Stamp Your Feet.
It’s a two gig weekend for me. The day between gigs is always interesting as I’m in total night owl mode, but I’m surprisingly keeping busy around the house with a few home improvement projects. Lag bolts, beams and a few other devices make for an interesting experience for all.
I’m such a geek.
I’ve had this song in my library for a couple of weeks and have been “force feeding” it to the Friday night crowd at the bar. Last night they finally gave in and admitted that yes, it is a good song and yes, I know what I’m doing. It packed the floor with more than just the LaDonna fans.
Here’s the latest single from Donna Summer, it’s called “Stamp Your Feet”. By the way, it was written in part by Danielle Brisbois, who played Stephanie on “All In The Family” all those years ago.
Quite frankly I fucking love this track.
Random Thoughts Under The Sheets.
It’s been a while since I’ve had the opportunity to lie in bed and play around on the computer at the same time. It’s quarter ’til 8 and Earl has been at work for an hour already. My morning classes have been canceled; apparently we’ve learned all the we are going to learn in those classes this semester. So I lie in bed surfing the internet.
Is it unusual that I’ve been sleeping in the nude since I was 13 years old? I can’t imaging getting all suited up in garb just to go to bed. When I was a kid my mom would wake me up for school and there I’d be, bare ass hanging out from the covers. Even when I go camping and it’s 35 degrees and I’m in a sleeping bag; I’m still naked with a hat on.
My dreams from last night were a combination of school activity, camping and UFOs. It’s fun when your mind mixes unrelated topics together and presents a movie in your head that makes perfect sense when you’re watching it. I know the source of all the elements of the dream so I’m not surprised that my brain was trying to work it all out last night. It was entertaining and made for an interesting entry in my dream journal. I write in my dream journal almost daily. I’m finding that it’s rare to remember about 90% of your dreams like I do.
When I was outside getting the mail yesterday afternoon a huge sonic boom shook every house and scared the hell out of Tom (he puffed up and went running on to the porch and scratched at the door to get in). I was standing in the driveway at the time. I could feel the boom as well as hear it and it popped my ears. NEADS (North East AirDefense Sector) is saying that the sonic boom was possible as there was a lot of air traffic but they are not confirming anything. The message boards for the local television station are telling all sorts of stories: everything from natural gas explosions to a technology test at the decommissioned (wink, wink) air force base going awry. One person explained that sonic booms are no longer possible because the Concordes no longer fly. What a dipshit.
I was tempted to drink a bunch of beer last night and try the remaining questions on my math take home test while I was drunk. I didn’t do that though. I drank iced-tea instead. It didn’t make any of the questions easier. I have two questions left. The test was designed for the 50 minute class period. As of 11:30 last night I had spent roughly four hours on the exam. I can’t wait for the excitement of the two day final next week. That’ll take me a month.
I suppose I should get up and start my day. It’s just that these blankets are so comfy.
Quicky.
I’d write a witty, stirring blog entry tonight, but I’m on hour six of my 50-minute take home exam for math. It’s going swimmingly.
At least I have only two questions left.
A Good Start.
Today I took my first final exam of the semester. It’s actually the first part of my Surveying exam, with the second part scheduled for the same time on Thursday. My college eliminated finals week for the year as they thought grouping all of the finals into a “finals week” placed unneeded stress on students. Personally I find this approach to education to be ridiculous but as a student I can only go with the flow.
I’ve been doing well in my Surveying course so I wasn’t too worried about this final. We were told that today’s portion would be entirely multiple choice. I’ve been keeping up with the reading and homework and have received excellent grades and comments on my work so I felt confident with my understanding of the material. An hour before going into the exam I did one last crash of studying by reviewing the previous two multiple choice exams that we had taken.
Imagine my relief when I discovered that the first 20 out of 30 questions on the exam were one of those multiple choice exams!
The remaining ten questions were on material covered since the last exam. Several questions were similar to this one particular question on the final:
24. Is it possible for Joe to get this question correct?
a. maybe
b. voluptuous1
c. D*200 the included angle
d. squeaky chair
I feel really good about my performance on this exam.
