I'm A Terrible Boyfriend

I say all the right things.
When we are together.
I'm trainable.
When we are together.
I make many correct moves.
When we are together.
I haven't called or written in ten days.
She called yesterday to remind me that she is still alive.
Ten days ago, I mentioned that I would be spending a week with the Dodgers after work etc.
I haven't really thought of her for eight of those days.
I'm not worthy, and need to tell her.
The half a dozen dates or so the three weeks before were fun.
But, without an enthusiam for baseball, she dropped off my radar.
Why am I telling you?
Easy, you are an anonymous reader.
Me, I'm A Terrible Boyfriend.

Closer to Normal Week

Had fun attending three Dodger home games this week. [All wins] They are off tonight, so I am home typing this up. I'll be attending three more this weekend. Wouldn't you?

Strange Week

Travelling in a different circle can spin one around. Sunday night I meet some friends at an outdoor jazz concert. Turns out the eighty year old, sax playing, headliner, was the cousin of the folk I went to meet there. We all go out to dinner and I am wow'd by the stories of traveling the world with his horns and the women who stalked him. The week ended with a dinner party last Saturday night, with a walk over to one of her friends house. We all go in and wait for the artist to arrive. When she does, the parlor is opened and a huge pipe organ is set up permanently in this guys parlor. He introduces the player who talks about each selection while changing the settings on the organ from romantic to baroque and back. I sure do not understand the footwork involved with all those pedals. Tip basket with envelopes was available and I put a twenty in an unmarked envelope and tossed it in for I was so astonished at what I just heard. Who has concerts in their home like this? I've invited guitar players to parties before, but never a pipe organist. Hope she does well in her competition in Japan later this year. It takes all kinds, and I'm sure I'll never see them all.

Shreding

Back from holiday, paid three weeks worth of bills and mailed them off today. Now to my shreading pile. I really like my shreader. I feed it everything with my name and address on it. Even catalog page covers and netflix envelope covers. Filled up a kitchen trashbag with my shreadings today. Now, is it puzzle time, or do I throw it all away?

Saturday on the Road

After a wonderful week visiting family and friends for the last two weeks, finally on my way home. Currently in a motel in Las Cruses waiting for the sun to set, and wake up tomorrow morning and head back to LA. For the last week I've been in a beach house viewing the Gulf of Mexico with good friends and good times. Cell phones have entered the house, and with improved service this year, calls interrupted many of our activities, except being at the beach and in the water itself. I'd like to ban them, but a couple of them have business's to run and most of guys have wives to say goodnight to. When they were doing that, I was either watching the moon and the stars through the clouds or tuning the satellite radio in to a station that might entertain the lot of us. One dude brought the Firefly series on DVD that I never saw before. Excellent series, what was FOX thinking putting that on Friday nights? Definitely a Tuesday through Thursday, if not Sunday night series. Oh, yeah, the picture. Well, when you get close to interstate 10 on highway 71 in Columbus, Texas, you see these weights hanging down from a sign that reads, If You Hit These, You Will Hit The Bridge. Stuck the camera out of the roof of the Mini and snapped while rolling this morning. Guess a few folk have hit the bridge. Off I go, cya.

Thusday, Big Travel Day

Left Tulsa at dawn this morning and headed for Houston. While still in Oklahoma, I pulled into a shamrock station in some little town off of highway 75 and was filling up the mini with premium when a couple pull up in an SUV and the woman gets out and asks me if I'm a local and can direct her to a nearby church. I'm wearing a blue Hawaiian Dodgers shirt, welder sunglasses, and a soft driving cap, putting gas into a mini convertible with California license plates, and she asks me if I live here. Where is she from? Arkansas? Um, no, I'm not from here, and I have yet to scope out the local religious scene. So she trots into the store to see if anyone there knows. Off I go then...

If it's Saturday...

...It must be Santa Fe. Santa Fe? What the hell am I doing in an artsy fartsy small town in New Mexico? Well my niece was in a broadway theater class for two weeks and it was show case day. I am currently on my annual two week road trip from LA to Tulsa to Houston to the Gulf Coast of Texas since it was happening at the same time, I swung up and glad I am to have done it. And I made it in time for both the 4 PM and 7 PM shows. For a fourteen year old, my niece is doing very well in this theater company. She has been taking jazz dance, ballet, tap, and voice lessons for years, and I had hints that she was good all along and this proves it. As I was copying videos from her mom's camera to this laptop, while being blown away by her impromptu performance here in the room. How does such a deep and soulful voice come from such a tiny teenager? I'm impressed. Her instructors said she improved everyday that she was there. Her mom is beaming, and Uncle Proto is stunned that he is related to someone so talented. Now, about that driving permit next year...

DTV Blues

Last weekend my aunt asks me to take her to a department store and use her coupon for one of those HDTV converter boxes before her DTV coupon from the government expires on Sunday. So on Saturday afternoon, I gather her and her coupon up and head over to the big stores next to the industrial complex. I needed some ink cartridges for my printer too. Might even pick me up one of these converters for the old bedroom TV. I pick out a couple of fifty dollar models, find a package of both my color and black and white printer ink cartridges and head for the cashier. The cashier had not used one of these coupon cards before. We stuck it through the machine like a credit card after ringing up the boxes and it put the forty dollar discount on it right away. Hazzah! Pop in my CC for the rest of the charges and away we go. I go in and set hers up right away. It came with the cable I needed, went through the menus and auto-selected all the channels, gave her the manual and the remote and wished her good night. If only it was so. Went home and set mine up in the bedroom, did mostly the same except I made the change to use channel three instead of four and allowed it to squeeze widescreen 16x9 broadcasts into my little 4x3 format picture tube. I have a good component DTV box on the big screen in the living room, so I knew the channels pretty well, and settled in for a late baseball game. Ring, ring, ha! Aunt lets me know that some channels are not looking right. I head over and play with the antenna. Her poor little rabbit ears are kaput. We pull another set off of her back room TV and get all the channels in. Plus I make the same squeeze and channel three adjustments on hers that I did on mine. She likes it and I head out again. Next day, Ring Ring! Everything is black, no channels coming in. Oops, I head back over there and see that she has the TV on channel four like I told her the first time. Guess I didn't mention that I changed it. Showed her how to get channel three on the old remote control first, then change them with the new remote. She's happy until I ask if she has an outdoor antenna we could use. Well the cable is in the back room, so now I have to get some cable long enough to run to the front room, maybe with a few wall outlets too if I can't stick it behind the molding. Work is never done for the willing nephew...

Sporetastic

I've been playing around with the Spore Creature Creator. Three little creatures including this little movie have been quickly thrown together and appear at Spore. This game is going to take up a lot of my free time when it comes out in two months. Maybe I will wait until the first patch is released before buying it though. There is always a patch, right?