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Monday, July 30, 2007

Nostalgia Digging 

On Thursday evening I went over to my folks' place and went through several boxes in their garage. I did really well; I only came home with one box of stuff. A lot of it was old coloring books that I vividly remember from when I was a kid. Also the Color, Cut-Out, and Fly series of books. I think tomorrow (Saturday) I'm going to look around and see if those books still exist in any way, shape, or form. If not, I might just write an article about them.

I also found an entire screenplay that I wrote: Relentless. I think it actually has a good (in a crappy way) story in it. I just need to make it take place in an ACTUAL location. Either that or in the future (which is how I originally envisioned it).

It was pretty cool finding all those old things from my childhood. I vividly remember the coloring books. I'll update this post with pictures as soon as I get 'em scanned in.

UPDATE: Here are the first couple of scans!


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posted by Christopher at 11:44 PM

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Thursday, July 26, 2007

Oh Yeah... Time For a Shameless Plug 

I keep on forgetting to mention that the store where I work, Ever After, is having a big ol' sale all this week (ends Friday the 27th). Everything in the store is 20% off, and there's a sidewalk sale where things are even more off than that. I know, sounds impossible, but there it is. Undeniable. So you have two days (today, Thursday, and tomorrow, Friday) to take advantage of it.

Also, the website (which I'm in charge of) has everything 10% off all week. So for those of you out-of-towners who can't make it in to the store and buy something on sale—wrong! You can still buy something on sale! Via teh magic tubez of teh intarwebs.


Come to Ever After's
Big Annual Sale!

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posted by Christopher at 9:03 AM

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Tuesday, July 24, 2007

You Did What Now? 

That's right, I wrote an article! I know what you're thinking: "Holy crap, Chris ain't written an article in nine months!"

Well, first of all, your grammar is atrocious. Second of all, you're absolutely right. It was about time I wrote another article. So here now I present to you the rules of my favorite all-time game:


The Best Sport EVAR:
TWO STICKS!

Go read it now. NOW! And then organize a Two Sticks league in your neighborhood.

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posted by Christopher at 11:23 PM

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Cutest Towel EVAR 


Over the weekend I went to Ryan's 30th birthday party up in Bellingham. I snapped this photo of the hand towel in his bathroom.

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posted by Christopher at 4:42 PM

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No, You Can't Have a Beagle. Not Yours. 

Fantastico is very lucky. Yesterday (Monday) we almost brought home a puppy.

Well, it would have been 2 years old. Lemmie essplain:

One of the Bead Babes has a friend whose mum has a bunch of pets, and for some reason (medical, probably) she had to get rid of all of them. Carrie has been itching to get a dog since the Bead Festival ended, and one of the pets was a Beagle. Seemed like a perfect match.

But because Carrie went away to Canada for the weekend, the Beagle was already given away to someone else yesterday. Which I think is actually for the best, because I read several articles that cautioned about having a Beagle if you have a cat ('cause Beagles are bread to hunt small game like rabbits and hares and bunnies). And I've always made it perfectly clear that even when we do get a dog, Fantastico has to be the #1 pet. She's going to hate it for a while no matter what, though.

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posted by Christopher at 2:43 PM

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Friday, July 20, 2007

The "K" to the "Wik" to the "E" to the "Mart" 

On Thursday whilst leaving an excellent dinner at Taki's Mad Greek in Ballard (get the feta cheese appetizer—trust me), Sandy, Mathias, & I passed by one of the 7-11's that's been converted into a Kwik-E-Mart to promote the upcoming Simpsons Movie:

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posted by Christopher at 8:32 AM

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Thursday, July 19, 2007

Impromptu Canadian 

On Wednesday Carrie had the day off, and in the afternoon she had a dentist's appointment. After I picked her up from that she got a call from Melissa saying that Viki wanted Carrie to take the rest of the week off 'cause she was over on hours.

That would be okay. Carrie & Melissa joked that now that Carrie had the rest of the week off, she should go to Canada with Melissa and her family. Then suddenly it clicked and we all realized there was no reason that that should be a joke. Carrie totally SHOULD go to Canada!

