So you should definately watch this clip… it’s quite amusing to me 😉

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S8cN2pB3MCE

HOLY CRAP.  This is different then the last time I posted.  What did you do Xanga?!  I don’t know, but my first impression is: I like, I like.

At any rate, I have a sad announcement to inform you all of.  It is very sad.  The end of an era.  Almost.  One of my oldest cassette tapes is no more.  That’s right…. Audio Adrenaline – Don’t Censor Me.  Holly and myself were in my car driving home from picking up our subway sandwhiches, and I was excited about hearing Jesus and the California Kid.  Big House was ending… silence…..  more silence….  some fast forwarding…. play… silence…. fast foward… play… silence… eject… look at tape….  no tape was running through the head anymore.  It broke.  Jesus and the California Kid will never be played again.  It seems at least a little ironic that Audio Adrenaline just released “Adios” which I assume to be their final cd, as it is a compilation of previous albums except for I think 1 or 2 new songs… but I haven’t listed to any of their albums after Underdog… so…  I wouldn’t know.  It’s very sad.

So I have been sick and am mostly recovered now… hence the lapse in posting.

I have one more long story to tell that was a little bit ago now, but I guess getting to it eventually is better than not getting to it at all.  So go ahead, get yourself a drink, and then come back to be entertained.  Get the bathroom out of the way, there will be no breaks after this, so do it while you can.

Done?  Ok.

So our first day at the beach we had gotten settled in and everything… went down to walk on the beach a little bit and check it out… then came back inside for dinner, etc.  While we were on the beach I spotted the thing I always look for when I am at the beach, because for some reason I like them…. a pier.  So I had decided that after dinner we should walk to the pier.  It was quite a ways off, but I figured that we could do it, and that it would be fun. 
So off we went, me with a nice LED flashlight (not too small, but it fit in my pocket).  We walked, and walked, and walked….  finally when we were seeing we were getting pretty close we were starting to get kind of sick of walking.  But of course, we still had to walk the whole way back.  Right before we got to the pier there was this building that was much closer to the ocean then all the others….  like it was pretty much ON the beach.  They had a bunch of sandbags out in front of it, and the waves coming in were basically crashing up against them.  So we stood there a moment and timed it…. It seemed there was plenty of time to cross, so we waited for a wave to come in, then just as it pulled out we darted across.  No problem.  We then proceeded to go up to the pier.

Upon going into the little store at the front of the pier we got some ice cream and were ready to go out to the pier… walked up to the cashier to pay for the ice cream and the $1 walking passes for the pier….  only to see a sign that said they couldn’t take credit cards.  Apparently there was a problem with their phone line that was preventing it.  And neither of us had cash.  We were almost very disappointed, but the guy was very nice and asked if we had just gotten in, and we told him we had.  He asked if we’d be back, and we said yeah.  He proceeded to tell us that we could go ahead out, and take the ice cream, to just come back and pay him later in the week.  We were very grateful and enjoyed our ice cream and pier walk at night.  The pier was pretty cool…  it did some moving, and some of the boards were kind of loose, which never makes one too confident.  After a little while, we had our fill and decided to head back.

Now, for those of you who aren’t familiar with the Outer Banks area, at night, the beach is pitch black.  There is no light at all.  I mean none.  The dunes block off the light from the houses along the beach.  This posed an immediate difficulty for us, because that was going to make it difficult to get past the beach by the  house with the waves crashing up against it.  so we thought maybe we’d walk along the road next to the beach… but the road we were on ended, and so there went that idea.  (Note: Should you ever have this same experience at the outer banks, walk out to the highway, there is only the one, and walk alongside it.  All the little rental communities are completely seperated from each other, so you can’t walk from inside one to another.  We didn’t really know about the highway yet, it was our first time, and we just got there.)

