I think it was today. I'm not exactly sure any more. I think I feel a little guilty about the fact that I don't remember the exact day...but not really. The details of the thing aren't all that important. It happened around this time or within a day or so in either direction.
On or about this day, my senior year of high school, my father died. The hows and whys aren't important...it's enough that he died. For those of you keeping track, that was 18 years ago. It had just occurred to me that I've lived half my life without my father.
Now, before we all get horrified and upset and such, my purpose isn't to generate sympathy or evoke feelings of sadness or pain or whatever. Frankly, I believe I made peace with what happened years ago. Won't say it was easy, or pleasant, and I certainly won't say it happened quickly...but I'm pretty OK right now.
The point of mentioning this has more to do with the concept of Yahrzeit. If you don't know what that is, it's basically a rememberance of a departed loved one done annually. I stopped lighting the candles a long time ago, although there have been a few years when I did it because I felt the need to.
In any case, this is my new version of Yahrzeit.
I carry a picture of my father wherever I go. It's actually his former Teacher's Identification card. The ring on my finger is actually made by my father...he originally intended it to be my mother's engagement ring...but just like me, there was a lot he never finished. My mother thought I would like it, and I've worn it since she gave it to me about 2 weeks after my father died.
My father taught me how to scuba dive, how to swim, how to run phone cable, how to fix swimming pools, how to respect people, how to work hard, how to take care of family and friends, to care about people, that the little things you do for people are important...often more important than the big things. Lots of good things about my father.
It's true that I was young, and as such, I probably never really got to know him as a person...but everyone I've met who knew him told me all the things I think I knew...that everyone liked him. That he was a wonderful person. That there was a lot of good in my father.
Sometimes I miss him...mainly when there's something I want to tell someone, when I want a pat on the head, when I want to hear a well-done. The whole concept of approval of a missing parent is not unusual, and I think it explains a lot about my mindset about a lot of things. But today isn't about my autopsychoanalysis.
The Jews, as a rule, are about remembering things. They say that the best way to keep a memory alive is through telling stories, poems, movies, plays, music, shows...continue to introduce new people to something, and the memory of that thing will continue.
This is my way of remembering my father this year...and now other people who didn't know him will remember him too.
I love you, dad.
How fucking cool are my friends?
So I made the shirt, and I told Landry via e-mail, and she laughed, and immediately blogged it on her site, and I blogged back and, well, some days, I love my fucking life!
Landry's comment got me movin'.
And, come to think of it, it was Landry that motivated me to start this blog, too.
But since I was having such a good time with the whole shirts thing, I made her a shirt. I (We?) came up with the concept when we were shlepping things out of Adam and Jennifer's old apartment in NYC, and packing them in trucks to head to Bahstan. Which, in my opinion, is exactly when you need a sense of humor.
Anyway, we were all standing outside, waiting for Adam to return keys or something, and the conversation somehow slid to sexual-innuendo-related topics...which is fairly normal when Landry is around. Although, it should be said that usually it's not innuendo...usually it's explicit. Like the time we got around to discussing which colored hankies you're supposed to wear for fisting and on which side...and I think it was an early morning brunch. But whatever.
So the topic ended up being fluffing, and how, somehow, Landry never needs any fluffing. So I mentioned (I think it was me...) that she needed a shirt that said "No fluffing required." Whereupon she said, (and if you know her at all, you know she said it JUST like this) "I would TOTALLY buy one of those t-shirts."
So there's the gauntlet. Pick it up.
Oh, and the rest of you should buy shirts too. Because it supports me getting out of debt faster. And motivates me to keep working on new shirts.
So I'm making these uniforms for my uncle, finally. The cool part is that with the money I'm making, I'm going to finance some shirts for Limewear. Instead of the Cafe Press shirts that I usually sell at what I think are too high a price, I can bring my price way down, and have really nice printed shirts that have my woven labels in them. So I'm pretty excited about that.
