@Wudan07

He started the day with a mood and a shake.
He was finally arranged.
And someone said with a cold, hard chest, “You’re a mess!”

There, the lyric spew wasn’t too bad.

I have finally realized that the online world we inhabit, is only a mirror of the real world. The real world has also been infested with trolls. Naysayers – People who are against the grande ideals of Truth, Love, and Beauty.

It has become known to myself that there is a Troll among us.

Troll, you take my precious things, and you spit upon them. You anger me at the very depths of my soul. You are a beast, not fit to be among proper folk, so the great justices of this world has banished you to the outer reaches of our territories.

Foul beast, there will be a reckoning. Let us hope that you hold your tongue more closely, lest my temper be unleashed. Your works are of nothing – an abomination is he that choses you.

You heard me. You should know now, that I hear you. Now do a better job of avoiding me, and be damned sure I don’t hear you talking shit about me and mine.

I’m all rage, baby.

I used to have a friend that liked to work on cars. He’d tell me that the cars demanded a blood sacrifice, and, as such, he’d always be bleeding by the end of his auto-maintenance.

My PC didn’t want to POST. If you know what that is, congratulations, you are a geek. Hey, you’re reading a blog, too – double bonus, you geek! For the rest of you, it means my PC didn’t start right away and it was defying logic. What it boiled down to was me using a good computer to access the net and follow really really really simple instructions that seemed below me, but seems to have fixed the problem. The PC still is temperamental – but it boots up and that’s good enough to me.

Back to my friend, and how it relates to my new PC. It wasn’t booting, remember? I got real mad and yelled at people I love (like I always do) and they’re all in bed, and here I am, blogging. I would like to say that I’ll change my ways, but I probably won’t, just like I haven’t. It makes me miserable to make other people miserable, and I really feel sorry for anybody who knows me or otherwise has to deal with me. I’m a crummy, horrible, wretched person.

Some of you are saying, “Don’t be so hard on yourself,” but some people are saying, “Go on …”

So it boils down to this – I’m sorry I’m a fuck-up. If you don’t want to know me, I’ll find a way to deal with it, because I certainly don’t want to know me. If you can accept all the bad things about me, I swear there’s something good about me that you might miss when you don’t know me, but, like I said, I’m a horrible person, I have a really short fuse, but on the plus side, people with short fuses don’t live very long at all. So you’ll be glad to know that I’ll die before you.

Oh, and new rule – drink and build PCs. I’ll be damned if it didn’t steady my nerves. I’ll be damned if it isn’t a sin. A delicious, mind-numbing sin.

But hey, news flash, I don’t think it works that way. Even on your best day, you can’t forsee the future.

Oh boy, I think I need another drink.

Long story short, I’m sorry that I’ve fucked up for what must be the 1,000,000th time. I’d like to say that I’ll make it up to y’all (especially Sukie), but really, what you want is for me to stop fucking up and being so goddamn mad all the time. That’s not happening soon, and I’m doubly sorry for that.

Ok, the trip to Colorado went as well as could be expected. I was really anxious to go to Colorado, since it has been about 10 years since I was last there.

I didn’t like it there, for the most part. Mostly because it sucked.

The highlight of my trip was meeting my friend Azymn (I’m on the left.) The lowpoint was the parking lot at the Denver Zoo – and me, being myself.

I’d like to write a long and drawn out review of the trip, but I guess I just don’t have the will to.

In case you hadn’t heard, there’s a big fricking crater in Utah State Road 6.

Whoa.

Oh, and I have this weekend off to go to Colorado. I’m meeting Azymn, creator of ForceMod III, which I host right here at mt-wudan. Hip Hip – Hooray!

So today was the parent-teacher conferences at Jabba’s school. It was a quaint meeting, where it was difficult to tell if Jabba’s teacher fully understood Jabba’s predicament. His vision was 20/200, which is legally blind. That’s the eye he’s going to school with. He says he doesn’t cheat at school (ie, use his ‘good’ eye) and I’ll beleive him because he apparently gets bored of trying to do his schoolwork and daydreams or otherwise moves on to other things. I can imagine that finishing your schoolwork is difficult when you can’t fricking see. But he tries, and that’s what’s important to me. During and after the meeting I couldn’t help but grin, because Jabba’s teacher didn’t seem (to me) to understand that he’s having a hard time seeing, and that’s that.

If you take off that patch on his eye, he’d fucking dazzle you. He was recognizing letters and a few words at 3 and a half, reading at 4, and cheated at his very first parent teacher conference, when asked what the colors of the crayons were, he fucking read the labels. He’s gifted.

He’s awesome, and I love him very much.

I just read a synopsis for the season premiere of Lost. It will air on September 21, 2005, and will be called “Man of Science, Man of Faith” – it apparently takes place right after the season finale, which goes against preliminary reports that the show would take place months after the events of the season-ender, which would piss me off, given the state of the finale. Oh boy that finale …

Shooting started a week ago. Wanna hear about how they will add the new cast members? I love Lost 🙂

Last night Jabba and I had a brainstorm that we should build a pin-hole camera to show him how the eye works. So this morning I tracked down a shoebox and built one that works pretty good, I say. I tried unsuccesfully to photograph the things outside of my windows, and got the bright idea to photograph the sun using our pinhole camera – and so we did!

Man, it really is a wonderful world. So far this summer I’ve shed some pounds (but I’m getting them back), laid waste to an entire civilization of warts, and, this week, half-fixed up my teeth (the bad half.) Aw snap, it’s the summer of Brad.

