My last weekend here in Austin was pretty crazy. I finally ate at a restaurant I've wanted to eat at for a while. It's called Z'Tejas and I wanted to eat there because it had a cool name. I also went to the Austin Hot Sauce Festival and made a fool of myself by eating all the really spicy hot sauces and turning fairly red. Fortunately, they provide ice water to ease the pain. That was a pretty stupid thing to do for pretty stupid person who can't take hot sauce but still eats it anyway. Yes, I'm pretty.

There was a lot of drinking involved this weekend. I went to Lance Armstrong's bar called Six. He's won seven Tour de Freedom races. That does not make sense. He may be a stud on wheels but he can't count too well. I think he should open up a little bar next to it and call it "Plus One". It doesn't help that the bar is on 4th Street. Actually, I think he decided to open a bar after his sixth victory, hence the name. But the bar actually opened just a few months ago...not too long before his seventh victory. No, they didn't serve EPO. Lance Armstrong would never use that stuff and neither would any of his bar patrons.

If Sri's interweb exploration somehow leads him to this last paragraph (and it won't) he'd ask, "So, did you pick up any hotties?" And if I pointed that out, he'd prove me wrong by saying, "No, I'd ask, 'Were there any cute chicks?'" And I'd be ashamed that I don't know Sri as well as I thought I did. But he'll never read this so my head will stay high. Anyway, hypothetical Sri's hypothetical question leads me to my next point: dating.

Recently, in a non-sober state (probably caused by excessive boredom and not alcohol), I realized something really neat about dating, or romance, really. It's either true, or it sounds so deep and thoughtful and cool that it's gotta be true. I think dating is all about knowing yourself. It's not about finding true love or a tasty Italian dinner and a night of drunken squirming (AKA dancing) at a club. Dating is, at the root, discovering yourself. To find someone you connect with on enough levels to be able to spend countless hours together, you first need to know what sorts of people you can connect with. The hard part is deciding what sort of personalities you can connect with in all sort of situations, and finding all or most of those sorts of personalities in one person. So someone with the type of personality you may have a great time with at a club or at a LAN party may not be the type of person you want to hang out with at your local save-the-chickens rally. OK, bad example. But if there was a point in there, you got it. Too many romances head for rocky terrain because person A thought that person B, the hottie he or she met and had a great time with at a trendy coffee shop or Linux install-fest, would also be able to make a martini or configure OSX to person A's delight. That rarely happens.

(Note: The BS above is based on a scientific study of bad inter-planetary romances from bad science fiction movies done by an individual who is incapable of distinguishing between reality and fiction and likes to write sentences that run on forever and will now end this sentence.)

I hope that made no sense. The router's powering down and getting ready to roll out soon so this will be my last post from ATX. I'm going home tomorrow afternoon. w00t to y'all!

I don't know why I'm not posting that often now. I'm not that busy. Nor am I that lazy. Maybe it's because I'm lazier than that. I offer my semi-sincere apology and this half-assed catch-up post. Together, you have a sincere-assed apology post.

Well my time over here in Austin is drawing to a close. Next Wednesday, I'll be taking my last trip home. But that doesn't mean the fun needs to draw to a close! Last weekend, two other co-workers came by to visit and boy oh boy did we have a blast. And three weekends ago, some other co-workers came by to visit. Two different sorts of visits. Two different sorts of fun. I was going to write about it, but...too long. Maybe just a short summary.

That first visit, we did a bunch of tours. We hit the state history museum, the capital, UT tower, and saw downtown Austin in an amphibious vehicle. Oh, and we went to the Salt Lick for some tasty Texas BBQ.

The second visit, we went clubbing (yes, Carl want to a club), bar hopping (151 shots! w00t), shooting, and the Salt Lick. I wanted to go tubing too, but on Sunday, we were way too hung over to do anything. Dude, I'm a horrible shot. With a 12-guage shotgun, you get five shells in a box. My target only has four holes in it. I used all five shells. That's not good. Ah, good times.

Even though one weekend was way more active than the other, I ended up hella tired the Monday after. Ugh.

Now that I'm leaving, work is starting to get crazy. I had some pretty crazy work days this past week. Geez, this probably isn't a good time to leave. I could probably be pretty useful now. I kind of wish I was going to stay. It was basically my decision whether or not to go home but I guess I'm kind of missing home. After havings said that I want to go back, though, it feels that I'm just quitting. I don't think I've ever been far away enough to be homesick until now so this is probably the first time I've ever felt this way. And as soon as it happens, I just want to go home. As I always say, I've never made a good decision in my life. Apparently, I'm not about to start.

When I get home, there are all sorts of things I need to do. The problem is that I need to make all sorts of decisions. Things aren't going to be any easier when I go home. But at least I'll be home.