I just have to decide which ones I want to print. I'm stuck between my Sniper shirts and my Size Matters shirts. I personally like the Sniper shirts...but I'm not sure which ones will sell better. The Size Matters shirts are certainly cheaper to print.
Anyway, it's a gorgeous day out, I got to do some Limewear stuff, and I'm off to LA in a few weeks for E3. Things are pretty good today.
When I worked at Modemmedia, that was the trick to client satisfaction. Of course, as everyone knows, in advertising, no matter what you get the client, they're never really happy...and even when they are, all it guarantees is that it ends up being a bigger pain in the ass when they screw you in three months.
In any case, I will aim for updating this every other day...and if I manage to update it for consecutive days? Well, then aren't you just the lucky ones?!
Today was a glorious day in the neighborhood. Went up to my uncle's house to show some samples for the lifeguard uniforms I'm printing for him. Took about 45 minutes once I was there. Then I spent about 2 hours wandering around the upper west side...really more walking down Broadway. Somewhere in there, I stopped off at Ollie's and had myself a tasty braised short rib with black pepper sauce.
I was wearing my Brian Leetch Toronto Maple Leafs game sweater...which caused some obvious Canadian to cheer when I walked past him. Weirdos.
Finally got home, finished cleaning up the apartment. I finally finished rearranging things, and the place looks pretty good, actually. I think I'll do some laundry tomorrow.
Maybe if I get really inspired, I'll clean out the equipment rack in my closet. I have this wire mesh shelf/drawer rack thing in my hall closet. In it, I have about 4 metric tonnes of computer hardware of various types and kinds. Video boards, hard drives, CD-ROM/DVD drives, sound cards, keyboards, a fleet of mice, assorted memory, and so on. I really need to just go through it and either sell it/give it away or scrap it.
Knowing me, I'll probably just keep it. Even if it doesn't work.
Yesterday, I had the worst headache ever.
It's not as if I'm a stranger to headaches...I'm actually pretty used to them. I have bad sinuses, I spend far too long looking at monitors, I sleep on too many pillows, and frankly, I eat so much chinese food, it's like I'm taking a 2000mg hit of MSG daily.
Yesterday, I had all of those headaches at the same time. One of those headaches when you can't even lie down on a pillow, because every time something touches your head, explosive pain shoots through your skull.
Sometimes, when I wake up with a headache, which doesn't happen as much as it used to, I'll grab two Tylenol Sinus, drink some water, and go back to bed for a half hour, and when I wake up again, I can function OK...makes me a bit late for work, but at least I'm there. Yesterday, that didn't work at all. At all. If anything, it hurt worse when I got up...that's when I called in sick.
Truthfully, I really really had a bad headache, and I couldn't see...like there were stars in my eyes it hurt so bad. I walked into the door frame while walking out of my bedroom. So I called in sick, got a cold compress, slugged down two more Tylenol Sinus, laid down and put the compress on my face.
After various showers, dosings, liquidations, and other headache remedy-like actions, my head stopped shrieking long enough for me to pass out at around 12:30pm. Whereupon I slept until about 7:30pm.
I have no idea what caused the headache...but it's like a bizarre Agatha Christie novel. There are so many suspects, it's hard to determine who actually did it...although it's always possible that it was all of them. Stress, poor diet, living downtown in NYC, noise, CRT emissions, poor posture, bad shoes, climate change, dust and pollen...no idea. All I know is that if I never get a headache like that again, it'll be too soon.
Oh, and I now have a ship in Puzzle Pirates. I bought it with Jeho...and it's a really cool deep cherry color with green trim.
I know...you can't stand how cool it is, right?
I've decided that I really really like doing this coordination on getting uniforms done. I like the "hard" aspect of it. You buy blank t-shirts, you coordinate artwork, you find a printer, you mix them all up, and then you get printed t-shirts back...and you make a ton of profit on resale. There's something really cool about manufacturing/sales that I really like.
I think I'm pretty much done with service industries. I like my job some days, and some days I just don't. I know I'm helping people most days...but I always get odd feelings about how I'm perceived.
