Brandon

12:28 am: without bed
I still don't have furniture. So right now, as before, I am existing with a coffee table, an end table, and a tv stand (luckily with tv and associated cable) in my living room. My bedroom consists of an inflatable "full" sized bed with queen sheets. I used to have an inflatable queen sized bed with (same) queen sheets on it, but Darin took it back. I sleep diagonally. My furniture should arrive sometime within the next eight-to-ten days, or so says the Air Force. Thankfully I'm not flying, so I'll be around to meet the movers whenever they randomly arrive.

I wish I was flying.

I was just at a party. For a little while, it was pretty fun. Then it became awesome. Here's why...

What's your favorite food? Mine's fajitas.

That's cool. That means I get it most of the time at restaurants. Sometimes I am disappointed. Sometimes I am happy. Never consistent, however. I will try it everywhere I am, and am prepared to be disappointed. For example, in Panama City, a certain (shitty) Mexican Restaurant has beef fajitas that tastes like Bar-be-que. Disgusting.. yes.

I just came from this party for a friend. And beer is provided, which is always fun. But here's the great discovery: halfway through the party, I see there are tortillas on the stove. They're hard and crispy, but I investigate. I open the stove.

Jackpot. Inside are four pans. One pan has several aluminum wrappers full of warm tortillas. That's step one. The second aluminum pan is full of rice, warm rice. I probe further. The last two pans contain refried beans and steak and onions.

I have never been happier. I have been handed, essentially, a lifetime supply of beef fajitas. Obviously, I can't eat them all. Obviously, it is not a true lifetime supply. But there are more than I can eat in one night. And that's better than any restaurant I've ever been in has offered. It's the happiest night in my life. I don't even want to play beer pong, because it will ruin the taste of the delicious, but simple, beef fajitas.

But I do play. And I win (I think).

Delicious. Wonderful. Mmmmm.

01:57 am: my feet smell
I'm in the process of moving. Right now I live with two roommates, which has its advantages and disadvantages. With our lease ending quite soon and different ideas of an "ideal" house, we decided to split up. I opted for a place close to work, with a long drive to the nightlife hotspots; they decided to live in said hotspots, but have to drive 30 minutes to work every day. My current commute is 15 minutes with no traffic lights, and my new commute will be five minutes. I won't go any further on the issue of traffic, but those who are familiar with me know that I hate traffic and lights. Especially traffic in Florida.

My new place is a 2BR/1.5BA townhouse. It technically doesn't exist... at least, as far as the credit card company and my bank are concerned. And that concerns me. When I called to change my address, their computer system didn't recognize my address as existing. I'm pretty sure it does, but I see that it's going to be a bitch to convince financial agencies the same.

I'm looking forward to setting up the place. A brief history: most of my household goods have been in storage for the last two years (strangely coincident with my last post on this website). And I'm not too proud of a lot of it - couches, tv stand, kitchenware (cooking being my latest hobby). I got my couches for free from a neighbor who smoked. I steam cleaned them, and two weeks later put them in store for two years.

As much as I want to upgrade them, I have to prioritize purchases (upgrading is a relative term. In terms of these couches, it means throwing them away to make place for a new one. Which is an upgrade).

It's probably grammatically incorrect to end a journal with a parenthetical comment.

07:31 pm: at UPT
Chris - looks like I lied. thanks for sparking interest in this though.

I'm at UPT now, everyone, so this will rarely get updated. Currently I'm in week 3 of Phase 1 (of 3), Academics, which lasts 6 weeks. So far we've learned the fundamentals of flying that we were taught in IFT, like how to read maps and all that. The last week and a half has been in aerospace physiology, where we learn stuff like how our body functions at altitude (due to less oxygen and pressure), how to use the emergency equipment in the aircraft (ejection, parachuting techniques), and how to survive if we're down for a few days. That last course was what we had today, and I am pretty confident that if I was put in a survival situation, I would take my chances and wait for help to arrive. Perhaps the most meaningful quote came from the NCO teaching us clever methods in the identification of snakes:

"Red next to yellow, poisonous fellow. Red next to black, you're too fucking close!" (He had Tourette's)

We've had two tests so far, one tomorrow which I should be studying for. However, it's pretty easy and we have a good idea of what to focus on so there isn't much to prepare. Friday we begin learning about Systems, which I find to be pretty interesting.