Back in Austin that is. This is my last trip over here. I'm really excited about going back home soon, but at the same time, I'm a bit sad about leaving this place. Austin is a great city. Too bloody hot (or raining too bloody hard) but a cool city nonetheless. I still can't wait to go back home to my family and friends.

Speaking of friends, thanks to all of you who expressed concern over my period of sub-standard happiness a couple weeks ago. It's nice to know that someone out there cares when things aren't so hot. But you should all be proud of me for managing to express my anger in words for the very first time in my life. Of course, many of those words started with "fuck" and ended with a space or a punctuation mark. I feel kind of guilty for cursing so much.

My trip back home last weekend was pretty relaxing. It's just what I needed. I saw Batman Begins, finally. It's a really good movie. I have a much better appreciation for the man who dresses up as a bat and clearly has issues. I'd like to go and read the comic book now, just to see what was true to the comic and what wasn't. I also managed to go to Coffee Society and Rojoz this weekend...twice for Coffee Society. Ahh, that was great.

Of course, no weekend is complete without a pinch of learning. This weekend I learned that dishwashing detergent tastes bad and I shouldn't a lot of water with detergent in it. I went on a ride up to Hunter's Point and back on Sunday. I was so very proud of myself for washing out my Camelbak that I didn't clean out all the soap. So I drank soap up and down the mountain. I tried to burp a bubble down to my friends below, but it really sucks not being able to belch on command. Oh well. But at the end of the ride, I was ready to puke, not because the ride was all that hard, but from all that soap. Ugh. So the lesson for this weekend is: don't drink soap! Or maybe it's wash your bladder completely before drinking out of it.

I haven't talked about my cars that I'm renting over here for a bit. My last one was a maroon Pontiac Vibe. It was kind of a strange car to drive. It takes a bit of getting used to because the front seat feels like that of a sedan but the shifter is more like that of a...well, non-sedan. And from the outside, it looks like a small minivan. Bah. Today, I picked up the last rental car I'll rent here: a white Toyota Corolla CE. Out of all the cars I've rented, this is the only one I have felt comfortable in right away. This one is a 2005 model, so it's nothing like my 1990 model that I used to drive. All of the cars I've rented have a special feature. The Cavalier's special feature was that it sucked. The Grand Am's feature was it's unwillingness to let me lock the doors with the power locks. The Vibe's special feature was that there was something stuck behind the glove compartment so every time I made a turn, there was some really irritating rattling. The best special feature goes to the Corolla. The inside of the trunk, there is a handle that lets a doomed mob informant free himself if he's ever trapped in there. But why would the mob drive a Corolla? Hmm...

There comes a time every 12 months to a year when I realize that I need to stop spending all my time at work and start figuring out what this whole "life" thing that people rave about is. That time is now.

Everyone has their own little problems. As flawless as I may seem, I have little problems too. But my problems tend to cancel themselves out. For example, I have found that I'm a bit obsessive compulsive. I like things very clean, neat, and orderly. Messes irritate me like moss irritates a non-rolling stone. Ha! Bet none of you knew that about me hmm? Of course not. That's because I'm also lazy. So while a spot of ketchup on my snappy white shirt might as well be a fire ant nibbling on my ear lobe, it's not like I'm going to do anything about it. I'm lazy and laziness balances out the forces of hard work in the world. Sorta like the Dark Side bringing balance to the Force. Keep reading young padawan. Have a point Master Jedi does have.

At work, I get annoyed by loose ends that haven't been picked up or half-assed jobs that haven't been full-assed . Usually, I just sit there and bask in the warm annoyance of it all. But every now and then, I do something about it. Yes, sometimes I take charge and fix a problem. This often gets carried away, so I end up trying to do other things and even more things. At a certain point in time (such as now), I come to the realization that I'm not being lazy enough and need to take it easy.

So now I'm going to try to take it easy. I've started by going to sleep at 8:30pm last night. Woo hoo! Yay for me! The hard part is going to be at work. The whole "flex time" thingy is great and all, but I need to start getting lots of work done while actually at work, and doing less of it while I'm not at work. That's kind of hard to understand, so I'll say it again in Italian (thanks to babelfish, of course). Devo cominciare ottenere i mucchi di lavoro fatti mentre realmente sul lavoro e fare meno lavoro mentre non sono sul lavoro. I have no idea if that means anything. Anyway, like Osaka-san, I need to get it together. It's time to work hard, play harder, and eat red bean paste buns.

Having said that, I'm actually too lazy to do anything about becoming lazy again. So that was just a bunch of processed meat sliced into sandwich-ready slices.

Welp, since my last update, I had some co-workers come in to Austin for a weekend of fun, BBQ, and more fun. We did have some fun. But I'll write about that later. Trying to be lazy here, eh.

