "but no one needs to drink past two in the morning." And I told her "you do if you live in Nevada."
Last night I saw The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged) at the Shakespeare at Sand Harbor. I've seen it a couple of times before. But it's good, it's funny, and it works for people who have only a passing interest in Shakes. They go through the Comedies in five minutes, which is about as much time as they deserve. They did some bullet time for some fight scenes in Macbeth. And my "step dad" got pulled out of the audience to go up on stage and run around. Good times.
A week of lounging around and reading and playing board games makes me feel pretty goddamn dull. I'm just a nerd, ultimately, which is fine. But I do find nerds boring, so I've always tried to be a somewhat more interesting nerd. I've failed most of my tries. I think that underneath all the useless trivia and the hatred of sunlight and the desire to be left alone lies a moderately interesting personality. My goal is to find it, damnit, and to let it run around mindlessly for a while.
Mike has his toes painted green. Someone needs to put a stop to that.
Friday, July 30, 2010
Friday, July 23, 2010
Blerg
I'm tired, I'm angry, and I'm hot. Also, I'm bored.
There is a fairly large over/under on me keeping my car right now. I might be able to get it fixed for a mere $1000, or it could end up costing me in the ballpark of $3600. If the body was in good condition (which it isn't) I would be able to maybe get $5,000 out of it if I sold it after getting it repaired. Not to mention the breaks are beginning to squeak (I just replaced them two years ago, what the hell?) and the shocks are going out. I could get this all fixed and drive the car for several more years, which would make it worth the cost. But I'm growing tired of the Clown Car (for those of you who don't know, it is called the Clown Car because I am giant and it is smallish).
I used to think I was going to keep that car for another five years or so. I also used to think that Toyota was an amazing manufacturer and that I would only ever own Toyota's in the future. Now I'm not so sure. Because they knew about the problem that my car is having years ago and they did nothing to warn me of it. Had they told me about it when they got the first reports of the malfunction, I could have had them fix it for free and there wouldn't have been a chance of it damaging my transmission. But at 150,000 miles there is no chance of a warranty, and there is a very high chance that the transmission is already fucked. This could have been an easy fix. It could have been, but it isn't, and now there is a decent chance I'll have to plop down nearly four thousand dollars to get it repaired.
To put that in context, for less money, I could get a 95 Ford Mustang convertible. Granted I'd have to fly out to New York to get that, but that would be an awesome drive back across country. For some reason I've always wanted a Mustang convertible. I've never even actually driven one.
Looking through those car ads has brought up a pet peeve of mine. How hard is it to run spell check before posting something fairly important? I use Chrome so it does spell check automatically whenever I am typing something online, but even if I didn't have Chrome (which is free, by the way), I have three other programs that I could have run the spell check for me. If I was selling my car online I would make damn sure that the description was at least spelling-error free. Grammar is one thing. I suck at grammar and if I am writing fast I misuse punctuation constantly. But, again if it were an ad to sell something that was in the thousands of dollars, I would give it a once over and make sure that there weren't obvious grammatical errors everywhere.
I'm willing to bet that most Americans don't have that great of a grasp of grammar. We sort of teach it to kids when they are about ten and then expect them to remember it for the rest of their lives. But ten year olds aren't writing that complex of things. They go over it a little in high school, but they expect everyone to already have a perfect grasp of grammar so they don't really drill it in. If it were up to me high school English classes would be 1/3 grammar, 2/3 classic literature. That last part is because, lets face it, if you aren't made to read Moby Dick and A Tale of Two Cities and Pride and Prejudice when you are in high school most people will just never read them.
The website I'm getting set up is coming along. It's off to a bit of a slow start right now since no one is interested in writing for a website that doesn't yet exist apparently. But it will exist soon.