There's nothing really unusual about that. I've always been the guy who no one really knows what I do...and in a way, I guess I let them keep guessing, because it gives me flexibility when the need arises. Which is odd...because I'd really much rather be known as the guy who does "this." Whatever "this" is.
Maybe it's because I get bored so easily...I like quick accomplishments that allow me to move on and feel like I've achieved something. And before someone tells me that big achievements are made up of a series of smaller accomplishments, I know that already. But somehow, I like being a problem solver and a do-er, rather than a "big picture" guy. In school, I loved being a cameraman...but I hated animating. I liked the craft of animation, but not the art. I'm a guy who executes. At least, I like to think so.
I think when I'm done with my current job, I'm gonna make shirts for real this time. I've gone through all this effort to set up Limewear and get woven labels and design business cards...and even set up a site...I suppose I should get out there and do for a change.
E3 is coming up...and I'm going. I hate LA...but whatever.
I got home, set up my new router-firewall-dhcp server, mucked about with stuff, and ended up taking a nap instead of writing more blog. I'm certain you'll all forgive me. And if you don't, I'll try to get over it.
I am impacting the world. Phyxie started blogging...and he is undoubtedly more clever and charming than I am, being British and everything. Actually, he's English...which are the only people who don't really mind being called British. Unless they're playing the footie, in which case they look at you as if you're mad as cheese if you call them anything but England.
In any case, back to work. I need to get uniforms for the folks here. Not uniforms...but like work shirts and jackets and stuff. More tomorrow.
Missed Saturday. Color me loser.
Anyway, saw Kill Bill Vol. 2. It was pretty darned good. I'd recommend it, especially if you liked the first one. It was cool...as much as the first one was all Asian in flavor, style, and technique, the second one is like an old western. Great acting, I think. Maybe I'll explain my interpretation of Kill Bill once I think it through more clearly.
Islanders got eliminated by Tampa Bay. No surprise there.
Montreal already wants to kill Alexei Kovalev. He's got 5 goals in 4 games...but he cost them a game with a stupid move. Herein lies the dichotomy of Alexei Kovalev...he's so good...and SO bad at the same time.
Playing more Puzzle Pirates. I love it.
Rearranged my living room to provide more computer desk space. What a geek.
And now, I need to run out to J&R to pick up a router, because now that I'm running off a cable modem instead of my 1.5MBit SDSL, I need the ability to hook up multiple machines to the connection. And no, I'm not going to use Windows Internet Sharing.
More later.
Movie night, ladies and gentlemen. Very exciting, indeed.
Spent all night last night playing Puzzle Pirates, completed my fly outfit, and made mad booty. Yaar!
When I went to dinner with my uncle the other night, I mentioned that I have a tshirt company. It's really not going all that well...mainly because I don't do anything to sell them, other than have them online. But anyway, my uncle wanted to know why I didn't mention it to him, because he buys 600 custom printed uniforms a year, plus or minus a few hundred for his business.
So he told me how much he pays...and I know I can beat that price, and still make some money. I spent a chunk of yesterday and this morning getting prices and such...and I have to admit...I really was enjoying myself. When Kyle told me how much fun he has running his business, I got vaguely jealous. Not like I want to kill him...but like I wanted to do that instead of what I'm doing now. I wonder if I could make a living making shirts. Anthony doesn't really do it...he does fashion consulting...but I wonder if I really gave it a try, if I could do it.
I'll have to find out some time. After I'm somewhat more out of debt than I am.
Oh, and my taxes got filed and paid.... Anyone wanna give me $11,000? I didn't think so.
Three days in a row and counting, baby! Fear me!
OK...to save time, I'm simply going to direct you to the recap of the Islanders-Tampa Bay game from Monday, and ask you to replace "two goals in 7 minutes" with "Martin St. Louis scoring a short-handed goal 10 minutes into the game" and it's basically the same thing.
I will, however, discuss the pre-game events.