We both went last year, and I didn't particularly enjoy it—it just really wasn't my cup of tea (and I had many commitments for the weekend already), so we decided that Carrie would go. So she spent the evening packing, and Thursday at some ungodly hour like 5:15 AM she was picked up by Melissa and left for Canada for the weekend.

Impromptu!

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posted by Christopher at 8:11 AM

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Tuesday, July 17, 2007

What's Going On!! 

The Puget Sound Bead Festival continued for the duration of the weekend. I actually went and walked around the show on Saturday for a bit, and saw the out-of-town girls (in order I saw them) Nicole, Brandy, and Gretchen.

That evening Fools Play did an ambitious new format called "Learnin' the Ropes" in which we try to get our apprentices ready to perform in the span of five (5) days. It had a really large audience, due mostly to friends of the apprentices wanting to see them perform.

Sunday I left Fools Play practice early so I could help tear down the classrooms at the PSBF. Then I drove up to Issaquah for Mike's birthday diner at XXX Root Beer. Man, that place is so good. I had a bacon burger the size of my plate. Then afterwards I went and ordered onion rings.

Carrie & I both took Monday off so we could recover from the PSBF, but also for another reason: we needed to buy a car. A couple of our bead colleagues had bought a car just last week from Toyota of Puyallup and highly recommended the salesman, so we went down there as well and talked with him. And ended up buying the exact same car that they'd bought. They didn't have our 1st choice color available at all, and our 2nd choice color was down in Portland, so it would have to be driven up and so wouldn't be ready until Tuesday. But we were also satisfied with the salesman (though the paperwork department for some reason took for-freakin'-ever). So if you ever want to get a Toyota, go to Toyota of Puyallup and ask for John Martinez, and tell him that Chris Harris & Carrie Hamm sent you (we'll get some sorta kickback if you do).

Monday evening Carrie & I went out on a date and saw Ratatouille.

That brings us to Today, when, after an afternoon nap, Carrie & I went and picked up our new car from the dealership. And here it is:

It's a brand-spankin'-new Toyota Yaris 4-door sedan. Only 400 miles on it. And it's so freakin' cute! I made Carrie drive the rental home from the dealership just so I could drive the Yaris home [evil laugh].

I bought a new car! In the past 8 months I've bought a house, a MacBook, a new mattress set, and a new car. I'm a grown-up! All I need to do now is get a dog.

Then after I dropped Carrie off at the store to teach her evening class (I dropped her off with my NEW CAR) I headed back home and noticed a car in front of mine had the same Toyota of Puyallup dealer plates that I had. "Hmm," I thought, "they got their car at the same place I got my car. That looks like the same type of... hey, wait a minute!" Indeed, it was Robbie, the friend who bought the same kind of car last week! He pulled over at our house and we talked about how cool the Yaris cars are. What's plural for Yaris? Yarisses? Or Yari? Anyhoo, I also gave him back the couple of Gamecube controllers that we'd borrowed, oh, quite a while ago.

I leave you with a pretty picture of the clouds reflected in my new car's hood:

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posted by Christopher at 7:39 PM

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Saturday, July 14, 2007

Happy Birthday (Party) to Mike 

Yesterday (Friday) Lisa actually drove me in to work in the morning and then picked me up immediately afterwards. I drove her to the Convention Center where I dropped her off, then I came home.

Carrie came home a while later, and I went out into the backyard to do some gardening, trimming and pulling weeds and the like. While I was out there Derek came by and saw me back there. He had a paper for me to sign (life insurance stuff).

Carrie went back to the show later on, and then a while after that I drove up to Kent for my brother's birthday party! I brought refreshment for the party—a can of root beer for everybody to share. I know, I'm so generous!

When I got there only Josiah & Cambry were there. I played a lot of Sky Kid for the NES for Josiah, but soon other people started trickling in until it was a rompin' stompin' full blown party. There were several people there I hadn't seen in quite a while, including Mike's "college friends" (Jen, Suzi, & Bryan of Frankenseuss Labs, who does a lot of the artwork for Buckethead's albums) and Chelsea, and I met キ, who is actually legitimately really good at drawing animé-style things. Also, Susan & Jason were there. Jason made a couple pizzas but didn't get to eat very much (at all), so Mike actually left his own party(!) and got some more pizzas. I ate a lot of pizza. Kevin brought a Wii, but we could only get one of the controllers to turn on, so a few of us played some Excite Truck. Interesting game.