Lately I've been trying to decide if I am going to move out of this apartment once the lease is up. I like it save for the fact that there is no air conditioning. But the lease is up in September, so I'll only have to put up with the heat for another month or so at that point and then I can cost through winter before I have to deal with the heat again. I don't think that I can get a place as big as this for this price anywhere else in Reno. Of course once my roommate moves out it does beg the question of if I need this much space. On the other hand, I lived here for a while before he moved in and it felt like the right amount of space for me. I've moved enough that I have a pretty decent idea of what I need to have in my apartment to be comfortable and I don't think there are any places, even smaller places, that would be any more than fifty dollars cheaper per month than this place. Which doesn't really make it worth it for me. Having two bedrooms gives me the option of taking on another roommate later on if I get strapped for cash again, and not having to move is worth several hundred dollars to me since I goddamn hate moving. I've moved at least ten times in the last eight years. Granted a few of those times was just me moving back in with my mom for a few weeks/months at a time, but I still had to move all my shit. I think I need to try to find some stability in my life for once. I sort of hate Reno still, but I have nowhere else to go. I'm always chasing some mythical idea. Always thinking of nothing but escape. But nothing has come from my dreams of bigger and better things so far. It sort of feels like giving up to admit that I should just stay put in Reno for a while. But it seems like no matter what I try to do with my life I always end up back in Reno. Maybe its time to start making the best of it.
There is a fairly large over/under on me keeping my car right now. I might be able to get it fixed for a mere $1000, or it could end up costing me in the ballpark of $3600. If the body was in good condition (which it isn't) I would be able to maybe get $5,000 out of it if I sold it after getting it repaired. Not to mention the breaks are beginning to squeak (I just replaced them two years ago, what the hell?) and the shocks are going out. I could get this all fixed and drive the car for several more years, which would make it worth the cost. But I'm growing tired of the Clown Car (for those of you who don't know, it is called the Clown Car because I am giant and it is smallish).
I used to think I was going to keep that car for another five years or so. I also used to think that Toyota was an amazing manufacturer and that I would only ever own Toyota's in the future. Now I'm not so sure. Because they knew about the problem that my car is having years ago and they did nothing to warn me of it. Had they told me about it when they got the first reports of the malfunction, I could have had them fix it for free and there wouldn't have been a chance of it damaging my transmission. But at 150,000 miles there is no chance of a warranty, and there is a very high chance that the transmission is already fucked. This could have been an easy fix. It could have been, but it isn't, and now there is a decent chance I'll have to plop down nearly four thousand dollars to get it repaired.
To put that in context, for less money, I could get a 95 Ford Mustang convertible. Granted I'd have to fly out to New York to get that, but that would be an awesome drive back across country. For some reason I've always wanted a Mustang convertible. I've never even actually driven one.
Looking through those car ads has brought up a pet peeve of mine. How hard is it to run spell check before posting something fairly important? I use Chrome so it does spell check automatically whenever I am typing something online, but even if I didn't have Chrome (which is free, by the way), I have three other programs that I could have run the spell check for me. If I was selling my car online I would make damn sure that the description was at least spelling-error free. Grammar is one thing. I suck at grammar and if I am writing fast I misuse punctuation constantly. But, again if it were an ad to sell something that was in the thousands of dollars, I would give it a once over and make sure that there weren't obvious grammatical errors everywhere.
I'm willing to bet that most Americans don't have that great of a grasp of grammar. We sort of teach it to kids when they are about ten and then expect them to remember it for the rest of their lives. But ten year olds aren't writing that complex of things. They go over it a little in high school, but they expect everyone to already have a perfect grasp of grammar so they don't really drill it in. If it were up to me high school English classes would be 1/3 grammar, 2/3 classic literature. That last part is because, lets face it, if you aren't made to read Moby Dick and A Tale of Two Cities and Pride and Prejudice when you are in high school most people will just never read them.
The website I'm getting set up is coming along. It's off to a bit of a slow start right now since no one is interested in writing for a website that doesn't yet exist apparently. But it will exist soon.
