adam @ 404

“You will rock forevahhhhhh!”

No words could ever rock harder. During the college years, I downloaded thousands upon thousands of illegally (and legally) traded mp3s. Yes, please sue me now. I wish I was still good at that. I spent altogether too much time on #mp3indie on IRC.

There was one song that stands out now. It was a mystery single, standing alone in its remote directory. One which I have never discovered the true source. It was a band that truly rocked me to the core. I found it again recently in my collection, and it still rocks, evoking images of maidens in distress and the coolest greenest fire-breathing, electric-guitar-wielding dragons ever imagined in the history of dragons.

Who was this song performed by? The filename of the mp3 was “Port - Rock Eternal.” Port? There is no record of this band on the Internet? Rock Eternal? What is this song you speaketh ofeth?

I submit to you “Rock Eternal” performed by Port. If you know who this mystery band is, please help me illuminate.

Walking up the hill to my apartment on the way home from work, I saw a huge racoon walk out onto the sidewalk. Strangely, this is in the middle of the city, downtown during rush hour. We saw each other and stopped in our tracks. Some people in their cars found this amusing, so I flipped them and the racoon off. But not really. We managed to creep by one another on opposite sides of the sidewalk - me going up, ricky going down.

The other highlight of my day was seeing a coworker put on a beret and light up a cigarette… at the same time! Without any sense of irony!

I keep finding reasons to not go skiing. Well, my primary reason is I don’t really have anyone with whom I can go skiing. Did you see the lengths I went to in that last sentence to ensure it didn’t end in a preposition? “With whom”, I don’t even know if thats grammatically correct. You see, for one, I can go skiing alone, that’s all good, but any time I tell myself I’m going to go skiing the next day, I inevitably sleep-in. Like today, I went to bed at midnight and got up at 11:30am, talk about loving sleep and being lame. Ultimately, it didn’t matter because I couldn’t have driven up to Snoqualmie without chains on my tires today (time to get some chains).

I’ve convinced myself that if I had someone to ski with (this implies they’re a relatively good skier, *toot toot*) then I’d get up in the morning because I’d have someone waiting for me. Nonetheless, I’ve promised myself, ski buddy or no ski buddy, ski car pool or no car pool, I’m going to ski next weekend. No back country yet, don’t have the equipment or the people to do that yet, but some nice steep or bumpy terrain. “We shall overcome,” as one player on the Seahawks put it in his post-game interview. I like that complete misuse of a civil rights rallying cry.

In other news, I had a great Christmas break. I managed to get a week off (took one day to work from home) and went to Michigan. I flew into Chicago on one of the most wild flights I’ve ever been on. I sat next to a girl that insisted our row have a drinking contest with the row in front of us (she was already drunk), so that’s what we did. We even had competing male flight attendants, very chichi. The lady behind us even stood up and told us to “please be quiet, you’re not the only people on this plane you know!” That set some fireworks off, but we managed to be a bit more quiet, but the drunk girl didn’t like that at all, and even got the lady to stand up one more time as a result of semi-hushed insults thrown her way. Dang!

In Chicago, I got to see Mr. Jd Ryznar and Miles Raymer at the Empty Bottle for JDs showing of the Yacht Rock series. Good stuff. In Spring Lake/GH it was a good family time, hanging out much with the Sis, parents, grandparents, and getting my ass handed to me in Guitar Hero by my stepbrother Lukas. Saw other friends in GR and Ann Arbor as well. It was a whirlwind trip that ended back in Seattle where I went out to a couple house parties for NYE 2006. Now I’ve been back a week and finally settling back into this wildly urban lifestyle I lead, grocery shopping, sleeping-in, drinking beer and surfing the veritable Web.

Speaking of, if anyone can answer my question, please do. I’m dying to find a real bagel.

No resolutions this year, none other than keep enjoying sleep a lot.

I’m writing from deep within Seattle’s worst wind storm in millions of years. Cats and even dogs are flying past my window. Homeless people are hanging onto road signs. Trees and large construction cranes are falling all over the place. Oh crap! It’s not even funny. Really, it’s really not funny. I lied, the storm hasn’t started yet. Sorry, that wasn’t funny. Really really not funny.

I love the weather. I’m sick, too. I’ve been christmas shopping, online only. Lots of stores have lists for “The Person Who Has Everything.” This isn’t helpful for anyone. A list for “The Person Who Thinks They Have Everything, and Doesn’t Like Much At All” would be much more useful.

For the first six months of work, I shared an office with another coworker. First Big Al, then Ott. Both good roomies, but I was excited to get a change of scenery and a personal cube. It’s not too often that someone likes moving into a cube, but I’ve got a view. If you know me, I’ve probably mentioned this to you. It excites me to no end because the view is amazing. I can stare at snowcapped mountains - how can you beat that?! Coincidentally Big Al and Ott are right next to me in their cubes.

work/amznview

I move to Seattle and they have the largest snowfall in years. The interviews on the news are alarming to say the least. Time to go skiing.

“The roads are quite sloppy. They’re moving you around quite a bit when you slam on the brakes.” Slam? On the brakes?

Work has kept me pretty tied up for the last week. Whatever “downtime” I’ve had at home has mostly been taken up with trying to complete a project by Today, coincidentally Halloween. It’s mostly finished, so what other to do than celebrate by carving a pumpkin. Celebrate! No dressing up this year, but I could easily turn into a drunk at the stroke of midnight.

No time to lose, I carved this baby in under 20 minutes! Live in fear of my deft knife skillz. boo!

partyhard/hween06

I finally bought a sofa this weekend, but it’s going to take 10 weeks to arrive. I’m trying to get something up on my walls and I’m considering fabric prints as a theme. My first try will be the Marushka print I just won off Ebay. A little piece of home? No, an 18″ x 24″ piece of home. What a gem.

It’s been 19 years since I’ve gotten to see the Tigers win an AL Division series on television. That is, up until a few minutes ago. There’s no stopping a train that’s been waiting this long to leave the station. We’re just getting started! Go Tigers!!!

Ed. note: In ‘87 there were only two divisions and Detroit didn’t win any series just the regular season Division title. Details, details…

I’ve been cooking better meals this week, due primarily to the fact that I actually went grocery shopping during the weekend. Traveling, getting settled and eating out too much gave me too many chances to not cook for myself. In an effort to rid myself of this habit of laziness, I’m trying to cook atleast 4-5 dinners per week. I mean “cook” as in prepare food from fresh ingredients. I’ve got a pretty good track record of oven and microwave prepared Trader Joe’s meals, but that’s not what I’m shooting for.

To help spur on my cooking bug, I’d like anyone with favorite dinner recipes to send or post them. Half the time spent cooking is finding what you want to make, and its generally most of the inspiration. Looking in cookbooks is fun, but personal recommendations should turn up alot of gems.

In a related eating out note, I added a link box to the sidebar of all my yelp.com reviews which happen to be all restaurants. Go figure. I plan on adding more restaurant and non-restaurant reviews since I’ve found the site to be indispensible in a new city. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to eat at many dinner restaurants in town. [Personal Ad: Looking for attractive, fun woman to take out on dinner dates for sole purpose of reviewing dinners. Honest.]

Final Thought: Last Friday a pigeon sh*t on my head. I mentioned this to Amy and she said it means I’m going to have good luck. Good…. I thought it meant God hates me.