I took off from work, and met my uncle and Kyle (the guy I went with on Monday.) This time, my uncle drove, and since he's way too good for McDonald's, we went to a steakhouse in Roslyn or near there. Phenomenal food. Just amazing. Great steak, awesome crabmeat cocktail, and the fried potatoes were the best of the lot. But of course, being with my uncle, we had to eat in about 20 minutes, because my uncle...well...he's definitely got the family "late to everything" gene. Didn't matter that much, really...I eat fast anyway...but it would have been nice to pace myself a bit more and enjoy it more, because it was awesome.
So, we take off, traffic here, traffic there, and then...we get to the game, and get seated just as the nice lady finishes the National Anthem.
Timing is everything.
Oh, and I remembered to ask Kyle about his statue site. You should check them out...they are WAY cool. It's www.lotussculpture.com. And I'm not getting any kickbacks or anything. Just helping out a fellow hockey fan. Even if he roots for the losing home team.
Two days in a row, baby! It's like a streak!
I'm at work, and today, I'm going to spend the majority of the day dealing with IT stuff, and some time working on an Engineering Cost Analysis. But as we all know, I'm also outta here at 3pm to hook up with my uncle so that I can go to another Islanders-Tampa Bay playoff game. Rawk!
I've noticed that the majority of my blog is about hockey and videogaming, interspersed with minor tidbits of work and day to day stuff in it. I suppose that pretty accurately reflects my life, actually. My life right now is about videogames and hockey and little bits of work jammed in there.
Last night, I played PuzzlePirates for HOURS. I can't believe I typed that. Anyway, I'm completely addicted. How would I describe it? Mmm...Puzzle-Based MMORPG with a pirate theme. My session went something like this: Log on, check the notice board for ships looking for jobbing crewmen. Sent out a pigeon to the ship that looked interesting (and paid the highest percentage of booty...) and was invited to join the crew as a jobber. I spent time working the sails...which was basically a tetris like game where I had to get certain patterns to fall in certain places. The faster I solved the puzzles, the faster the boat went. Occasionally, I would work the bilge, which was a puzzle like Gems, where I had to switch the places of two gems to get three of a kind in a row (or more) to keep the boat from sinking. Once, I worked carpentry, where I had to take patterned pieces of wood and try to patch holes in the hull in neat order to repair the ship.
All the while, the captain of this ship was navigating and steering it around, while others loaded cannons and fired on vessels we chased down. Once we did some damage to them, we boarded them, and had us a fight! Which was basically team tetris with some very cool twists. If we won, we got booty (treasure, you dogs!) and if we lost, we'd lose what was in our hold and such. Once we got back to port, the captain would divvy up the booty according to our performance at our tasks and our rank. I stayed on one ship for quite awhile, and got invited to join a full-time crew. No longer a jobbing sailor, I now was associated with a ship. Sorta like a guild, I guess.
I took my hard earned booty and bought a bright green turban...all I could afford. But as soon as I earn more, I'm gonna buy a green striped shirt, and a vest, and pants, and boots, and a bigger sword, and.... I also took a job in a distillery, where I tried to solve puzzles to distill rum. A very cool puzzle, and frustrating at times, but it earned me loot, and helped fill orders for people who were buying rum! On top of all this, stores are owned by players, and there's a huge trading model on top of it, to buy and sell goods and cargo and ship them between islands and on and on and on.
Very deep, very cool looking, free to try. I already subscribed.
I'm a sucker.
Anyway, back to work...gotta get this stuff done so I can leave early, and hopefully watch the Islanders get killed again tonight.
OK...so it's Tuesday. Which implies that, yet again, I've managed to not write in my blog every day. Sue me.
I got home late last night from the Islanders-Lightning playoffs game. I ended up with a ticket because my cousin, who is a huge Islanders fan, had to go to Paris all of a sudden with his girlfriend. Man, I hate when that happens.
So I end up catching a ride to the game with my cousin's friend Kyle. Kyle, who is from Connecticut, was a way cool partner for a rainy night adventure to Long Island.