Instead we went down a path from one of the houses to the beach.  Now, in addition to it being dark, allow me to explain to you another problem.  As I said, you can’t see the houses from the beach.  The entire beach looks EXACTLY the same.  There are no distinguishing features at all.  The marker we had been planning on using was a log we had put up.  In the pitch blackness with my led flashlight that only worked for maybe about 10 feet in front of us, this made knowing where we were impossible.  The light did allow us to see the crabs that were walking on the beach, which freaked out Holly and thus made traveling along the beach yet harder.  So to get her away from the crabs, I decided to take the next exit from the beach, and see if we could take the road again.  We ended up coming up in a KOA campground.  We walked around it for a bit, then saw the edge of the fence, and decided hey, we’ll go outside the fence and walk to the road.  Bad idea.

Something for you to keep in mind at the outer banks is that there are cactii on the island.  So where there is not a path, you do not want to walk.  Now, we weren’t really aware of how many there were though we were somewhat aware of their presence because we had seen one or 2 earlier that day.  We jsut kind of were walking along the fence when I stepped on something that kind of hurt.  So we stopped and I shined the light.  There was a cactus sticking in the back of my heel.  And there were cactii all around us.  So I got myself to a clearer area and then pulled it out.  We then slowly made out way out, I got stuck one or 2 more times, I think Holly made it out pretty much unscathed.  So at this point we were like… whatever I guess we have to stick with the beach at least until we’re passed the campground (which, since we found the edge of it, we knew wasn’t far.)  We also resolved never to go off of paths again.

Back to the beach for awhile until finally seeing another entrance (they are hard to see).  Came up it and had no clue where we were, except that we both felt we hadn’t walked far enough to be at the area where the house we were staying at was.  So we decided to just walk out to a main road and follow it.  So we did.  Neither of us was really that sure if we would be able to figure out where we were going, but we got to the highway and turned to follow it the same direction we had been walking on the beach.  I was starting to get rather frustrated not knowing where I was and at the prospect of being lost all night.  Finally we crossed paths with a large group of folks whom I asked if they knew where the place we were looking for was.  One of them said yeah, and pointed out a lit sign in the distance and told us that was it.  So we thanked him and continued on our way, feeling much more confident.  Finally, we got there, and all was well.  But we were very tired from the incredibly long walk…. and cactii pricking… and crab…. frightening.

The end.

So I guess no one is going to comment on the last post. That’s ok, I just learned that there is a good reason to make posts here aside from that. I decided to go through posts of this week in every previous year from the time I started writing in Xanga. It was quite interesting and caused me to remember many things. You should give it a try sometime… and apparently this week of August is when a lot of fairly major things have happened in my life… heh.. tho I guess this year breaks it, unless.. I dunno… I get that job that I am hoping to get or something.

At any rate, onto this whole WalMart thing. It actually happened the day before I left for the beach, and I wanted to post about it then, but I just didn’t get a chance to due to being busy with packing and such, but… I am posting about it now.

So I was at the WalMart over off of 85, which due to it’s being renovated to become a supercenter has a very messed up and annoying parking lot. So I was stuck at a certain spot in the lot, and was sitting there like 2 or 3 minutes waiting for cars to go by, when I noticed that this car in the row in front of me was getting ready to pull out. So I’m like, all right, I’ll just take that spot. So I pull up, realize that the person who pulled out isn’t going to get around me, so I back up a little… it’s at that point I see someone else is waiting on the spot too. I have no idea how long they have been waiting, I know that I’ve been waiting, and I know that I can get into the spot before them, so I do.

I then didn’t think too much of it, except that I probably made them mad, but they’d get over it. I proceeded to go inside to continue the search that I had started at Kohl’s for a duffel bag. After I have been in the store just a few minutes, and am over around the sporting goods looking to see where exactly I think duffel bags might be, this guy is walking from behind me, says something like ‘hey’, so, I turned around and looked at him. Tall kinda lanky black guy, cornrows in his hair… he was probably my age or slightly younger. He also seems to be upholding the stereotype against young black guys.

“That was a real asshole move you just pulled out there.”

“umm… ok?”

“I was sitting there waiting for that spot and for those cars to go by and you just swooped in and took it.”

“Well, actually, I was waiting too-“

“No you weren’t. I saw you. You were in the traffic lane.”

“Well, you don’t have to believe me, but I was. Goodbye.”