I left around 11:30, which was unfortunately very shortly after Tia & Tim showed up, so I didn't get to hang out with them very long.

I went straight home and straight to bed.

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Friday, July 13, 2007

What Split-Shift? 

Yesterday (Thursday) I went straight from work to Katie Downs to join Carrie & Lisa there for lunch. Carrie was supposed to then have a split-shift for the day, but she ended up going on a search for flowers and never ended up actually coming back home.

Around 3:30 I went down to the Country Insurance offices and picked up the cheque for my totaled car. I then immediately went to the Fred Meyer bonk and deposited it. I also bought some Gatorade and a book of stamps whilst I was there.

I dropped Lisa off at the Convention Center in the evening to teach her class, then I came home and blissfully rested. This is a stressful time of the year, so it's nice to have an evening to myself!

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Thursday, July 12, 2007

It Begins... 

Yesterday (Wednesday) was mercilessly hot. It was also the first work day for the Puget Sound Bead Festival. Carrie left for work much earlier than I did. I went to work as usual, but afterwards I walked to the south three blocks (three double blocks) down Broadway until I got to the Greater Tacoma Convention Center on 15th Street.

Christine let me in, and I joined many other Bead Boys (and Gary) in putting together the classrooms: gaffing power strips and extension cords, plugging in and testing lights, and the like. I also did a stint ferrying materials from the U-Haul truck in the back of the building. In order to do that, though, I had to go outside the air-conditioned building and spend several moments in the 95-plus-degrees sunshine. I didn't enjoy that so much.

I was there for a couple of hours (the other Boys had been there since about 9:00 AM) before Travis showed up with foodstuffs from MSMII! I got a Mike's Deluxe, a very tasty sammitch. I hadn't quite finished half of it when Carrie informed me that she and Cat were leaving and were willing to give me a ride back to my car way up on 4th Ave.—saving me a 30-minute walk in the sun! I was very grateful.

On the way back to the house I stopped by the Bead Factory and picked up a couple of Lisa's boxes that she'd had shipped there. I came home and shared the rest of my Sammitch with Carrie when she arrived.

Then I went and got my hair cut at Julie's Hair Care place. I look awexome now!

I came home and then Carrie & I pretty much immediately left for her folks' place. They weren't home; they were out seeing Harry Potter. But they'd said that we could borrow their Nissan for the duration of the Festival, so Carrie snagged that car. I drove the rental back home while Carrie continued on north to the airport to pick up the arriving Lisa.

I cleaned up a little more until they got back to the house, then I started up the barbecue. People then began trickling in—Christine, Travis, Steph, Gary, Melissa, and even Erin Miner from NYC! And Jeff Pines! And even more people than that! We went through two six-packs and two bottles of wine, and I grilled up a whole bunch of sausages of all varieties, including some with cheese in 'em.

The reason everybody came over to enjoy my cooking was our weekly gathering to watch So You Think You Can Dance. I didn't actually see very much of it due to my cooking and hosting duties, but that's okay; I enjoyed the evening thoroughly.

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posted by Christopher at 9:34 PM

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Wednesday, July 11, 2007

That's Not Very Queenly 

The in-house thermometer says that it's 88 degrees inside right now. It's close to 95 outside. So forgive me if my memory ain't what it should be, but it's too durned hot to think right now.

Yesterday (Tuesday) Carrie got off work before I did and went straight home. I got off work and swung by the Bartell's to pick up a couple of things and then met Carrie at the house. I arrived only moments before the lady from Dana's Housekeeping showed up. Yes, that's right, Carrie & I had our house professionally cleaned yesterday thanks to the gift certificate we got from Viki at Christmastime.

While she was there cleaning, Carrie & I swung over to University Place. She dropped me off at the DMV (more on that in tomorrow's entry) while she went to Trader Joe's. The DMV was packed, so I was nowhere near being called up by the time she got back. It looked like it would be hours more, so we decided to call it quits and that I would go in the next morning to try again. We drove on home where I unloaded the groceries.