Lately I've been trying to decide if I am going to move out of this apartment once the lease is up. I like it save for the fact that there is no air conditioning. But the lease is up in September, so I'll only have to put up with the heat for another month or so at that point and then I can cost through winter before I have to deal with the heat again. I don't think that I can get a place as big as this for this price anywhere else in Reno. Of course once my roommate moves out it does beg the question of if I need this much space. On the other hand, I lived here for a while before he moved in and it felt like the right amount of space for me. I've moved enough that I have a pretty decent idea of what I need to have in my apartment to be comfortable and I don't think there are any places, even smaller places, that would be any more than fifty dollars cheaper per month than this place. Which doesn't really make it worth it for me. Having two bedrooms gives me the option of taking on another roommate later on if I get strapped for cash again, and not having to move is worth several hundred dollars to me since I goddamn hate moving. I've moved at least ten times in the last eight years. Granted a few of those times was just me moving back in with my mom for a few weeks/months at a time, but I still had to move all my shit. I think I need to try to find some stability in my life for once. I sort of hate Reno still, but I have nowhere else to go. I'm always chasing some mythical idea. Always thinking of nothing but escape. But nothing has come from my dreams of bigger and better things so far. It sort of feels like giving up to admit that I should just stay put in Reno for a while. But it seems like no matter what I try to do with my life I always end up back in Reno. Maybe its time to start making the best of it.
Thursday, July 22, 2010
The Internet Be a Dangerous Place, say I
Things don't work out in life by going in a straight line. That is something that I have worked out. I take two steps back for every step forward. I go off in random directions. I can't seem to get anything to work out the way that I would like it to. I probably never will.
I spent some time thinking about what I would like to do with my life. I realized that I was always very interested in fiction and in journalism. So I am creating a site that will sort of incorporate those two elements.
It probably won't work out the way I'd like it to. But maybe it will. I can never tell. I can't work for other people. I just don't have that humble employee mentality. I always think that I know better than my bosses. The fact that I've been proven right more often than I've been proven wrong hasn't helped to get rid of those thoughts.
I used to think I would end up getting a pulitzer and a nobel and some other awards. I've realized that those awards won't be forthcoming in my life. I used to think I was a genius trapped in a lazy mind. I've learned that isn't the case. But I am smart, I am ambitious. I can't work for other people because I like to go my own way. I can't work for other people because they are always just working for someone else. I need to be at the top. I'd rather be at the top of a thousand failed experiments than at the bottom of a successful one.
I'll never be someone that you can tell your grandchildren "well, I knew him when..." I am just going to go my own way. I'll find a way to make money off of it. I'll be content for at least a few months out of my life.
This might not make a lot of sense to other people. I keep a lot to myself. But this is sort of a manifesto for myself. Hopefully it will make sense to others by the time I'm done.
I spent some time thinking about what I would like to do with my life. I realized that I was always very interested in fiction and in journalism. So I am creating a site that will sort of incorporate those two elements.
It probably won't work out the way I'd like it to. But maybe it will. I can never tell. I can't work for other people. I just don't have that humble employee mentality. I always think that I know better than my bosses. The fact that I've been proven right more often than I've been proven wrong hasn't helped to get rid of those thoughts.
I used to think I would end up getting a pulitzer and a nobel and some other awards. I've realized that those awards won't be forthcoming in my life. I used to think I was a genius trapped in a lazy mind. I've learned that isn't the case. But I am smart, I am ambitious. I can't work for other people because I like to go my own way. I can't work for other people because they are always just working for someone else. I need to be at the top. I'd rather be at the top of a thousand failed experiments than at the bottom of a successful one.
I'll never be someone that you can tell your grandchildren "well, I knew him when..." I am just going to go my own way. I'll find a way to make money off of it. I'll be content for at least a few months out of my life.
This might not make a lot of sense to other people. I keep a lot to myself. But this is sort of a manifesto for myself. Hopefully it will make sense to others by the time I'm done.
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