“No, I want you to realize that that was a real asshole move you pulled out there.”

“Goodbye.”

I proceeded to walk away, he proceeded to follow me.

“I’m going to follow you around and let everybody know what an asshole you are. Everybody, I want you to know that this guy is an inconsiderate asshole, he doesn’t care about anybody else….”

(Note: I was trying very hard not to laugh while he was saying that, because I didn’t really want to agitate him so he’d try to punch me or something, but it was reminding me SO much of the Family Guy episode where the guy follows Peter around going “hey everbody! this guy’s a phony! He’s nothing but a big fat phony!”)

“Fine, I’m an asshole, goodbye.”

“No-“

“goodbye.”

“I want you to apologize for being inconsiderate and admit that you didn’t wait for the spot.”

“I’m not apologizing for something I didn’t do.”

Continued walking around, I don’t remember if he was saying anything at this point or not, but he was probably running his mouth. Oh yeah, all this time one walmart employee was following us around from the beginning, and 1 or 2 others have started by this point, as well as a couple customers in the store were paying attention. So anyway, I eventually said…

“don’t you have anything better to do then follow me around?”

“yeah, but you pissed me off and ruined my day, so now I’m going to ruin yours.”

(special note: it did not ruin my day. it made me a little frustrated and on edge while he was around simply because there was the chance that he might decide to throw a punch or something. In the end, I have merely recieved a story to tell to several people and laugh about about this stupid guy who gets so upset over a parking space that it clearly wasn’t hard for him to replace since he was able to find me in the store 4 or 5 minutes later.)

So now I pretty much have decided he’s not going to stop following me, and I’m sick of being followed, so I stop and let the walmart employees approach. They come up and start trying to calm him down, he continues to run his mouth about the same things he had been saying, the walmart lady doesn’t seem to understand what he’s really upset about, and so I tell her he;’s mad because I took a parking spot that we were both waiting for. He’s still not really calming down at all, so they call for a manager. As soon as it is apparent a manager is coming he sort of changes his tone and goes with

“I just want you to realize that there are some people out there who wouldn’t just come and talk to you about this but they might beat you up in the parking lot”

“Maybe so, but anyone trying to beat someone up in a walmart parking lot in the middle of the day would have to be really stupid.”

Probably soemthing else was said and he walks off, as though he was just doing me a favor and he just doesn’t want me to get beat up.

Anyway, I stand there for a second, calm my nerves, walmart lady apologizes, I ask about duffel bags, i follow the manager who has now arrived over to where they are. I hear him on his walkie talkie that there is another manager that is actually following the other guy through the store. They actually followed him until he pulled out of the parking lot in his PT Cruiser, and the manager that was me actually walked me all the way out to my car. I asked him if that sort of thing happens very often. He said “occasionally, usually around Christmas when we run out of an item.”

Oh yeah, and they didn’t have any duffel bags that suited my needs.

The moral of the story is: Some people have some serious anger management issues. If you are so angry over losing a parking space, even if the person DID steal the spot without waiting, that you feel the need to follow them through a store, you may want to consider some serious therapy.

So as the title says, I am now back from the beach, which is where I was since a week ago yesterday.  We went to the outer banks in NC.  First time I have ever been there, it was pretty nice, but not my favorite of the beaches I have been to.  The plusses include that the beach wasn’t crowded, we had a nice big house rented, due to several of the extended fam coming as well.  At said house, we had a private pool/hot tub, both of which were quite nice.  I hate having to share hot tubs with people I don’t know, so it was good to be able to just use it as much as I wanted throughout the week.  I miss it already.