Carrie left to go get a super-cute haircut and get more groceries from Safeway. The cleaning lady finished and left and then Carrie got home. Arount 6:30 a big pickup truck pulled into our driveway. It was filled with our new mattresses. Neighbor Gary showed up shortly thereafter and helped to bring in the new mattresses and bag up & remove the old ones.

The funny thing—Carrie & I have been sleeping on a Queen-sized mattress for since we've been sleeping together. Turns out, though, that we didn't have a Queen-sized bed or box spring. Those were full-sized. So the new Queen-sized mattress set didn't fit on the full-sized bed. Whoops! The guy from Mattress Mania was very helpful, and ran up to the store and came back with a queen-sized bed frame. In the meanwhile we disassembled the old bed frame with some well-placed karate kicks! Hyaa! Gary & I took it out to the Garage. Soon the new bed was all set up.

It's crazy—it's so cushy that it's actually about eight inches taller than our old mattress. So now our bedside tables are way below the level of the bed, so we have to reach down to get stuff. But it is oh-so cushy.

Umm... Gary & I hung out for a while longer and watched some TV. Then he left and Carrie & I watched The World Series of Pop Culture before going to bed on top of the covers and eating ice cream and putting a bowl of ice in front of the fan and all sorts of other things to try to keep cool.

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posted by Christopher at 6:59 PM

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Tuesday, July 10, 2007

Zombified 

I hate the heat. And yesterday (Monday) it was hot.

Heat makes me cranky. And tired. And vegetative. It is difficult for me to do much of anything other than sit around and be vaguely aware that I'm hot. So that is what I did for most of the day yesterday, though I did get some work done in the later evening (when it started to cool down).

We ordered in a pizza from Pizza Hut (extra cheese, sausage, & mushroom—a classic combination that is up there with pepperoni & black olives) for dinner. There really wasn't anything good at all on TV, so we watched some on-demand stuff and then Carrie watched her three hours of Friends and cleaned during commercials while I tried my best not to let the heat zombify me. Not terribly successful.

It's only going to get hotter over the next couple of days, too. Joy.

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posted by Christopher at 3:36 PM

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Sunday, July 08, 2007

Home Cookin' 

Gaahhh... my memory is horrible right now. I can't even remember the first half of Saturday. I know I did some cleaning, but I can't remember specifics. Ah, well.

Michael came and picked me up about 45-60 minutes early for Fools Play so we could practice the new format that I'd failed to practice on Sunday due to being in that whole car accident. The whole way down we talked about Transformers and just what a conundrum of a movie it really is.

Then we ran/talked through the format a few times before people started trickling in and we had to set up the show.

The new format was called Home Cookin' it went pretty well considering how damnably complicated it is and how little time we'd actually had to go over it.

After the show we went to Rib Eye where I sat with Sandy, Mathias, and Amber and ate bean-less chili. Mike took me home around midnight (so I got home around midnight:30).

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posted by Christopher at 11:53 PM

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Friday, July 06, 2007

Jam Packed 

Yesterday (Thursday) when I got home from work my dad was already there, working on the backyard patio. Carrie & I took him out to lunch at El Toro up on 26th. A short while after we came back he left, and then I did as well. I headed out across the hills to Auburn's frightful Auto Row to get all of my personal belongings out of my totaled car. Amusingly, on the way there I actually drove right by the place where I pulled over after failing to catch up to the white pickup that hit me.

I found the place no problem, and was led by a young man who called me "Amigo" through a series of back rooms, a repair floor, a paint shop, and finally into the back lot where there were rows and rows of defunct vehicles. Funny thing, though, I had parked basically right next to this lot, so I didn't have far to walk with all of my belongings.

So here it is, the last any of you will ever see of my car.

You can easily see where the impact took place.

But the reason it was totaled was because the impact was so severe that it actually caused damage to the opposite side of the car:

So the whole entire front of the car would have had to have been replaced, including most of the engine, the entire frame, the front axle, and both front wheels.

I made a thorough search through the entire car and grabbed everything of any possible interest, including the old, ratty Jack in the Box antenna ball. I had a Sealab 2021 air freshener hanging from the rear-view mirror, and it was a b*tch to get that thing untied. We also had a small pair of bells from Cat's wedding. I figured that was a sentimental item, so we should probably save it. It proved to be impossible for me to untie, though, especially since it was approaching 100 degrees inside that car sitting in the hot sun.