Well, it would be if I had a bitchin’ schedule. But that may change, as all things must – ‘with strange æons, even death may die.’ Sukie’s got an iPod, I’ve got one, and Dax is going all out with a 20Gig. Ok that’s not all out, but it’s 5x bigger than mine 🙂

Road Trip! In a few weeks I’ll be making a return to Denver, Colorado. It’s hard to beleive we really only lived there for 4 years, 10 years ago. If I put much thought in to it, I probably had a horrible time in Denver, but time does put a shiny sugar-coat over the painful past – and there were so many other positive things, like Boy Scouts. theorb77, from what I understand, didn’t enjoy it so much. But then again, he’s not exactly the best camper in the world. I’m probably not, anymore, but who cares 🙂

The trip is for Carebear’s wedding – omg I knew her when she was like 2 feet tall or something! Jeez! I should be able to visit my buddy Azymn while I’m out there, too. And I want to go to the Zoo. And the Museum. Damn – Denver’s got some cool academic places to go 🙂

Oh and I polished up my pop-up comments, and changed the layout ever so slightly. I like my faux-gold 3D logo, but I don’t think Sukie does.

Ok, so as most of you know, I work a job, and have a crappy schedule. I took this schedule because the bills were piling up, times were getting dangerously rough, and desperate times called for a desperate measure. Seeing an opportunity to take some of the burden of solving the problem upon myself. It was my idea.

So here we are, months later, out of debt. If I had a day schedule, Lucas would be back in daycare, and this would be an added expense on the pocketbook. Right now it feels like we could handle it, honestly. We’ve been making purchases and eating out a lot. There’s lots of cash flow now.

There’s a lot of pressure on me to get a better schedule, one way or another. Frankly, I’d rather sit on my ass at home all day, but the paltry sum I bring home every so often actually justifies the pain and aggrivation of going to work. And when I kick ass, I like it. When it kicks my ass, I don’t like it.

I get criticized about my job by my friends and family, a lot. Mostly because of the schedule, and also because people think I could do a lot better. It happens so often that I’m pretty much pissed off.

I know I told Sukie that I’d look for a new job, and I sent a few resumes out, got one interview, and I couldn’t fricking make it to the goddamn interview, which by the way, was for a pretty shitty schedule and even less pay than I’m making right now.

Goddamn if the job prospects don’t look enticing. Since the last time I went job-hunting, 4 years ago, I’ve gained skills and (almost) a goddamn associates degree. I should be able to see something out there, but there’s nothing that suits my fancy.

I’m discouraged.

I’m upset.

And no, I don’t want to talk about it.

… and the living’s easy.

This weekend Sukie, Theorb77, Striker, Jabba and myself set out for the far reaches of Utah, in a place called Delta. It’s about 140 miles from Salt Lake City, and a fair distance from a great many other things as well. That might sound bad to some of you, but to me, that’s a good thing.

When we got there we still didn’t know where we were going, so we knocked on the door of an empty house and then backpedalled and found the right house. Once there we grilled up some delicious bratwursts, marvelled at the extreme leetness of my uncle’s place (after all, it is the tradition of my people) and then were coerced in to riding on inflated tubes, pulled by a motorboat.

Everyone wanted Sukie to go first, they all coaxed her, and it was with no small ammount of pleasure that I watched her attempt it, even though she was terrified, because she can’t swim. She did good, and it was fun, so I went next. The advice I was given for getting in to the tube was to straddle the tow-cable and drop my bottom straight back in to the tube, and I damn near went over backwards – whoops! Theorb77’s ride was definitely the best – he was up in the air on that tube about 5 feet!

Anyway, after that we pitched tents on some of the driest, hardest ground on this earth. It was definitely not comfortable. Jabba did not go to sleep very easily, but eventually tired and went to sleep. It felt like I just blinked a few times, and suddenly I couldn’t go back to sleep, so I got up.

Apparently it was 6:15am. Anyway, Saturday featured Jared’s second run, Striker went with. Jabba (on the far left – Sukie, theorb77, and Striker in the forefront) went in the tubes for a second time – it was cool because he didn’t even express any fear or apprehension about going in the water.

Striker fell out twice! On the way home we saw the great Mt. Nebo, and an 18 wheeler pilotted by Captain Kirk.

So I guess you could say things started to get ugly last night when I got home from work. A good buddy of mine was over for a visit, playing The Simpson’s: Road Rage with Sukie. Fun aside, we stayed up til the wee hours eating Monster Fries and playing video games. No problems there, right?

In the morning, I woke to Jabba’s bloody nose and we pinched it off, but I wasn’t sure so I was screaming at Sukie to come to the bathroom and double-check to make sure I was doing things right. Bloody noses aside Sukie went back to bed and I got up and played some more video games until Sukie woke up a little before 10 and then she was playing video games, too. We got a heads-up from theorb77 and Antigone that we should all have hot dogs for lunch, so we planned that up.

My friend took off for home and I got in to a little tiff about starting the coals and then leaving them whilst we went to WalMart to purchase stuff for the cookout. We got some needed drinks from StarBucks and good, joyous supplies at WalMart but our Debit Card refused to work, so we ended up leaving empty handed. I, of course, was less than pleased with the situation, and snapped at Amy when she asked me if I was ok.

I’m an incompetent moron, a fact that is roughly reinforced by the fact that I’m married to someone who’s supercompetent. Jabba behaved very adult-like (as he often does) and took me aside and told me that I shouldn’t be stressed out right now.

Well, the short of the story is that Sukie is pretty much fed up with dealing with my many (many, many) flaws. She deals with more than any of you know, and I really can’t blame her for being waaaay past done with me.

Sukie, I really am sorry for being the way I am, I hope that you can forgive me.