Anyway, more on that later I suppose.  The wednesday before we left was Holly’s birthday.  It started with me having not had a chance to get her present yet due to putting it off till the day before and then not having time to the day before.  So, I intended to get it before she woke up….  unfortunately, she woke up before I could go to the store (the store in question, Costco, does not open until 10, so I was waiting for that.)  Anyway, I was checking my e-mail, when I noted that Holly had sent me an add request on Ringo (which I have never used and didn’t remember even signing up for, but that is beside the point.)  Upon seeing that, I noted the time it was sent, which was that morning… thus I knew she was awake before leaving my room.  So I came downstairs as stealthily as possible to see if she was still in her room and if I could slip out.  However, she was not, and was in fact in the bathroom.  So I decided to leave her a note very quickly on her macbook since I knew I’d probably be gone for an hour.  I went into her room, grabbed the computer, and opened Microsoft Word.  Now, for some reason (I think probably due to not being shut down for quite awhile, though I also ran disk repair on it and it found some things that needed fixing) the computer had been running slow.  I was not really aware of it at the time though… but seriously…  Word took FOREVER to boot up.  I thought she might come out of the bathroom and ruin my plan, but I waited and finally it came up.  I quickly typed the message (I think I did pretty good, only one typo if I remember correctly from when I looked at it upon my return).  I said something to the effect of “Happy birthday, I’m not here right now, but I’ll be back soon.  Why don’t you go ahead and get ready for the day?”.  So then I left and drove to Costco.  The gift in question, for those of you who might be wondering, was a Nintendo DS Lite.  I knew she had kind of wanted one, and was previously planning on getting her a bike, until my mom revealed that her old one was still in good condition, and smaller then her current bike (which we found out when we went riding one day, is too tall for Holly.)  Anyway, she said Holly could have the old bike, so I decided that better for her to have a bike and something else then just a bike.

So I got the DS, then proceeded over to Gamestop to look for a game.  Initially, I was trying to locate a copy of Animal Crossing, which Holly had expressed interest in, but upon taking the case to the counter, the guy said they were sold out.  So I decided on The Sims 2 (which I was not sure of, but has turned out to be a good choice… she played it quite a lot while at the beach).  Next up was something to deter her for awhile….  though certainly something that I knew she would like.  I stopped at Bloom (formerly Food Lion, for those who don’t know) and picked up a dozen roses.  At this point I had taken a little longer then I expected… I think it had been almost an hour and a half in total.  The only question was what to do with the gift.. I didn’t have time to wrap it, nor did I know where any wrapping paper was.  So I decided the easiest thing to do was to leave it in the car, because she was expecting to go somewhere anyway.  I took the roses in with me, and knocked on her bedroom door, and surprised her with those.  She asked where I had been, and I said I had to take care of some things, and asked if she was ready to go yet.  “almost”, of course, was her reply. 😉  So she continued to get ready, we requested of my mom to cut the roses and place them in a vase, and then we “left.”

Of course, she knew something was up, but, we got to the car, and I opened her door for her, and as she was about to get in she saw the DS and game sitting on the seat and she was quite surprised. So we went back inside so that she could put them away and plug in the DS so it would be charged for play later.  Then we were back to the car to leave for real.

Our destination was supposed to be a surprise, but she got me to tell her that if she guessed right, I would tell her.  Her first guess was right, Dutch’s Daughter.  We got there, had lunch, which was very good.  I had a bowl of the cream of crab soup, and salmon.  She had a cup of cream of crab soup, and some kind of vegetable cheese bread that looked pretty good.  So after getting quite full there, we had decided it would be a good day to go to the inner harbor, as she had wanted to for quite some time but the last time people went she was horribly tired due to being out late the night before and then having to wake up early and work that day.  So we went home to do…. something, I can’t remember what.  Then off to the Inner Harbor.

We walked around to all the shops, sat on the edge of the harbor over behind the Rusty Scupper, and did all the basic things one does at the inner harbor.  we sat to watch the magician at the little street performer place…  and i was quickly chosen to help with a trick… pretty basic… he had a closed deck of cards (in the box).  He had one person choose a color, black or red, (red was chosen), one person choose a suite, hearts or diamonds (hearts was chosen), and then had me choose a card, 2 thru Ace (I chose Jack).  He then took out the cards and said one of the cards in the deck was upside down, he flayed them out and found it, then had me come up and remove it and show it to everyone, of course, it was the Jack of hearts.  Pretty good trick I guess, couldn’t figure out how he did it really.

