Dick Cheney
I spent six hours in the drizzle and cold to see Dick Cheney. It was not by choice. It was all pretty insane. I'm not here to hate on Dick Cheney though. I don't like the guy, at all, but he did come out here and deliver his speech in support of us (being the 101st) and he stuck around to shake hands with everyone who wasn't already fleeing the rain before he hardly got off the little stage.
Erased
What would have gone here has been deleted, erased at least three times.
I'm anxious. I'm nervous. I'm excited. I'm angry. I'm tired. I'm bored. I'm the little kid whose arms aren't long enough to reach what's on the counter. Everything I want is ever so slightly out of reach.
Eyeballs
Today was my part 2 appointment for my laser surgery. They looked at my eyes, dilated my eyes, took pictures of my eyes, looked at my eyes again, and then took more pictures of my eyes. I won't complain about this process, I'd prefer if I didn't get screwed up in surgery. My surgery is dated for October 30th. It totally pees on Halloween but at least it means I'll be off for the rest of the week. At least it's right in the middle of my last visit to Springfield and my next visit. I'd hate to go there for Thanksgiving totally miserable and blind.
Now that block leave is halfway over, things at work are starting to get retarded again. I guess it was only a matter of time.
Stupid VDO, stupid spider guardian
After thoroughly enjoying some Metroid Prime: Hunters multiplayer with Jim and Chris and Matt this weekend I thought I'd go back to the single player game and try to finish it up. Now I've finally gotten all the weapons and I'm finding bits and pieces here and there and now I'm in the Vesper Defense Outpost and there's a goddamn timed mission that I failed on the first shot. This is going to make me insane.
I tried to finish Metroid Prime 2: Echoes but the stupid spider guardian is easily the worst boss ever, and that's horrible because Metroid Prime and Prime 2 have some awesome boss fights. It's not that the boss itself is hard, it's actually pretty easy, but the final stage of the fight requires multiple precision morph ball jumps that I simply don't have the rhythm or coordination for. It's always that last stage of the fight that gets me.
Metroid Prime is making me suck at Metroid games and that makes me a sad panda.
Facebook is like Myspace except less retarded.
So look me up because I plan on deleting everything but my account itself from my myspace.
This is not for you
The very first line of House of Leaves. Before the introduction even begins, though after a short foreword by the "editors". Unlike the house the book is about the book itself seems shorter than it looks. When I first picked it up, with it's larger than paperback size and 700 something pages, I thought I'd be reading this book forever. I just finished it tonight. It looks long but it goes fast because there's a lot of offbeat typography that doesn't take up full pages, like near blank pages but for a few words in a square block.
I can't ruin anything for anyone adventurous enough to track it down but the simple summary is it's a book written like an academic research into a film called The Navidson Record, which is (from the book's description) a Blair Witch-ish movie about a family living in a house that's actually larger on the inside than on the outside, that is commented on in the footnotes (in addition to the original footnotes written by the researcher) by a guy who finds the materials the researcher was using after his death, and all of this is overseen by the final product's editor. In essence, a movie commented on by three authors; the researcher, the man who finds the work, and that man's editor. There's almost too much to it to describe. The book goes by quickly enough but there's so much to it that I could probably re-read it right away and pick up parts that went unnoticed the first time I read it. There's sections in the appendices that I don't even remember being referenced.
It kept me up at nights because I'd want to finish a chapter and see what's next and if that's not a sign of a good read then I don't know what is. It's confusing at time with footnotes referencing footnotes that reference an obscure line in one of the three appendices but it's that way on purpose. Mark Z. Danielewski just released his second full novel so it'll be while before it comes to paperback but I look forward to reading it as well.
Stuff
I got my VA loan eligibility certificate so this week I'll be paying a visit to banks to try to get a loan. One step closer to buying a house. This is good news. My dad used to deal in real estate and my mom's a real estate agent so my chances of screwing something up and getting screwed are pretty low for a change.
I'm spending a weekend in Springfield this Columbus Day weekend. Katie's planning a Kill Bill movie event at Andria's. This is the first I've been able to get up to Springfield since the weekend after I got home towards the end of July.
Another laser surgery appointment on Oct. 12th. Not the surgery yet but part two of the screening. The little informational sheet they gave me at my last appointment implies that this one could take a while. It's too bad I couldn't get the appointment earlier than 2pm, I might have been able to weasel out of work if it were a long appointment scheduled for the morning.