NBA.com: Julius Hodge 2005 NBA Draft Chat Transcript
Jenzen: Julius, what you wearin?
Julius Hodge: (10:38 PM ET ) I’m wearin a creme suit with a mint shirt with some Italian cut shoes. I knew, more than anything, not where I’d be drafted, but that I’d be the best dressed guy on the night. I almost went with a lime shirt, but my mom liked this one. That’s what counts!
My mom died 20 years ago today. June 27, 1985. I kind of feel like expounding on it, but I will do that later. I just think it is notable. I don’t really know what it’s like to have a mom, so I don’t know what I have been missing out on all this time. I have always felt like it might be a blessing in disguise that I was so little when it happened.
My dad called today to see how my trip went. I kind of think he also wanted to check in with me today because of the significance of the date, even though we have never really discussed that before.
I owe him a whole lot. I can’t even imagine what it must have been like for him, and I don’t even think there’s any point in trying to figure it out. I was smart enough to call 911, and to try to call him at work, but my neighbors were too dumb to realize that one has to dial the area code to get through to Hershey from Mt. Gretna. So he was 29 with a wife and a 4-year-old son, and then one day he comes home from work to find out that his wife died with absolutely no warning. Unimaginable. Of course he remarried when I was 7, and though I didn’t get along with Jill until after I came to State, they are happy together and she is great for him, and they begat my brothers as well, who for some reason idolize me. We all act like a big family now, which is just great. My dad is not a broken man by any means. He’s the strongest man I can conceive of.
So anyway, he called. We just chatted about my trip to Baltimore, and the 4th of July, and granite countertops, boats, kitchen renovation, the usual. One day I will talk with him about the Dark Times, if he feels like it. My old man is the nicest guy in the world, and I can’t bring myself to ask about this for some reason; maybe at some point I will. It was nice to talk to him, and I think he was glad to talk to me.
You know how, when making cookies, and you roll out the dough and you use a cookie cutter, at the end there’s a misshapen, jagged bunch of refuse left?
That’s how they made Maryland.
I’m going there this weekend to visit Justin and Melissa and the Family Russ. Should be a good time. Might even be a special appearance by Miss Aimee, which would be nice. I think that the plans involve hiking, drinking, eating seafood, etc. I look forward to that.
Google Maps now displays arrows on one-way streets, which was one of its major shortcomings. It is helpful, but it’s also about the only thing that could make a map of DC more confusing than usual.
Now, when are they going to start putting a scale on the maps?
Hey, look! Another news story in which local government mentions that Hillsborough Street needs to be fixed! I think I may grow old before I see a story about anything actually being done.
WRAL.com – Raleigh Mayor Proposes Solution To Repair Part Of Hillsborough Street
If you think I can’t make up my mind about the visual style of my journal, you’re right. Mainly I’m just cycling through premade themes from alexking.org’s repository of WordPress themes. I’ll probably end up heavily modifying one of the themes I like with some CSS changes and added photos of my own. God knows I’ve taken enough photos.
Oh, speaking of which, I also can’t decide whether I want the Canon Powershot S2 IS. Right now, I’m leaning towards yes. It just came out, and a ton of people bought them last week due to a ridiculous Dell deal that brought the price down from $500 to $350. It supposedly has some good features (great macro, better low light performance than the S1 IS) and some major problems (build quality, noise at any ISO other than the lowest). I’ll let the dust settle and read some real reviews once they come out.
Now that my roommate has moved out, it has become clear that I do not own much. For example, here is the list of living room furniture that I own:
When I buy a house, I am going to need
Okay, I might not need all of those things, but I do need some. What I don’t have could fill a warehouse. And furniture is EXPENSIVE. Anyone have any bright ideas on where to buy quality furniture that won’t cause foreclosure on my home?
I just ordered a microwave. I thought about more “necessary” items first, items whose job can’t be done by anything else, like a vacuum cleaner. But who doesn’t have a microwave? (I passed on this gem from NewEgg. ‘Cooks superiorly honorable roast in virtually no time off one’s watch!!’)
Yesterday Mandy had scheduled a feast of ham and vegetables, and I was planning to go to the Billymander’s lair to partake. I had some time to kill, and when I have time to kill, I usually end up in Cameron Village. It was Hot out yesterday, and so I bought a Discover magazine and sat in Starbucks with a marginally tasty cold drink for a while to cool off. After I had cooled off, I called up Mandy to find out whether I needed to bring anything to dinner. To my surprise, she said she was actually coming over to the Teeter and therefore could give me a ride from there to her place. A happy coincidence.