Anyway, we were there about 3 hours in total, ate some cheese fries from Johnny Rocket before leaving, and were off to back home.  I don’t remember what else we did really upon getting home, but it was fairly late, so we probably just watched some tv, ate dinner, and went to bed.

This post is long, too long.  In another day or 2 I will tell you more about birthdays and beach trips and things in between.

So last night I had a really bizzare dream.  The strange thing is that I also remember it really, really well.  As you might be able to tell from the title of this post, it was about zombies… kind of sort of.  They were zombie like, I guess, but not entirely how I expect zombies to be, so they are kind of a random creation of my subconcious.

At any rate, my dream took place in the area here, with some differences.  For example, mine and Elliot’s houses were in basically the same place in the dream as they are in actuality (for anyone who may not be aware of that setup, basically a short walk through a wooded area to the other house).  There were plenty of differences though…  my house was kind of surrounded by a museum… campus.. type thing.  Like there were lots of paintings and such.  Also, the woods were like REAL woods.  And no other houses or anything like that.

So anyway, as to how the whole zombie infection thing got started I’m not really sure… I believe that the dream just started with that being the situation.  The first thing I remember is all of us being together in my house and us being attacked.  By “us” I mean many people that I know in actuality (you know how it is, in the dream I knew all of them, but thinking back on it now I have no idea who some of the people were supposed to be.)

Now, as to what made the zombies different from “normal” zombies.  These zombies weren’t particularly mindless.  They had sort of a singular purpose as zombies do, but they tended to be able to figure things out.  And they were able to make unified efforts.  They may have eventually become mindless though, given the time….  because another difference was that there was not an immediate and/or sudden change.  Typically, when one is bitten by a zombie, they become a zombie, complete with mindlessness, pretty rapidly.  There is no questionable stage… when they are a zombie, you know it.  Not so with these ones.  After the attack, where we had lost a few people, there was another who, though we did not know it, was also infected.  It was a guy, but I can’t say I knew who the guy was   Anyway, basically, he was a zombie at this point, and he knew it, but at this point there was no physical difference, and he acted basically like a normal human.  He took this girl away from the rest of the group under the pretense of going for a walk or something like that.  Upon being alone, the girl sort of figured it out because he was acting a little strange, but it was too late for her.  However, we did find out what had happened, and that was basically when we learned that about them.

Later on in the dream, we all left the area to go do something…  I can’t remember what exactly, but when we got back this girl was there who hadn’t been there before, but that we were expecting.  It turned out she had been there overnight while we were gone.  She assured us that it had been a quiet night, and things kind of went along as normal until the next day.  Once again, she led another girl away from the group.  They were sort of in the area that is elliot’s backyard… but a ways back.  They were talking about the paintings and such in the art museum, and the new girl was saying how she had been looking at them.  Eventually she said “you know, I saw the artist that painted that last night”.  Which you know, clearly, that artist was dead and known to be among the zombies.  So the other girl started to freak out and ran.  She came across myself as I was headed up to Elliot’s, and upon realizing what was going on, I ran with her up to Elliot’s… which, btw, had sort of a bunker out in front of his house.   We ran in there with the zombie right behind.  I had a gun (basically just a pistol) that I turned to shoot the zombie girl with.  but it was empty and didn’t go off when I pulled the trigger.  Which sucked.  So at that point we thought we were going to die.  Then, the only other specific person that I can remember doing a specific thing…  Elliot and 2 other people came up behind the zombie.  Elliot had a really cool shotgun which fired 2 shots pretty rapidly, one in the torso and one in the head.  Which killed the zombie.  And… that’s pretty much when I woke up.

I had to write about that though… because well… it was a pretty cool dream.

Ok so I made one post fairly recently, but it wasn’t very good.  I don’t know… for some reason I feel like posting.  Probably the lack of a job at the moment that is inspiring it.  As I sit and look at Xanga and the way it does things… I have to wonder….  why are people using MySpace?  It’s just a random mishmosh of various scripts that don’t even really work together.  The design of the site is a horrible mess, it has huge almost-porn ads all over the place, and well… nothing makes sense on it.  Then you have Xanga, where things work like they should….  everything works together instead of being independent.  and ads are nice and small (and non-almost-porn).