I'm aware that this has been a pretty piss-poor post in terms of my usual rants, observations, or alliteration. Hopefully the above quote carried the humor for this entry, because I haven't really made note of anything funny that's happened lately. At any rate, I may update this later on; however the best way to reach me for the next year is probably through my email or call me on the cell one weekend. I won't be using IM that much anymore, either (not necessarily a bad thing)


You stay classy, San Diego.

06:36 am: why did Jojo leave Tuscon, Arizona?
The fact of the matter is, I began the journey to Tuscon without a piece of paper or a pencil as part of my personal belongings. I don't normally those around with me, but I like to have them on trips to record such things that may be deemed "journalworthy". I walked in and out of shops at the different airports (Houston being the only one, really), but found none for sale. Among all the books, newspapers and magazines, not one item was for sale that promts human creativity. It was as though the message in each of those bookstores was "these books are here, all the writing has been done, give up, Brandon".

As it is, the notes on which the following thoughts are written are none more than the back of a receipt at some bar, and a small piece of notepaper that I ripped out of one of my brother's various notepads. He's a writer, so I'm afraid he'll have a sixth sense about missing a piece of paper, as insignificant as the one I borrowed.

I dated the few notes that I took, by days mostly. No times. The first day I wrote anything about was Saturday. To be fair, the reverse of that paper, where Friday's entry would have been I suppose, is a receipt. So here is what happened "Friday":

EL CHARRO
6310 E BROARDWAY
TUSCON, AZ 85710.

No, I copied that directly; they misspelled it. But here's my problem with this place: the bathrooms weren't clearly labeled. That is to say, they were if you speak Spanish and are knowledgeable of its associated slang. The only Spanish I have heard related to me is "senor/chico/gringo". Thankfully there was a picture of some guy with a sombrerro on the men's door. Sadly, I was buzzed to the point where I stood outside the restroom for about 10 seconds, convincing myself that only the men in Mexico wore sombrerros. For those of you interested, the word on the door was "Charro".

For any of you readers who have been to Mcguires Irish Pub in Destin, FL (or Pensacola), you might be saying to yourself, 'perhaps HHakley has had more than one occaision of not knowing the correct bathroom to enter'. And you would be correct. As I entered the lady's room @ McGuires in December, I concurrently expressed delight that a men's bathroom finally had only stalls, .. shortly thereafter wondering, "but seriously, where are the urinals??" At which point John says "uhhhh dude, you should probably come out now".

The next stop that night was at a restaurant that mirror's Charlottesville's "Michael's Bistro". It was here that I was exposed to the Univ of Ariz mafia of graduate writers, poets mostly. And they talked about.... poetry. I guess it was to be expected from grad students, though I thought it was kind of nerdy (Marty, I apologize if you're reading this). However, if I was sitting among graduate engineers, I probably wouldn't be bothered by their conversation as much as my non-technical minded friend, Tim, whose head would probably have exploded. ("Boy, will your face be red when the find the black box from this one" - Stewie).

One of the grad students in our company was a buzzed-head of a man named Mark. A very interesting guy, with extremely dialated pupils. To make me further suspicous, he was rolling his own "cigarettes" into paper, then smoking them at the table. My uneasiness about the situation dimished, however, either as I became more drunk, or the presence of the fumes became more common (seriously, it was just rolled tabacco in paper). His reasoning for the unusual method was that "it's a helluva lot cheaper, honestly". Good enough in my book.

Let's take a not-uncommon digress in this journal to talk about birthdays, of which I had one last week. However, several people out there have still not wished me a happy birthday, and I am still waiting. I know who you are.

But 23... that's one of the lines you cross, not unlike the ages of 40 or 100. With 22, you're only one year away from 21. You're probably even still in college. But 23... well let me just say, it's not as special as it once was. Perhaps it's because I wasn't at college, surrounded by multitudes of friends wishing my day good wishes. Perhaps it's because I was scrambling about doing laundry, looking for my houses's circuit breaker, or breaking my lawn mower in an attempt to repair it. But here's what I learned the hard way, you could say: no one cares.

