Tony’s Journal

Starting off the week with some Barry White. Oh, hell yes, y’all. Actually, I remember this song from my early childhood for some reason. It reminds me of our elderly neighbors’ house. Dark, dingy, wood paneling, shag carpet. But hey, Barry White is Barry White.

Appropriate, too, as Cynthia is coming home today. Additionally, we found out at 4 pm that Miami will succumb to the ACC’s amorous advances.

I got a radiator for the Volvo. Once it gets up and running, it will need a name, much like Melissa’s Archimedes, Chris’s Fireball and Fireball II; Billy’s Billy Coaster, etc. It’s gotta be some kind of Swedish name, as it is a Volvo. I’m thinking something like Sven or Hildegaard or, uh, Peter Forsberg. I say “up and running,” which is kind of misleading, since once it gets to the 29 Dixie it’ll sit on its boxy metal ass for some months. But it can still have a name.

Frikkin coffee filter collapsed; grounds dropped in and left me with chunky style coffee. Sigh.

Did I do anything this weekend? I don’t remember. Jim wasn’t there, which is unusual. This entire past weekend was spent working on the (whatever I shall call my monstrosity of mp3 playing) and watching VH1’s “I Love the 80s” marathon. I think I have seen all episodes except maybe 1985 now. It’s the best show on TV. A shame that there were only ten years in the 80s. The celebrities and comedians they have on that show are hilarious. Mo Collins (or whatever her name is, apparently from MAD TV, a show I have never watched more than 10 seconds of) singing “Addicted to Love” got stuck in my head for the rest of the day yesterday. Not Robert Palmer’s version, mind you, but this woman on TV singing it while exaggerating his voice.

The lights are on
But you’re not home
Your mind
Is not your own. . .

Yesterday evening Mandy made lots of stuffed peppers out of the 6 billion she brought home last week. They were good. I over-Tabasco’d mine, which was unfortunate, and I reminded myself of the episode of Chef! I saw on Saturday night, where he goes off on some customer who asked for salt. Mandy made chocolate pie for dessert too, but i guess i went to bed before that was eaten or something, since I don’t remember eating it.

And now it rains torrentially. Cynthia wants seafood tonight; it looks as though it may float itself to the door.

And there you have it, a journal entry fractured by a short attention span.

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Ryan: I’ve eaten raccoon, quail, bear, squirrel. . .
Tony: They should allow you to hunt squirrels for food around here, and on campus. They’re nice and fat around here, what with Chick-Fil-A and all.
Ryan: Yeah, they should declare open season on ‘em. You’d have a lot of folks coming up here from eastern North Carolina, that’s for sure.

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The Onion has a little story about Wachovia today.

Banks Introduce 75-Cent Surcharge For Using Word ‘Bank’
NEW YORK—Executives from the nation’s 50 largest banks announced Monday that, effective July 1, all customers will be assessed a 75-cent surcharge each time they use the word “bank.” “Now, each time a customer uses the word ‘bank’ in either its spoken or written form, 75 cents will be automatically deducted from his or her account,” said Kenneth Nordland, 54, president of the American Banking Association. “For instance, if you say, ‘I bank with Bank of America,’ that would cost you $1.50.” Nordland added that customers wishing to avoid the penalty are encouraged to use the alternate phrase “financial institution.”

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I’ll start with a nice quote from WRAL, evidently convinced that its readers/viewers are either terrible at math or unsure of how many genders there are:

At the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 60 percent of students are female, compared to 40 percent male.

Yeah, so yesterday was weird, starting in the afternoon. My dad wanted to come by and give me a note that Mary (my late grandpa’s wife) wanted me to have, so he came on down to campus in his “performance vehicle” Volvo 850. He brought my brothers along. Met him outside Page at 4:30 or so, and he gave me the note, which was a card from Mary. She had written me a nice note, and I’ll have to get back to her with my response to it. Along with the note was a check for a bit of money that my grandfather had left for me. That was nice, I guess, and I do appreciate it, but that’s not the way that you want to get money. I feel almost bad about it.

Meanwhile, and unrelatedly, my dad asked me if I had given any more thought to driving. This is interesting, because I actually had been, I had been looking at autotrader and eBay motors for some general ideas on how much an auto would cost. So my dad was thinking of getting rid of his cream puff, the 82 Volvo 240 DL, since no one drives it anymore. He will give it to me for free, it just needs about $1000 worth of work done to it, mostly body work. I can pay for that out of my new money, but besides that, I don’t want to spend much of that money. So I think I will pay to get it fixed up, and if it’s not costing my dad any money (taxes, etc) by just sitting there, I’ll wait on the rest of the expenses. By that I mean title transfer, tags, INSURANCE, etc. I’d rather just save up a bit for insurance, since it is an unexpected expense that can really start whenever I want it to. It’ll be a big expense, too, since I have been a licensed driver for 0 years. Sigh. I am excited about having a car and stuff, but there is a lot to worry about with this. Oh well. There are far worse things than a free car.