So that said, I am taking a stand for Xanga and returning to it from MySpace.  Maybe it will make more of an impact then that time I took a stand for ICQ… but that time was just a joke anyway, so… who cares?  This is for real.  Xanga is soooo much better.  And just think, your profile won’t randomly be inaccessible for some reason every other time you try to use it (and I don’t even check myspace every day like some people do, yet that happens to me constantly).  The site won’t randomly go down for stupid reasons constantly either.  There is really nothing but bonuses to using Xanga.  So stop trying to be all cool and sceneish and using MySpace… because it is neither cool nor… well, ok, i guess it is sceneish, but scene kids are frigging annoying anyway (no offense).

And so I am listening to Five Iron for the first time in awhile…. and I still like it.  Good times.

So how about that myspace?

So I didn’t make any posts.

That doesn’t mean I didn’t TRY.  It just means I failed ;).

Apparently I only like to post when I’m sick, though I’m not sick now, and I’m posting.

Still working the same crappy job.  I will be in Florida starting the day after Easter for about a week and a half.  If you are there you should hang out with me.

Ok so I don’t really have anything to say, I just thought it was time I posted SOMETHING.

So wow… it’s been a bit of a while since I last used Xanga….  I guess when I was sick I made a post… but.. before then it had been awhile too… I dunno… not much to talk about I guess… most of my time is spent either working or watching movies/tv, really….  and then the gym 3-4 nights a week.

Recently I started playing some games more….  mostly on the weekend…  I finally got around to beating Paper Mario, which I hadn’t played since I started working at my current job.  And then today I picked up The Wind Waker… which is ok so far, not great, not bad… but i’m not very far into it… so…  it could be better… or worse… then i currently think it is.

Unfortunately I am very tired right now, so I am unable to play it despite rather wanting to.

The other thing I have been wanting to do is read…. I keep finding books that I want to read during my and Holly’s frequent trips to Borders…. and I buy them….. and then I never get a chance to read them, because of all the other things I mentioned….  but I have been reading at least a little bit every night the last week or so….  if I am exceptionally tired and the chapter is long I try to get through at least half of the chapter ;).

Work is the same…..  boring…  not terrible, but I’m kinda done with it, and I’m really starting to look for a new job now.  I sent a resume in to Bethesda Softworks for a QA Tester Internship they have on their website… not really sure what it pays, but, it’s 2 months, temporary, and I think it’s one of those deals where if you do well, at the end of the 2 months they’ll hire you on in a permanent position…  which would be my whole point for doing it.  It will be different when/if I start that and/or when/if Holly starts at Borders…. because we are used to having the same schedule and so other then before she started working her first couple weeks here, neither of us has been off work when the other was at work….  so…  I guess we’ll have more time apart….   which could be a good thing, though, when you enjoy being around someone you of course don’t look forward to not being able to spend as much time with them.

Anyway, I’m done here for now.

I think I’m going to try to start posting here regularly again…..  but we’ll see.

ouch.  my throat hurts really badly again.  need to kill a few minutes before i can take any more advil (still gonna be taking it about 30 min before I’m supposed to, but I can’t sleep with it hurting, and it hurts).  anyway…  I went to the doctor (didn’t see Sarah’s message about a free clinic till after I had done that, but I may check that out next time) and it ended up costing less than they had said it might….  apparently the $100 or so fee they gave at first was what their normal price would be without insurance, however, they ended up giving me a pretty big discount, and only charged me $48 for the appointment and the strep test.  oh yes, and the strep test was in fact positive.  so i have medicine for it now… which… thus far….  doesn’t seem to be doing an extreme amount of good.  but i guess it will take a day or 2.  Though I guess, it doesn’t feel like my head is being crushed anymore….  just from my lower jaw down through my throat still hurts an excessive amount.

anyway, i took the advil just a minute ago… so i think i’ll go lay down and wait for it to kick in so i can go back to sleep for the rest of the night.