Yesterday (cripes, was it really only yesterday?) I woke up at 5:30AM and could not go back to sleep. This may or may not have been due to Sunday night, when the staff at the Cafe decided that we didn't spend enough time together off hours and decided to go out dancing. When the club we were going to turned out to be full, this turned into a staff barhop which finally ended with us getting split up, some of us at the Black Cat, others going back to the first club and finding it at last allowing entry. All of the walking around and drinking should have made me more tired, but somehow it had an opposite effect.

So, on the plus side, I had a nice relaxing morning rolling around trying to get comfortable during which time the cat came in and decided that my head looked like a good place to sleep. Then I gave up, got up, had a nice slow breakfast, managed to read the paper without vomiting it up, and got suited up to head out.

One of my goals for the new year (other than updating here more regularly, the success of which is on display below) was to start getting up before (or at least by) noon by the end of January. This goal in turn was in service of the other goal of trying out a yoga class. So Monday I hopped on my bike at around 11:30 and rode off, thinking to myself that the weather, while closer to January than it had been, showed little of the coldness of the previous night's snow flurries.

Then I got out on the street and felt the full force of the arctic gales pounding the District.

I've been colder sure, but usually with some warning... at least an opportunity to put on a sweater and cover exposed skin.

The yoga class was nice, but more of a workout than I'd been expecting. My abs still be sore, yo. And my shoulders, less so. Twice a week of that for the next few months and I'll be something vaguely approximating a STATUE OF A GREEK GOD. Plus my back will probably bother me less. I'll try to do it again... and justify the cost by reminding myself how much I save without car insurance/registration/parking tickets et al to worry about.

Then I went to the Cafe early and did some reading. Augie March is still having adventures, and his endlessly dry and cynical voice still makes me chuckle.

Then a night of work, dazed and punchy from lack of sleep. And then today off, during which I read and watched idiotbox and installed my new DVD-R/RW drive and attempted to install more memory (only to discover that the damn chip I bought doesn't fit the sockets on my damn motherboard for some damn reason, damnity damn damnedness)

As I said elsewhere, just priming the pump here, trying to remind myself that they don't all have to be revelatory and deep... or particularly entertaining.

Now I must sleep. Soon I will have to run around town and show disrespect to a (possibly, and if so unduly) respected world leader. Will probably be a long week.



- posted by Bob @ 2:29 AM

 
What is it that has sent me off on this consumerist orgy? At first I thought it was Christmas, going out to the stores and seeing all the things, buying presents for other people (and in the process seeing things I wanted myself), and then getting a rather lean selection in return. But the CDs, the DVDs, the clothing, and now all the way to new computer components (will the long-considered new amp be next?) are just piling up well past any reasonable expectation for post-holiday shopping momentum.

{Afterthought: I think the belated realization that I was sitting on a nice pile of money from selling my car, combined with the realization that it was growing due to my not having to pay insurance/registration/gas/parking tickets/biweekly maintenance, may have had a little something to do with it}

Perhaps it's the arrival of 2005 and with it the reflection on '04, during which I purchased little for myself but bicycle components and comic books. 2004 was a lean year for me on every front imaginable, and shaking off its cobwebs I can only see as a good thing. Maybe I'll indulge my newfound spendthrift ways so long as they continue to accompany the generally increased productivity I'm currently experiencing... and so long as they don't threaten to break my budget.

On the subject of my increased productivity, I'm in the midst of applying to grad schools. I thought this day would never come, but two friends of mine have convinded me to look into getting an MLIS. As usual, I'm incapable of any modes between idle and fullspeedahead so I'm just filling out apps. I suppose once I get to the Personal Statement stage I'll need to slow down and contemplate the matter more deeply.

My current problem is finding my GRE scores, which I KNOW I have somewhere, dammit!

{Note: I have still not found my GRE scores. I have, however, found out that the matter is moot. They expire after five years, and mine went belly up a few months ago... damn}

I've also been reading more. Particularly of late has been George Lakoff's "Don't Think of an Elephant," which I got for Christmas from an aunt and uncle... part of the Academic Intellectual wing of the family, bless them.

I had a bunch of deeeeeeep thoughts about that book, but right now they seem trite and I feel lazy. This is what always happens when I settle down to record my deeeeeeeep thoughts on this here ol' BoBblog, which is why it's updated twice a month and always with prattling nonsense psychobabble or stories about my encounters with crazy people.

- posted by Bob @ 6:10 PM

 
2004 Brain Dump

My first reaction, upon thinking back on 2004, is that not a damn thing changed, that it was just a marking of time for 365 days while our globe whipped once more around our sun.

Warren Ellis, on one of the last entries in his now-defunct Die Puny Humans 'blog, described 2004 thusly:

2004: the year blogging got boring and the year commenting systems broke. The year Bit Torrent got really big and the year the Motion Picture Association Of America somehow became a world power. The year Indymedia finally managed to frighten someone and the year MoveOn.org managed to convince no-one. The year of podcasting, and the year no-one had anything to say. The year no-one paid any attention to Mperia while labels like 555 starved to death -- but that's okay, because people with day jobs tell us that art on the net should be free anyway. The year I actually read someone on a website say "I want hospitals to compete for my business." I find myself desperately looking forward to that man's first tumour. The year that the half of America the coasts sneer at as "flyover country" voted George W Bush back in because, according to one of his creatures, "they like the way he walks, they like the way he talks, they like the way he points at things." The year the rest of us laughed at the electoral college system, while looking uncomfortably at our own stark lack of choices in our next general elections. The year I heard Air America radio and realised the left wing in America is beyond doomed. The year I saw The Daily Show and understood that Jon Stewart and his team realise that too. The year that the ambient sound of Britain became a collective mumbling noise. The year I discovered videoblogging and the year I discovered that almost no-one knows what to do with it.

2004: another step to the boneyard in the continuing Death Of Western Culture. You're welcome.

So, stuff happened if you write comic books.

Last night I went to see Q and not U at the Black Cat, only to find the show sold out. No matter, it turns out, because I serve enough of the people who work there their coffee that I not only got waved in, but then got free beer once inside. Chris talked about how he felt like 2004 was a year of percolating and gathering strength for DC music, how he felt like 2005 was going to be the year everything came to a head and DC would explode all over the place. I dunno if I bought it. I dunno if the crowd bought it. But hey, infectious optimism is one of the hallmarks of their shows.

Maybe I should think of oh fo' as rebuilding time for me... but isn't that what 2003 was supposed to have been?

just for the list here. In 2004 I:

• Blundered into yet another romantic charliefoxtrot
• Got my car smashed
• Moved into my current basement digs
• Sold my car
• Didn't go on a single vacation, hardly left DC
• Did not so much as kiss a single girl
• Spent a large portion of autumn in a depressed cocoonfest during which I tried (successfully in some cases) to burn as many bridges as I could
• Voted, for all the good it did
  
• Started writing again in November, attempting NaNoWriMo yet again, crashed out and hardly wrote at all in December, currently trying to regain momentum

I keep thinking there must have been more to it than that... mainly too many iterations of the old painfully familiar two-step of reaching out trying to meet new people, to make some meaningful contact, then retreating in a panic as soon as it seems like I might.

So, there have been better years.

There have been worse. It wasn't 1999, for example.

Tomorrow I should eat some peez and kahbahzh and sit around thinking about what to do to make '05 (the year I turn 30! oh dread!) less of a waste.

- posted by Bob @ 2:27 AM