V-day aka Valentines Day. I like to think it sounds like D-day. Anyway, I have been having too much fun bitching over V-day and getting over dramatic about it. Stephanie caught on quick and made sure to get me a very special Valentine or Valentines that I thought I should share. America, I give you what you want!!!!
Today is my birthday. I’m 29 years old! Woohoo!. Damn, one more year till 30.
I’ve never been a big Valentines Day fan. It always tried to steal the glory from my b-day. All of a sudden everyone goes stupid to have romance day. A day, that must have been invented by men.
Here is my theory. When a man meets a woman he decides to court her. He buys her flowers, and takes her out, hooking her with sweet nothings and general valentine day kind of things. Pretty soon the man starts to lure the girl in until he finally has her, and he gets her stuffed and mounted on the wall. He no longer wants to work for her affection. However, she is going to yern for the ole attention, so many sitcoms have told us and hilarity ensues.
The answer, Valentines Day. Instead of randomly surprising and trying to remain romantic we invent a few specific days for romance with Valentine’s Day the king. Toss in an anniversary, a birthday and maybe another holiday, like Halloween in case you managed to catch a goth chick or something else wierd. Men no longer need to be spontaniously romantic but simply have to fullfill a romance quota and the rest of the time can be spent watching ballgames, drinking beer at the bar, and spending too much time at the office.
Well, I just can’t get into it. Never liked the holiday but I’m not going to be a total party pooper. I made a valentine for all you lovers out there.
I had a good weekend. Hung out with Jonathan, got drunk, played Halo 2 online and tried to get him banned from it so he would roleplay more 
Next day I hung out with Mark and we went to the game store (thanks again for the book) and then got sushi. We then played Resident Evil 4.
Had to leave early to meet up with Stephanie for “An Evening with Ira Glass.” Ira Glass is the host to a show called This American Life. Stephanie was a big fan of the show though I had never heard it (actually, I did briefly on the way to El Paso when I had to catch my flight after Christmas in Cruces and here on Joe’s Blog). He had also been a producer and reporter for a number of shows on NPR including “All Things Considered” which I was more familier with. Neither one of us knew what to expect.
So, we headed up to UCSD which was disorganized. We had problems finding parking and then they had a double booking problem. However, after 15 min they got everyone seated and started the show. “An Evening with Ira Glass” reminded me a lot of the “Firefly/Joss Whedon” presentation at last years comic-con. He talked about the show and his history in radio. At the end he had a question and answer session just like Joss Whedon did.
In the end the show was educational. I was a bit lost as it was a show for fans of “This American Life” and I imagine my reaction would be similar to someone who went to the “Firefly” presentation and had never seen Buffy or Firefly.
On Sunday I ended up forming a migraine late morning and ended up drugging myself up. I did make a major effort to catch “This American Life” at 2pm. I turned on the radio and layed down. However, after about 10min I could not focus on the show, after about 20min I kept dozing off for a minute or two. After half an hour I had completly lost interest and turned it off to watch anime.
Later that evening I went to Stephanie’s for my b-day dinner which she made paella, my favorite. We also had a bottle of wine, bread and orange slice. We then watched “Lord of the Ring: Fellowship of the Ring” which she had been putting off but because it was my b-day gave in. As I expected, she didn’t like the movie but we had a few laughs making fun of the movie. She gave me a Cure CD and Tori Amos’ new book 
Well, I guess I’m the party pooper and no one really knew. By that I mean that I finally called the cops on a party as a noise complaint. I had been thinking about it forever as parties in the court yard of my apartment could get real loud. With my window being right next to the court yard and most parties not starting until after 12 it could become extremely difficult to get some sleep.
A few weeks ago I was at Jonathan and Michelle’s and a party across the street started up and I saw Jonathan call it in. I got the number he called and was ready to use it.
At 1pm last night the a party drifted in front of my window. To give you a better idea as to how bad this is I could hear to people perfectly as though they were in my room talking. This is combined with yelling “woohoo.” So, I got the distributor who asked me my name, number, address, and some details. She then asked me if I was willing to make a citizens arrest. I was upset and tired at the time and said yes.
In less than 10 minutes the cop showed up and shut down the party. I could hear him talking from my room and I heard him bring up the citizen arrest thing. I really didn’t want anyone to get in trouble, I just wanted the noise to calm down. Not sure if anything happened to the person though.
This of course made me nervous as I had never done anything like that before. Thinking I had broken some underwritten law of PB, a party pooper in PB, heresy! Anyway, you could hear a pin drop after the cop left. Fell asleep a short while later.
I went and saw Hotel Rwanda on Friday. Absolutly amazing! It is one of those movies that burn and you never want to see it again but it is still brilliant. About a man who works as a manager for a four star hotel in Rwanda and turns in into a refugee camp during the Hutu try to kill all the Tutsis.
On a happier note Stephanie and I went to Scott and Dede’s for dinner to send Scott off on his first 1 month cruise in the Coast Guard. Dede kicked ass and made me Pre-Bday Cake which I didn’t expect.