After several struggling minutes I got a flash of genius. I grabbed onto the rear-view mirror and applied torque until it popped right off of the windshield. Then I simply pulled the bells right off. It's not like the car's gonna need a rear-view mirror anymore!

So I loaded everything into the rental and paused to use the restroom inside the place before heading back to T-town. It took me just about two-and-a-half hours round trip to do all of that.

So I needed something fun to do. So when I dropped off Carrie at the store to teach her evening class I went directly to Lawrence's place and picked him up and we went and saw Transformers. I'm going to write a movie review of it on Monday, ya hear me?

After the flick I noticed that I had a cryptic phone message from Gina, something about not going galavanting after the movie because I was needed to take her home. The message was a little bit garbled and cut out a bit. So Lawrence & I headed to the BF and caught Carrie's eye for some clarification. She just wanted to make sure I didn't go out of town or become unavailable like that time that Mike & I went and saw Grindhouse on a whim and she'd tried to call me to get a ride home but couldn't reach me because I'd turned off my phone like a responsible movie patron.

So I took Lawrence over to Christine's and then came home. Carrie called after a while and I picked her and Gina up with a hearty, "Hi, cute girls!" and drove Gina to her folks' house. Then I drove us on back home. Whew! Quite the day!

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posted by Christopher at 3:34 PM

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Thursday, July 05, 2007

4th of July 2007 

Yesterday (Wednesday) was, of course, the 4th of July. We got up at a reasonable time so Carrie could go meet her friend Erin and give her all of the jewelry she'd designed for her wedding. I worked in the meanwhile on gathering supplies for our day-long cookout. I also baked brownie bites (brownies baked in miniature muffin pans) which were very, very tasty fish.

Carrie brought Erin back to the house to give her some CDs for wedding music, so I got to see her. I had seen her before, but many, many years ago. She left, then Carrie & I continued gathering things and supplies (and a lot of food). Christine & Lawrence went down to Point Defiance Park and after a false start found an absolutely fantastic place where we could all set up. So as soon as Melissa was dropped off at our house we loaded everything into the rental car and headed down to the park to join them.

It was a great spot, the first barbecue area after you pass the area that has all of the playground equipment in it. It was really nicely shaded, and there was a big enough open area that I could actually set up a badminton net for some Two-Sticks action later on.

So by the time 1:00 rolled around we had the coals a-burnin' and everything all set up. That was also, unfortunatley, the time when Christine had to take Lawrence away because he had to work on the 4th. Honestly, why is Starbucks open until 9:00 on the 4th of July? Lame.

Soon other people started trickling in, and Travis brought Christine back, and there was much cook-outing and frivolity. The whole Lareau clan even stopped by with their two pugs and three kids and hung out for quite a while. Lila really liked Gabby, the puppy. She learned how to say "Gabby" (and apparently she's been asking Jen, "Where Gabby?" pretty much nonstop since the 4th).

There were several games of Two-Sticks throughout the day. Julian & I actually had a pretty successful team ("Team Broken Backs") that won three games in a row. It was fun explaining all the rules to everybody.

Oh! And Chris Fantz showed me the iPhone his folks had gotten for him. It is pretty spiffy, but there's no way I would every pay that much for it (especially right now), nor would I really want to switch to AT&T. T•Mobile is so very cheap!

Anyways, after almost eight hours of cooking out things started to wind down. So we packed up our group, got a grip, came equipped, pack our proton packs on our back, and we split! We took Christine with us, and after we got home we drove down to Starbucks to wait for Lawrence to get off of work. It took a while due to somebody messing up a till or something. I dunno. But then we picked him up and drove through the northern Stadium district looking for a parking spot within easy walking distance of the intersection of Yakima & Carr (here), which is a primo place to watch Tacoma's annual 4th of July Fireworks Display. We met up with the entire Lovejoy clan there and all watched the fireworks together. I discovered a while back that my camera actually has a "fireworks" setting. I think it might work better if the camera is on a tripod, but here are a couple of good shots:




Anyway after the big show the four of us (Carrie, Christine, Lawrence, & I) all walked back up to the Rental car and took everybody home.