Apparently, he's started an online business selling statues from Southeast Asia...and he supports himself doing it. If and when I get the URL, I shall definitely pass it on. In any case, Kyle was very laid back, in spite of the fact that he drove from Connecticut in the rain to pick me and some tickets up in Manhattan, then drove, just short of rush hour out to Long Island to get to the Coliseum...which we did in plenty of time to scarf down some McDonald's.
OK...now, in case you didn't know this about me, I am a New York Rangers fan. Being a New York Rangers fan is about as far from being a New York Islanders fan as you can be, and still be in the same sport. There are very very few rivalries in US sports that compare to this. I guess the Yankees-Red Sox thing is pretty close (might even be more than this, recently.) In England, Premiership Football is all about these rivalries. But in New York, being a hockey fan, you're a Rangers fan, or you're an Islanders fan. You're not both. You're never both. Both teams sell shirts that say "I only root for two teams: The New York ____(Rangers/Islanders) and whoever's playing the _______ (The other team.)" Oh, and they mean it.
So, there I am, a New York Rangers fan, deep in the belly of the beast. I have never seen so much ugly orange in one place in my life. It's terrifying.
But let me say this about my experience in Long Island: The Coliseum is an amazing place to see a hockey game. The place FEELS small. The seats are so close to the ice, when they say "beware of flying pucks," you feel like it's something you should pay attention to. They give away t-shirts during the intermissions...if you consider attractive young women with compressed-air t-shirt cannons to be "giving away t-shirts." And the place is LOUD. Not the normal roar of a sporting event. I have season tickets to the NY Rangers. I go to a MINIMUM of 40 games a year. I know what sporting events sound like when they get loud. This place was like standing next to an F-4 Phantom as it was taking off...only to have all it's munitions detonate simultaneously. I'm serious. I could NOT hear Kyle talking for the first 10 minutes of the game...which is exactly how long it took for the Lightning to score 2 goals, and thus shut the entire place up.
DiPietro looked scared in net for the Islanders, the Islanders were totally pumped up by being at home and all the noise and the scantily-clad women giving away t-shirts and such and took some really dumb penalties. I can't believe I'm writing this, but you don't give the Lightning those kinds of chances, because they will kick your ass.
And kick ass they did.
If there is a greater pleasure than watching the hated Islanders lose at home during a playoff game, I am not certain what that would be.
Oh, except that I'm going to Wednesday night's game at the Coliseum as well.
It's pretty amazing. I started this blog with the intent of writing in it every day. It's pretty hard to do ANYTHING every day. But I'll keep at it, and maybe I'll hit my goal of regular daily updates at some point.
Last night, I went to Chase's goodbye party. That would make the third friend leaving NYC in the last two weeks. (Although I suppose Jennifer and Adam really only count once...but they're both my friends.) I idly wonder if this isn't just some normal course of events. Let's be fair...I went to cities, lived there for a year or a few years, then bailed just the same way. I KNOW I have friends in Hong Kong who miss me and keep asking me to come back...and in London as well. Why should life be any different when I come back to New York?
In any case, we went to this place in the East Village on a Saturday Night, around the corner from where I used to live when I was first at NYU. I think 2nd Avenue has become more trendy...or maybe I wasn't paying attention all that much when I was living there. The food was OK, the drinks were decent. I left early-ish, because I was just fading fast. It was only 10:30pm, and I felt like I was passing out. It was kinda warm in there, it's true. Maybe that affected me, along with the very small amount of alcohol I had. (Less than half a mojito.) And I even took an hour nap before I left to go there. No idea why I'm so tired all the time.
Whatever...anyway, on my way to the party, I took a cab, and I will say this with no hesitation: Riding in a cab up the FDR with the window open on a nice night is without question my favorite part of living in New York. It's the wind, and the smell of New York, and the dark and the lights, and the water, and the sounds of city. I enjoy taking that ride during the day, especially a really nice day...but at night is when I think "I love being in New York."