And once again I did not celebrate in the great American tradition of sitting around the TV and watching the super bowl. Instead, I played Halo with Glen. We watched about 5 minutes of the painful military opening ceremonies and Glen said “Chris, make it stop.” In which I replied “There is not stopping this, Bush is out of control.” Well, I thought it was funny.
And yet I think playing Halo for 4 hours during the Super-bowl might have been better then what I did last year in which I counted books at Gametowne for their annual inventory. Strangely enough, it was also the second adventure of my Fading Suns game which means The Champions (current gaming group) is a year old.
I know have new email address. However all my old emails addresses work. So, now I am Chris (@) zerneeak.com. However, you can still use chris (@) czernopkins.org.
I will slowly start converting all my emails over and am hoping that in a year or two to remove czernopkins.org completly. So, that only took around two weeks to fix. Which is about three times faster then it is taking to set up my works SSL server.
I must be a masacist because every morning my alarm goes off tuned to NPR. It is scratching and mixed with a loud beeping but I get up, turn off the alarm, lay back down and turn on the main clear radio which brings NPR in my room which I listen to for 10-15min before getting ready for the day.
This morning I wake up and a few minutes later get a speech by President Bush. Same ole’ frustrating crap. 80 billion dollars for the war, Iraqi elections, soldiers dying for the cause, health care, ex ex. Everytime he speaks it is painful. I think that everyone else must be hearing something else because it makes no sense to me. Like he is speaking a different language. I cannot comprehend what he is saying. I understand the words and their meaning but I cannot understand how he can justify what he is saying.
More boggling is that this is what we wanted. Or at least the majority of the country that voted him in. I keep hearing that the democratic party failed because we weren’t aggresive enough during the election. But how can we take the blame for Bush’s failings.
And things like health insurance concern me. I currently trying to figure out how to get, if I can afford it, and if I do get what exactly I’m getting. As these policies are written not to be understood. So, currently, I don’t have health insurance or a savings account. That means if something happens to me I’m fucked. I’m either rejected from medical help or will end up with a bill that I can’t possibly pay.
For the first time I feel affected by the politics that seem so far away. And it drives me crazy every morning as I listen to NPR reporting Bush’s plans. And I realize every morning that I, much less that nation, am getting screwed. I now wish I could go back and listen to Humpty and Dumpty, the Howard Stern rip offs on all the local rock station around the nation so that I may be ignorant of my surrounding and blissful.
I wonder if stress is a relative thing? I think about my problems and think they must be so minor in comparison to a homeless person or a tsunami victum. However, if there situation is 10 times worse then there stress must be 10 times worse. Anyway.
Over the week I had to deal with a minor quibble from online boards where a bunch of infighting occured after a player wasn’t happy with a game. Seemed like a simple enough problem and I’ve handled these situations before. Amazing I seemed to have made things worse. However, I no longer blame myself. Internet communication is an amazing thing. I can write pointless things about my life and people will actually read it. And, while writing this I could be pissing someone off and make them hate me forever.
Personal communication is probably only 50% words. I’m no expert but you don’t really need to be to figure that one out. In college I participated in an experment for psychology were I guy was testing internet communication. Me and some other guy had to type a one page essay on pornography and we could only communicate over the internet. I had a lot of fun with it tossing emoticons and joking. By the end he had no idea what pornography was (he thought he did) and was raving pissed while I had a delightful time with the project and though he did, too.
So, I’ve seen flamewars ignite and passions soar since I first started logging on in 1991. The recent events on the my internet boards show that some things never change. From the recent fight to a good friend leaving the boards.
To add to my nothing stress I ended up sitting next to Stephanie the other night while she went through he mail after being in Chicago for five days. This wasn’t something I wanted to do* but she seemed comfortable with it and if she didn’t want me to see anything she could have waited.
Of course she ended up pulling out mortgage statements and other financial information which made me realize that our financial situations are very different (well, I knew this, but this was a big reminder). This gets me going on reflecting on my financial situation which stable, is not great or secure for anything bad to happen to me physically or in the work place.
I now try and figure how to change that. Have been for awhile and am totally clueless when it comes down to these things. I love my job (doing the work I want, walk to work, no deadlines ex ex) but if I want to improve my future in any significant way things will have to change.
*There are certain things I want to remain ignorant of such as past boyfriends (Chasing Aimee Complex, or the whole how do I compare) and finances but realize I’ll have to deal with these things if I want the relationship to work.
Last Saturday Stephanie I went to a geek concert at Lestat’s. You might be thinking “What is a geek concert? A concert full of geeks? A concert with a choir of geeks?” Well, it is both. Stephanie had managed to find this woman who sings about science fiction, roleplaying, and the geek lifestyle on Livejournal so we decided to go.
The event was interesting as geeks listened to the acoustic sounds of geek music. A few geeks were even singing along. After a while we realized that we were outsiders, that all the people were part of some bizarre niche geek circle. After the event they all poored outside and talked among themselves like some SCA I hate the mundanes circle jerk.
I did have fun though. Stephanie thought it was funny when thing singer said “This for all the gamers who take Vampire: The Masquerade too seriously.” I also had to smile at that.