Back to Arizona. Back to Monday. I awoke at 6:30 am to the sound of my phone vibrating (I'm a light sleeper). It's a text photo. I groggily hit "ok", "ok", "ok" to facilitate the download of this mysterious picture. It turns out to be some 40 year old balding man with glasses. He has taken a self portrait through a cell phone camera on a bus, and I am chosen as the lucky receiver. I erased the picture as soon as I got it, but it was not until later in the day that I considered, perhaps there was a meaning in the picture. Perhaps one of my friends was sitting next to him, being held hostage. Perhaps it was my dad. Perhaps this guy just made an honest mistake. You'd expect middle aged people not to understand how to operate cell phone cameras. It is entirely conveivable that them doing so would take up so much brain power that they would be unable to competently input a telephone number to send the image to.

As I close this journal, I would like to bide a tiding of caution if you find yourself sitting at a table with beer in hand and a hot waitress in the proximity. Upon seeing an insect crawl across the table, do not raise your beer by mere inches with one hand over the approximate location of the insect while using the other with the intentions of expunging the insect from your table.

The bee later came back to the table, I suppose to check up on us and apologize for any inconvenience it caused. I crushed it with the numerous soaked napkins used from wiping the beer of my shorts/shirt. That night, justice, as well as several house beers, was served to table 14A.

Does anyone know the answer to the subject?

11:40 pm: thoughts while cleaning the kitchen
The dish soap I use scented like oranges. But that led me to think: if you were using that soap to wash something like an orange juice maker, how would you know if it was clean?

"Remember, whether you think you can, or you can't... you're right"

"It's Brian" "Ah yes, the new fellow... come on in"

"You guys have guns?" (does anyone else think that the Simpsons is taking a turn towards Family Guy randomness?

Major life purchases are being completed in this recent time period: I just bought a new TV and am getting a new guitar very soon. The nut on my old one broke; the replacement led to horrible action from the strings, and the old guitar just isn't the same. Honestly, it's very sad, because I've been playing that guitar for 6 years and felt a *bond* with it... a bond that was broken by a crappy repair job unable to bring the guitar to its original quality. Thinking of a Taylor, had a hard time choosing Taylors vs Martins, but the Expression system and a great sound have me teetering on the fence towards Taylors now.

In feline news, the two kittens my roommate graciously adopted (with my gracious support) from Hurricane Katrina victims are now on the market for new owners. Less than 1 yr old, two color options available. Names negotiable. All paws/tails included; ears are extra. Great time wasters for you procrastinators out there (or should I say pro-cat-inators). Seriously, check out these guys here http://community.webshots.com/album/548048667LtLtiP. They're awesome but they put Jess over the pet limit for Columbus AFB. Let your cat-loving friends know!

09:51 pm: short and sweet
"I saw a human pyramid once. It was very unneccessary"

I heard a radio ad for a diet bar. Advertised as being a low-calorie, high energy bar. Incredible.

For those that haven't caught on, energy is the definition of a calorie. This is obviously a technicality, but the commercial is ridiculous.



I heard "Sweet Home Alabama" played during a commercial for Kentucky Fried Chicken. I think there's a conflict of interest in that.

07:38 pm: back by Gianina's demand
Nashville is an all-American city, deep in the middle of Tennessee. The capital of Tennessee, or so say Kyle and I, it features everything from restaurants, stadiums, hotels, parking garages, a cute foot bridge, beer, music, and bums on 2nd Ave, One might wonder what makes it distinct from other all-American cities, American cities, or cities in Europe. It's because I was there this weekend.

Perhaps the only disappointment this weekend was that I couldn't use my "Tennessee / Ten-I-See" pick-up line. (me - "Are you from Tennessee?" her - "yes" me -"cool...")

Nashville is an eight hour drive for me, so I arranged to meet my fellow Wahoo fan Tim in Birmingham, where I was to attempt the following feat: leave a car in a strange city for two days. Luckily my neighbor from back home lives in Birmingham now, and after getting ahold of him, I arranged to park my car at his apartment complex. Don't be fooled by that: he was actually home in Virginia so my car would be all alone. To top that, as I put my bags in Tim's car and said "see you in a few days (I hope)" to my car, several of the complex's residents walked by. Advantage: no one.

A long drive, then Tim and I arrive at our hotel. Let's talk about hotels for a second. The complimentary hotel bar soap. You know you did a good job washing your body when you're stickier than you were before you got in the shower. Is the rough, sticky feeling characteristic of effective anti-bacterial soap? I also decided, while sitting on the john, to start checking the inside of the toilet paper roll axles. Who knows when I'll intercept a spy's transmitted information? No one, that's who.

