Month: June 2000

Pride

I’m really proud of myself tonight.

I did my laundry without having run completely out of socks and underwear, and with only two months having passed since the last time I did it. This is pretty major; doing the laundry is, at best, a quarterly occurence in my washerless world.

Afterward, I made this glop with chicken, macaroni, and broccoli for dinner. I’m not nearly as proud of it. It’s good enough that I’ll finish it, but not good enough that I’ll ever make it again.

Things I love today:

Things I hate today:

  • Lukewarm onion rings with a double cheeseburger combo.
  • Laundromats.
  • A significant portion of Daly City.

I took a bit of an email break this weekend. I should be caught up tomorrow night, so if you think you’re being ignored, you’re happily mistaken…

Smoking Bad

A hangover without even gettng drunk the night before. That was Friday, with the lethal combination of not sleeping well the night before and then getting up and smoking like a chimney while finishing a mockup for a new porn site for hire the next morning.

I have to quit smoking very soon. But dammit, I’ve quit almost everything else. Smoking is all I have left. And when I’m working on websites, I’m a little like the stereotyped reporter in old movies: a cigarette constantly burning as I hover over the keyboard. I’m not sure how I’d function otherwise.

Yesterday’s unpleasantness is now smoothed over and I no longer feel like crawling into a hole and dying of embarrassment. OK, I still do, but it’s not nearly as severe as it was yesterday.

Dinner at Tad’s with Dan and Jamie last night. It’s nice knowing the owner; he’s a complete sweetheart who may not be long for this world. He gave us dessert and told us corny stories. We like Don.

And today my mission is to save Mark from becoming a lonely, psychotic old man sitting around the apartment training his killer cat to do God knows what…

The Problem with Websites

For those of you who have asked, I am indeed the adorable brown-haired tyke on the left in Wednesday’s front page picture. I have no idea who I was holding hands with, although I remember that I was vaguely related to him and he lived in Florida. I did, after all, warn you that I’m bad with relationships.

Don’t you hate it when you go to the grocery store just to get a gallon of milk, end up spending thirty bucks, and come home to find a phone message from someone you’ve really pissed off with an old (and now swiftly removed) journal entry? Especially when the last thing you wanted to do was piss them off?

It’s happened once or twice before; I was writing something that I thought revealed (comically or otherwise) what a head case I was. But it was read by another person in the scenario as a slight to them instead. And probably with good reason, as I read it again. As I mentioned in a desperately apologetic email response, the sponteneity of the web is both a blessing and a curse.

OK, you’re right. The average person probably doesn’t hate it when that happens because the average person’s evening probably ends with the thirty bucks worth of groceries. Which is probably best. After this, I think my evening’s going to end with a beer. Or seven.

If anyone has a spare hole around the house, I’d like to borrow it so I can crawl in and die, please.

Dating

A good friend emailed me this week. At the end, he off-handedly asked if I was seeing anyone lately. I stifled a little chuckle when I read it. I can’t even remember the last time I was actually dating someone, but 1995 comes to mind. I can’t even remember the last time I met someone who satisfied the three main criteria by being:

  • Worth the effort
  • Interested
  • In the same time zone as me

Being both a hermit and not particularly adept at relationships anyway, it’s probably a good thing for all concerned that no one really qualifies. I don’t really want to be dating someone right now, although I’ve been just socialized enough to feel a slight lack of self-esteem due to my terminal bachelorhood. I’ve often though that the right dog would give me much more satisfaction than almost any boyfriend I might find.

Yeah, I think I’d like a dog. But I’d probably change my mind the first time it took a shit on the carpet. Which suggests that a kid is pretty much out of the question as well. But that’s no surprise either…

Video Memories

For the past couple of weeks, I’ve been engaging in the tediously entertaining task of dubbing all my 8mm camcorder videos (dating back to 1994) to VHS. I’m in the middle of 1998 now.

A couple of things I’ve realized in the process:

  • My hairline has remained pretty constant since 1995.
  • The early videos (where I was using the video camera as a video camera rather than as a glorified still camera to get screen shots for the website) were much more entertaining.
  • I really porked out in 1997 and 1998. I think a good chunk of it’s gone now.
  • My apartment used to be the most disgusting, nasty pigsty in the world.
  • I hate my “conversational voice”.
  • I like my mom and dad a lot and I miss being around them on a regular basis.

It’s kind of fun going back and looking at the old stuff again. I’ve seen people I forgot I knew and places I forgot existed. And this is only after 5 1/2 years. It’s amazing how much San Francisco has changed (mostly for the worse, I’m afraid) in this short period of time.

I’ve watched Sarah’s hair grow from millimeters to inches. I’ve enjoyed close-ups of food from every diner and dive imaginable. I’ve seen myself having sex on numerous occasions. I’ve re-lived road trips and visits from friends. And, as always, I’m still more concerned with what I didn’t shoot than with what I did. South of Market, before it succumbed to yuppie cancer, would be one thing I’d like more of. More sex would be nice too, but I imagine I already have more of that on tape than most people anyway.

It was not a bad way to kill a few days, all things considered.