In other news, I am working on a project, and being helped by my fellow nerds Billy and Chris. As some of you know, my inexplicable love for the 8-track caused me to buy a couple of stereos, neither of which particularly worked correctly. There is one with a silver face on it, and I am going to hollow that one out and turn it into a mp3 component player. It will be nice if — and this is a big ‘if’ — we can get it working right. I am fairly sure I can put a computer inside the case. But if I can do all the cool little things that I mean to, well, that is yet to be determined. Bought a Dremel last night, so noe I am able to cut nearly everything in our house in half, or at least engrave it.

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The past couple of days have been good. That does not happen all that often. But let’s see:

• Found out that a friend from when I was in preschool – preschool! – in Pennsylvania! – just happens to go to State
• Talked to Professor Sandy Stallings for a half-hour
• Did not get rained on nor hit by lightning from the apocalyptic-looking storm
• Got offered a handsome sum to do some light web page work
• Reached the lowest weight I have been at since I porked up after last spring’s Big Weight Loss

And Bo tonight! I won’t gain too much back based on one Bo.

Tomorrow, I get to move boxes (Cynthia’s grandma is moving) and see Bridget afterwards!

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An Account of Last-Night.

So last night I got home from work after getting a haircut and decided to get a little exercise in. I stole and idea from Jim and jumped rope. It is much more tiring than I remembered it. Then, while I was in the shower, Dayo arrived with two friends, Howard and Greg. This happens a lot, me coming downstairs half-clad and finding Dayo with strangers in my home. Anyhow, Dayo was flying back to FLA last night, so he wanted to go to dinner. We picked Two Guys and had a good meal. Then it was off to El Rodeo for margaritas, then Dayo and his people departed.

Tad picked me up with Brock & the Jew (Daniel? I don’t know, he’s just called the Jew) around 8:15, as I had been recruited as a trivia ringer. It was trivia night at the Saucer, in which the prize is free beer. We got there and the place was pretty packed, mostly with men (hence one member of the group referring to the place as the Flying Sausage). Apparently Jamie and Jeremy had been there since like 6 pm. In the first three rounds, we did not do so hot, though we did come up with some good answers, and our group begin acknowledging that I sometimes made good guesses. Round Four was when we came on strong. As in, we got a perfect 10/10. Got us a shiny laminated $20 free beer card, and there was much rejoicing. By now our table was yelling about every damn thing, and this undoubtedly was pissing the other groups off.

Next came round 5, the final round. I had been told that round 5 was genereally a “name that tune” round, and I would have done pretty well on that. However, it was just more trivia. We did really well on this too. I got one wrong — I said that most bellybutton lint was gray, but it’s not, it’s blue? I dispute that. Anyhow, we ended up in a tie that round, so a representative from each group had to go up to the front for the playoff. Everyone in our group pointed at me in their stupor. Tense moments indeed for me, as I don’t like being put on the spot, but what was I going to do? My group clearly needed more beer if they wanted to completely destroy their livers that night. I staggered up to the front. Other guy got the first question, and he did not know the answer, but I did. Unfortunately I couldn’t “steal” his question. That turned out handy, as the tables were turned on my question. He didn’t know his second question either, but then came my turn.

What organ’s volume is measured with a spirometer?

Being fairly inebriated by this point, all I could think about was the Spirograph, where you stick the pen in the toothed plate and spin it around to make pretty little circular fractal-looking things with radial symmetry and whatnot. However, I did see “spire” in there, so I said “lungs,” and that was correct.

I turned around to the people at my table and they rejoiced even harder than before. Another $20 free-beer card, and this one was given directly to me by all ny new drunk friends. This was especially exciting for me, as I don’t really drink a lot beer. I’m learning though.

But I do have it, and plan to go back next week to win free beer for the usuals. I know those guys go every week, and they did make room for me, which was nice of them. The one dude, Jamie, is trying to get with one of the waitresses who wasn’t there last night. I don’t think she knows this, but he is more loaded than a fat guy’s baked potato, so it would behoove her to submit to a wooing by him. Maybe next week we can see how that unfolds.

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I got a Dell Axim, it is fun. Set up a wireless network in our house so that I can nerd it up from anywhere in the house.

On Wednesday, my dad came to eat lunch with me and Aaron at Mitch’s, and his car got towed from behing Sylvia’s. At that point I was very angry at Sylvia’s (yeah, he shouldn’t have parked there, and it was his own fault, but it’s my dad) and I was thinking of ways to disguise an arson. Then later my dad calls and tells me that Sylvia (or whatever the guy’s name is) called up the tow truck driver out of the goodness of his heart and got him to take my dad to his car and give it back to him, all for free. So I dropped the arson plans. Now I want to buy a pizza from Sylvia’s.

Jim is here for a week or so while he sits and is pleased that NG is about to hook him up with a sweet job. ATTN FRIENDS: Please to be getting jobs where you can get your friend Tony a job. Ah well, it’s good for him, he is already spending lots of money in his head.

It rains again, and I rejoice.

Hey man, that suit is you! Ooooooo-wee! You’ll get some leg tonight for sure! Tell us how you doooooooo!

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