Here is a photo album I made of the day's festivities in case anybody is in the least bit interested.

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posted by Christopher at 3:50 PM

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Wednesday, July 04, 2007

Totaled 

Yesterday (Tuesday) I left work a little early because Carrie had a dentist appointment, so I picked her up and took her to that. I played a lot of Kirby Squeak Squad while I waited for her in the waiting room. I think I'm almost done with that game, which is very impressive considering I only really play it when I'm in a waiting room or something like that.

Anyhoo. In the afternoon I stopped by the Bartell's. It was a rare Tuesday that Carrie didn't have to teach in the evening, so that was cool. She did end up working rather late, though (It's the week before the Bead Festival; that's par for the course this time of year).

I got a call in the late afternoon from the insurance company saying they'd decided to total the car. Now I have to go down there on Thursday and get all my personal belongings out of it, and then at some point in the near future shop for another car!

In the evening we walked down to E-9 to join Christine & Lawrence for a couple o' rounds. That was nice. Leia called while we were there to inform us that she & Kedar were going to be moving into a house in Renton! Renton is a LOT closer than Redmond, so we're very excited for them (plus the house sounds absolutely awexome). In fact, they'll actually live closer than Sandy & Mathias! Hoorays!

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posted by Christopher at 3:41 PM

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Tuesday, July 03, 2007

Bit More of a Boat 

Yesterday (Monday) I walked with Carrie to work in the morning, where she was given Christine's car keys so she could drive me to work. After work I walked up to the Enterprise place on St. Helens and picked up our temporary rental car: a white Nissan Altima. It's not bad. A little bit more of a boat than a Corolla, though.

The rest of the day I basically spent working. We had pizzas for dinner, and much later in the evening Carrie sent me out to buy some iced cream. I kept on having antsy feelings, mostly because I would have preferred not to have to deal with all this insurance stuff almost immediately after spending huge gobs of money on a new mattress set.

We put on Buffy Season 5 to fall asleep to. Awkward sentence.

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Monday, July 02, 2007

Did Anybody Get the License Plate Number of the Truck That Hit Me? 

So yesterday (Sunday) there was some excitement in my life, though not really of the good kind.

I woke up at a regular time and got ready and all that, then got in my car and drove down towards the Supermall, where I was meeting Mike so we could go see Ratatouille. I got off Highway 18, went down West Valley Highway to 15th St, and from there took the little one-way side street to the left that winds around until it dead-ends at Supermall Drive.

As I was pulling up to the light at Supermall Drive, I noticed that my brother was in the middle of the three lanes (the left two lanes are left-turn only lanes, and the one right lane is right-turn only). So I pulled over to the left-most lane and pretended I was shocked to see him there. He laughed, then we waited at the light for a little bit until it changed so that we both had green left-turn arrows. I let Mike go a couple seconds before me because after you turn left there the two lanes on Supermall Drive merge into one, and I thought I'd let him merge in front of me there.

Then as I pulled out on my green arrow a white pickup truck came from the left, ran the red light, and hit my car right at its driver's side front wheel.

It spun my car sideways a little bit so I could see that the truck continued through the intersection. I quickly straightened my car and pulled up behind the truck so that I could pull over near it when it pulled off the road.

It was at about that time that I realized that the truck not only wasn't slowing down, but was rapidly accelerating.

I hadn't gotten a make, model, or license number on it yet, so I slammed on my own accelerator and gave chase all the way down Supermall Drive. When the truck turned right onto 15th St I pulled out my cell phone and quickly dailed 911 and continued the chase while talking to the emergency operator, turning onto 15th right behind the truck.

I couldn't get close enough to ready anything on the truck because my front driver's side tire was rubbing up against the mangled side of my car. I just couldn't accelerate fast enough to catch him.

He obviously knew I was chasing him because he took the next right onto the freeway. I chased him up the on-ramp and then decided that I really shouldn't drive freeway speed with a tire rubbing up against the side of the car (I could smell burning rubber), so I pulled over and informed the operator where the truck was heading. She said she let the Highway Patrol know where it was going, so I pulled over on the side of the freeway.

Here's a map of exactly where the impact took place.