1 ‘voluptuous’ was a choice on quite a few of the exam questions, including those questions geared toward design curves.
Home Stretch.
This is my final week of classes for the semester and words can’t express how thrilled I am by that fact. I have one remaining homework assignment due on Thursday and that is a take home exam for Professor Frightful and his cast of voices in the blackboard. My engineering classes are apparently ahead of schedule – we are taking the final for Surveying a week early and the corresponding lab has been canceled this week; my statics (physics for engineers) classes have been canceled for the rest of the week as well.
I’m enjoying this relative downtime this morning by washing the car and enjoying a pastry at our local Panera. The crowd here is relatively sparse which is something that I truly enjoy, aside from the fact that I have no one to comment on as I sit here and write this blog entry. Well, actually there’s a few woofsters in the food prep area that are worthy of a “woof” growled in their direction but I’ll refrain from doing that so as to not startle the women that are sitting between the counter and me. (Sorry, I was distracted from my intended topic for a moment).
I’m happy that this semester is winding down but I’m really looking forward to the fall semester. The classes will be more interesting and I shouldn’t have any math courses for the rest of my time at this school. Shouldn’t being the operative word of course. Let’s see how I do on this take home exam due on Thursday. It might just save me.
Groovy.
The television networks are certainly missing the boat on today’s shows by deleting the groovy introduction in lieu of more commercial time. I mean, who can forget this? The trumpet blast at the episode title card is AWESOME.
By the way, this was the pilot for “Happy Days”. My friend Tim auditioned for the role of Potsie, but as he put it, “that fucking Anson Williams got the part.” I think Tim would have added more flare to the role.
Tradition.
Last night Earl and I made the trek to nearby Rome to return the Malibu to the dealer. The lease is up and Earl’s company is providing a new company car (funny how that works), so the folks at the Chevy dealer were a little disheartened to not be selling us a new vehicle. The Malibu was a good little workhorse and we had a couple of road adventures in it. It served well as Earl’s company car for the past three years.
We hadn’t been to that part of Rome in quite a while, which is now called “Little Italy”. (You’d think all of Rome would be considered Italian, but that’s another blog entry). On the way to the car dealer we noticed a barbershop had opened up in a store front that had been a barbershop up until the mid 90s and had since been abandoned. It was good to see the shop busy once again and we noticed that the hours were a little more lifestyle friendly for today’s hectic pace: open until 7 on weeknights and until 4 on Saturday.
Earl has not had a haircut in a long while. He wasn’t satisfied with his last visit to his (now former) barber and was trying to figure out where to get his hair cut without driving to the always popular Shoppingtown Mall Barbers near Syracuse (it’s quite a drive for a haircut). So this morning, after we picked up his company car, I drove us to the barbershop we had spotted last night. As we walked in I noticed that Todd, the new owner of the shop, had kept the shop as traditional as possible while still keeping it comfortable for contemporary times. The old sink in the center of the shop was cleaned up and standing proud. The old chairs from the 40s have been given the attention they deserved and the wood floor has been restored. Various bottles of potions, lotions and such, remnants of the shop that used to occupy the space, lined the countertop. With the addition of a flat screen television and a comfortable couch, it’s a nice slice of tradition in this neighborhood that is finally getting itself back together.
Being bald and all I just sat in the shop and shot the bull with the few guys that were hanging out whilst Earl got his haircut. Todd told us that he had opened up in January after working with another barber across town for the past eight years. He was happy to strike it out on his own; his former boss was 92-years old and was apparently getting a bit much to handle. When all was said and done, Earl was quite pleased with his haircut.
I think it’s safe to say that Earl has found his new barber.
Brink.
I just paid $4.029 for a gallon of gas at the convenience store down the street.
Ironically, tomorrow we pick up Earl’s new company car. It’s an SUV; a Dodge Durango.
God Bless America.