I don't have less friends...I just have a widely separated group of friends. I wonder if it's generational. Or occupational. I probably could travel around the world and stay with friends in half the places I go.
When I was living with Mike Finkel, I was astounded at the number of people who used to crash on our (his) ugly orange couch or in our bathtub (no kidding) or on the floor. Literally one or two people a week the entire time I lived there. Some of them didn't speak much English. It just occurred to me that Mike was living my lifestyle before I even knew it existed. Mike has friends all over the world. And I mean everywhere.
I DID get my laundry done yesterday, though. So I got that going for me...which is nice.
Today, I'm doing my taxes...which I've done already...but I'm doing them again, because frankly, I can't figure out why I owe so much money. I hope I made a mistake...in my favor.
Maybe I'll go see a movie with Adam later...he said he wanted to last night...but it's going to rain.
OK, so I got home from work, checked my mail, ate a quick snack...then was so tired, I just crawled into bed and passed out until 10:30pm.
Woke up, ate some dinner, then decided to play a little Star Wars Galaxies. I haven't really played it in a while...and truthfully, I don't really "play" it in the traditional sense, even when I do.
SWG is probably the first game I've played that doesn't require me to head out and kill things in an endless cycle of boredom. I think all MMORPGs kind of do that. You're new, you get a basic weapon, you go outside "town" (whatever that is), and you kill things, pretty much non-stop, until you make the next "level" (whatever that is.) Then, you do that until you run out of new monsters to kill. For the next x months or years. Along the way, you pick up "phat l00t," whose sole purpose is often to make it so you can kill the bigger things faster or better.
If you think this is an exaggeration, play one. Play them all. I have.
SWG didn't make me do that. I'm actually an architect/decorator. All I do is make and sell buildings and furniture. To do that, I "build" harvesters, that collect materials over time, at some cost, I "assemble" these materials into items, then I give these items to my NPC vendors, and they sell them when I'm not around. In the last year, approximately, I've made about 15 million credits that way. That, I think, is a lot of money, gamewise. And killed pretty much nothing of consequence.
I suppose in a way, it's boring...but in another way, it's running a business. And I seem to be pretty good at it, which makes me happy...and I'm reliable, and have quality goods, and fair prices...all pretty fun, really. I like it.
I played that for a few hours, and now, I'm doing my blog entry...after which I'll probably surf the web, watch a dvd, or just go back to sleep.
Laundry tomorrow...yay. You know it's time to do laundry when you're wearing that underwear that doesn't quite feel right and the socks that lost all their elastic.
Long day. No idea why I'm always so worn out after work. It's not like I'm doing heavy lifting or anything. Spent today mainly messing with IT junk...again. I always feel like every time I go in early...best intentions in the world of tackling a project I'm supposed to be doing...I end up fixing laptops, unjamming printers, fixing Nextels. It's silly. We're interviewing a guy on Monday for doing most of this work...and frankly, I hope he's good at it.
I kinda wanted to play a game tonight...but kinda not. Just not into it right now. I have SO many games that I should finish. Several RPGs. Two MMORPGs that I'm flat out ignoring. Steel Battalion:LOC, Maximo: Army of Zin. Farcry singleplayer...and I'm totally not playing Call of Duty right now...which shows when I show up in the ijsmp server. Funny how the timing and aiming of each game is so radically different....
I think the Gameboy Advance SP is the coolest thing ever. I play it on the subway to and from work...pretty much it. I'm playing Fire Emblem...which is PERFECT for this. You can shut the game off at any time, and it goes back to that point when you turn the game back on. If you like turn-based tactical combat games with RPG elements, this is for you.
I owe money again this year on my taxes. I have no idea how I'm going to pay it...I'm still paying LAST year's taxes. Well, at least 2004 will be OK taxwise. I hope.
I think I'll watch a DVD or something, eat, and go to bed. Tomorrow's another day.
Chinese has arrived...more tomorrow.