After I got off the phone with the 911 operator I called Carrie to tell her that I wasn't hurt or anything. While I was talking to her Mike called me to ask where the Hell I was. He hadn't seen me chase the guy off, and just assumed we'd pulled over into the Wal-Mart parking lot just south of where the impact took place. But when he couldn't find me or the truck anywhere he called me. So I told him where I was and he said he was on the way.

I got off the phone with Carrie, and Mike & I hung out on the side of the freeway for a while until a fire truck showed up. They looked over the car and made sure I didn't want an ambulance or anything. I was a little worried about my shoulder because that's where I felt the impact when it happened, but I didn't need to go to the hospital or nothin'. They said if I was sore the next day that I should just go to my regular doctor.

So they left. Then a while later the Highway Patrol showed up and took all my information and everything. Then the tow-truck driver showed up and hooked up my car. After the cop gave me the report he'd filled out I went inside Mike's car and called my insurance and told them what was going on. The tow-truck drive told us where he was taking the car (we didn't know any Toyota body shops in Auburn, so we let him choose) and I passed that info on to the insurance people. They also told me that there'd be a rental car waiting for me at the Enterprise on St. Helens in Tacoma. I knew exactly where that was.

Then the tow-truck took my car away and Mike drove me back to my house. Needless to say I did not go to Fools Play Practice that afternoon.

I was very disappointed. I really wanted to see Ratatouille.

Anyway, I spent the rest of the day just relaxing and doing stuff on Konpyupyu here and watching BSG and stuff like that. My back felt like it was stiffening up a little bit, which I expected, but I took a couple of muscle relaxers and it seemed like it was helping. Carrie left at one point in the evening for a store meeting.

Thankfully when I woke up this morning my back wasn't sore, my neck wasn't sore, and my shoulders weren't sore. Well, not any more sore than usual at least. It was like nothing had happened. Except of course that my car wasn't in the driveway and I hadn't seen Ratatouille.

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Sunday, July 01, 2007

Good News, Suggestion Card: The President Signed You, and Now You're a Scene 

So yesterday (Saturday) was another exciting day in my life. Carrie got up a little early and actually went in to work for an hour or so. She came back and got me and we went to Trader Joe's for grocery supplies.

When we came home I made an humongous pasta dish for lunch. It had a ricotta & marinara sauce and turkey meatballs. So tasty.

In the afternoon I did some konpyupyu work and then did a huge stack of bills while Carrie took a nap. Excitement!

I took a shower and had more of the pasta for din-dins before heading down to Fools Play. It was just me and Mike, and we did Fools Play Revolution, our 4th of July format. It was a really funny show, and a couple of times I made Mike just absolutely crack up on stage, which I love doing because it makes the entire audience bust up watching Mike try not to bust up.

There were a lot more people in the audience than last week, including Tiare, Leia & Kedar, and Tia, though only Leia & Kedar came to hang out with us afterwards (Tia due to being exhausted and probably sick).

We went to Rib Eye and I sat with Sandy, Leia, & Kedar. Sandy was really loopy for some reason, and it was really funny. We both ended up getting the hot roast beef sammitch, which is really tasty. I even got a side salad and ate half of it! Wow for me! I really miss salads, and it looks like I can start slowly working them back in.

The show ran a little long, and I tarried at the restaurant a little long, so I was a little later getting home than usual, but I made it home just fine and dandy.

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posted by Christopher at 12:51 PM

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"Of the Month" July '07 

Link of the Month:
Lifehacker
This website is an absolutely great resource on how to increase the productivity and fully utilize the customizability of not only your computer systems and programs, but your life. Everything from Firefox extensions to how to build your own air conditioner for about 30 bucks.

Book of the Month:
Runaways Vol 3
I really enjoy this comic book. It's the story of a group of teenagers who discover that their parents were all supervillains. By the time of this third volume they're relatively well established, but they're still dealing with all the usual teenage crap. It's just way more well-written than most teenage crap is.

Album of the Month:
Busdriver: RoadKillOvercoat
Speed-rapper Busdriver's latest opus, this is probably his musically strongest album ever. In addition to his usual jaw-dropping verbal agility, RoadKillOvercoat has some surprisingly melodic and beautiful songs. It is probably my favorite Busdriver album to date.

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posted by Christopher at 8:07 AM

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