I began walking around the store, picking up provisions here and there. I got to the breakfast aisle and lo and behold, the delicious Nature Valley granola bars were on sale, buy one get one free! This was pleasing to me, and obviously had been pleasing people all day, as the pickings were sort of slim. I began moving boxes around to find which flavors were available.
Someone showed up next to me. The granola bars sure are popular!
“How are those?” she asked.
I gave her a friendly glance and expressed my satisfaction with them. “And they’re pretty healthy, too,” I said. “Actually, they’re pretty filling, and if you eat one with a drink, it pretty well fills you up.” I thought this was nice, I was having a conversation with my fellow shopper about nutrition.
“Well, if I bought them, I’m afraid I’d eat the whole box,” she said with a laugh. And as she said that, I heard a thappita-thappita-thappita.
I turned to look, and found that the noise was generated because she was slapping her belly to highlight the fact that she was. . . generously proportioned. Percussively slapping her belly at fast cadence with both hands, like she was doing a conga drum solo. Thappita thappita thappita!
This was the first time I really looked at her. She was about my age, and pretty in the face, and was wearing a pink shirt. She probably weighed a few pounds more than me, and I weigh a little over 180. Furthermore, she seemed proud of that, which is cool. Game to make self-deprecating comments about it.
“I’m on a seafood diet,” she said, grinning.
Well, that’s one of the oldest one-liners in the book. I can finish that line, and I did, aloud. “Ah, so you see food, you eat it.”
(Now, based on her reaction, that’s what she meant. But only later did it occur to me — oh God! — What if she really WAS on a diet that, like, consisted only of shellfish and shrimp! What if she was going to continue and begin telling me about some sort of crab dip that was tasty and lowfat, and was opening her mouth to say that, and I cut her off with a snappy “what, you see food, you eat it?” When I finally did think about this — EIGHT HOURS LATER — I felt like quite the ass, but also laughed out loud at myself for a good five minutes.)
Anyway, she didn’t miss a beat. She laughed and said “Yup!” and headed back towards her cart. We had a nice little chat about nutrition. Turns out she was a nutrition major, actually. Then she turned around and came back towards me. “Yeah, I don’t want to do anything about it. I figure my future boyfriend, whoever that might me, will like a little bit of meat on his woman.”
I just nodded and smiled. To each their own, and it’s good to be happy with your own body. I sometimes assume that all girthy people want to lose weight, but I try to catch myself, because what matters is being happy. That’s the bottom line. “Well, good luck,” I said, in a heartfelt tone, not the one I usually use. I smiled at her, and she smiled back and headed to her cart.
I went back to looking at the nutrition info of the granola bars. Then, I heard her speak again, with more than a tinge of dementia:
“I mean, come on! Look at these BOOBS! What man wouldn’t love these?”
She was charging at me, eyes wide open, NOT smiling, one breast in each hand, hefting them alternately upwards.
That was really a WTF moment.
It was like a two-stroke cookie-powered engine powering the Angioplasty Express went off the crazy-rails and was careening straight at me.
What do you say in that situation? All I could muster was “. . . nice. Very good,” delivered with that W-esque smirk of mine. I went back to reading the boxes.
Never had I read Nutrition Facts so intently. Those granola bars are Not A Significant Source of Vitamin A, Vitamin C, or Calcium.
I guess she was able to regain control, because she got near me and then turned around and went back to her cart for a third and final time.
Was this supposed to turn me on? I guess it was (it did not). I guess she had amorous intent. About one thing, there was no need to guess: whether a bitch had done gone crazy. Cause she sure done.
I guess I should be flattered. Beggars can not be choosers. But that girl just did not do it for me. In the heat of the moment, when I had to make a split second decision, my first reaction was flight. I wanted to run away down the aisle and hide in the open freezer display, which, coincidentally enough, was filled with frozen shrimp.
As I threatened to the other day, I have moved to a new journaling system. It’s called WordPress. I think it will work pretty well. In fact, you’re looking at it right now.
I really like the fact that it uses PHP and MySQL.
The look and feel will be changed. There are tons of themes available for it, and I might make my own as well if the mood strikes me. It’ll just take a little CSS tweaking.
I have imported all 722 of my livejournal entries, so they came along. That is really nice. Plus it’s searchable. The comments did not come along, unfortunately, but that’s no big deal.
Also, there is an RSS feed, for those of you who are into that.
I will add more links to y’all’s journals as well.
I don’t know how to integrate it into my front page at this point. Maybe it will become the front page, I don’t know.