Can things get worse? Of course! Now I'm feeling sickly. I'm going to blame it on stress because it's a good excuse. I used to not believe in stress because it was a stupid excuse. Now I still don't beliee in stress, but I'm willing to use it as an excuse. That's what I get for getting older.

Worse part of this is that I missed a fun-fun happy hour tonight. I was looking forward to that all week. Oh well.

Some co-workers are coming to visit this weekend. That will be fun.

F U C K! My company doesn't pay for meals on weekends while I'm out here. Weekends are personal time, they say. That makes sense, but maybe someone could have told me that before I ate all those big tasty meals. Fuck! Actually, someone told me specifically that I could expense my meals on the weekend. Fsck that. Well, had I known that, I wouldn't have gone out to eat...uh, ever.

The maid came again today. She didn't give me any new towels! Argh! And she took away the wash cloth and hand towel that I was using and didn't give me another one. WTF? On the plus side, she did take those cans and bottles that I've been meaning to recycle away. But why didn't she come yesterday BEFORE I took out my trash?

Yesterday, I really wanted to write something about rabbits. Something like: Rabbit ribbit frog. That is a complete sentance in some languages. Just none of the languages ever spoken on Earth. I wrote all that bullshit last night and I forgot to put something in there about rabbits. That really pisses me off.

Kinko's has this service where you can upload a file to them and they'll print it out. You can then pick it up at a branch about 2 hours later. Sounds nice, doesn't it? I thought so. On Sunday I decided to print some stuff using that online printing thing. I had three pages to print and it cost 34 cents. Not too bad. I picked a branch that was near where I would be in the afternoon so I could pick up my printouts while I was there. My pick-up time was at 3:15pm, but when I showed up at 5pm they were having problems downloading files or something so it wasn't ready. I didn't have time to wait around (had to meet some people and eventually end up at a country-western gay bar, yay) so I left my phone number. By the time I was too far from the place to go back, they called me and said it was ready. Fuck. I had to make another trip down there to pick it up. I did that yesterday afternoon. Not too bad. I wanted the three pages printed double-sided and in black and white. My envelope contained three pages, single-sided, and in color. Here's the best part: later in the evening, I get two e-mails from Kinko's. The first one said that my order was ready to be picked up. That was sent about an hour after I picked it up, and two days after my desired pick-up time, and two days after it was ready. The second one was even better. This e-mail asked if I was 100% satisfied with their service. Ha! Was I 100% satisfied? Hmm, they were late and they got my order wrong. While the printouts weren't so important that I needed it right away and while I would have liked the first two pages to be on one sheet of paper (easier to hunt for while on the plane), getting everything about my order wrong doesn't earn anyone 100% satisfaction. And then they send me an e-mail asking if I was 100% satisfied? Whoa, that's too much. Since the steam was still foaming out of my ears when I saw the e-mails, I replied. Yeah, I've gotten bold since my you-will-starve-on-the-weekends-you-maggot company sent me out here.

I've been cranky all week long but I think that's all the anger I have for now. Unlike weirdness, however, anger comes with free (and unwanted) refills. So there'll be more angriness in the future. Weirdness is something ya gotta earn.

Happy August. People say my posts are getting weird and I'm having fun imagining certain people I know going googly-eyed reading this rubbish. But too weird is bad. I've been pretty busy recently. I have work to do during the day (amazing), and more work to do during the evenings. Not to mention I need to perform tasks that allow me to stay fresh, alive and beautiful. Well, all right, not fresh. As a result, there is a lot of weird in me that needs to get out. Please bear with me as I jettison some, uh, weirdsam.

Here goes...

Blubber blubber beef. Fuzzy chipmunks swim along the tree tops wearing hats made of nylon. Alligators aren't animals, but baboons beat berries. Howling at the twinkie makes twinkling in a hole pretty bad in a bad way. Adaptive and quantitative qualities of algorithmic strategies bring coffee to a boil. But only under an intense mountain of marshmallows who sing. A cow is a dog is a deer is a pig. That's bass ackwards. If you're going to zonk, zonk big. That way, tiny green crab people won't crawl into your left nostril while you git jiggy wit bit. Mosquito bites suck, I have them all over my legs. Ow, it really stutters when I move from right to left but it only sputters if I wiggle a toothpick. Holy fish sticks Bert ran for the bait mobile. Where's my beet-a-rang? Boom, an otter just sneezed and spilled enough pastrami to commit without saving. Alien finger? Not on this pillow. I prefer the space-saving greenosity that protrudes from the wall...of doom. 100110100010101010105101010000100!!! Why must Altoids approach the wisdom of the ancients and forget to chew before swallowing? The soot coming from the tip of a cherry pit usually leaps across pool parties like a, like a, like a...

Uh, that's it. I'm all out of weird.

I think I need to end this crap with a: hahahaahha lol.