The night after the football game, Tim and I met up with my neighbor and her boyfriend. Jacob is an entrepeneur earning way through this world with homemade car stickers, drum gigs, and some sort of geographical information systems career. A well-rounded individual, although he's facing competition from street bums in one area: it seems the homemade-items scene is pretty big for people living on the street.

One area I didn't mention as his strong point is his knowledge of the city. Tim and I followed the couple into the city for a night on the town. As we parked a short distance from a tough neighborhood (Deadpan Jacob: "If you walk three blocks that way, you get shot" me:"Are you serious?" Jacob:"nah not really ... it's more like 4 or 5".

I grew skeptical. Determined to check their authenticity as tour guides, I quizzed them on everything from the name of a river to why the Bell South "Bat Tower" building was oriented in a particular direction (they didn't know). Jacob avoided my continued curiosity of whether or not people had jumped from the bridge into the river, finally answering no, he was pretty sure no one had. As we entered the city with promises of a bar with a mechanical bull, a street closed for pedestrians, and a certain band playing at B.B. King's Cafe, I realized that these were, in reality, fantasies. No such bar existed, and the street closed, but later. The so-called band didn't even exist anymore!

(All throughout the night, I, wearing my Virginia hat, would nod to other fans. I thought our victory earlier in the day would promote a bonding of all UVa fans throughout Nashville. I was sorely mistaken. I did talk to a couple at B.B. King's who reminded me of a scene from Wayne's World, when Chris Farley as the limo driver gives a lot of information to Wayne. The couple indicated they were from Charlottesville. I asked what they did there. The wife answered, speaking slowly as if English was my second language: "We're in town to see the game.. we're staying at the Renaissance hotel... we're just out enjoying the night". TMI, I thought to myself as I shook the man's hand, told them "good game", and walked away.)

But seriously, G and J were great tour guides. The four of us ran in and out of bars, collecting stamps on our hands and getting a taste of the different types of country we could find. We settled for the night at B.B. King's, where a band featuring James Brown's (?) sax player was on stage. The band did a wonderful rendition of "Let's Get It On", and the Baptist choir in the audience provided a lively entertainment as well, dancing the electric slide to a song other than - you guessed it - the Electric Slide.

I didn't mention the football game. It was close and we scored in the last minute to win. Tim and I had a competition going to see who knew more Wahoos at the game. I started off winning, 1 - 0, but I forget what the score ended up being. I stopped keeping track when Tim's count surpassed mine.

Family Guy shoutout: Tom Tucker: "Coming up... a pig that refuses to eat Jews"

have a great new year. And if someone knows more than the first two lines of Auld Lang Sine, drop me a line.

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09:47 am: the livejournal link was so far down on the list of recent sites
I became a Florida resident yesterday, despite all my complaining. Potentially this means I can't complain about Florida anymore, and on top of that they're offering me an "incentive", a "bribe", if you will (no income tax). But I'll probably forget all about that later just as soon as I get to the next paragraph. Now all I need to do is get new plates for my car.

For starters, the license is a little flimsier than my old one (which I didn't get to keep). Just a small thing, I know. The traffic is still messed up, but I actually almost came to the point yesterday of accepting (i know!) the horrid situation. I finally realized that if I'm stopped at a light, it doesn't matter if I go the speed limit of 45 mph to the next light, or take my time and go 30 mph (which is actually what people do), I am going to sit at a red light. And faster I get there, the longer I sit. I realized this after I passed some cars, one of which was a dump truck, and thought "suckers", and then had the dump truck get a better position at the next traffic light than I. (When the light turned green, i pulled in front of the slow-to-accelerate truck).

Quickly, some adds. I saw something on TV that guarantees something to stay fresh or working (or whatever) until you're 100 years old. Of course they can get away with that; no one will remember the product by the time they're 80.

Fox news alerts: The death of a football coach's son is not what I would call a news alert. Let me know when we get nuked or invaded, or do the same to someone else.

Ads on the radio for new food products. People call up "hi, I'm a working mom and my husband is a diabetic, and my kid is twelve, and I don't know a good food for the whole family". And the narrator/announcer guy will say "well in that case, sliced ham is perfect for your family!!". And the woman says "wow, thanks so much!".

I don't need a commercial for flashlights telling me when I can use it. "You can use it when you're camping, or going through a crawl space, your kids can use it in forts, YOU CAN EVEN USE IT TO WALK THE DOG AT NIGHT!". Wow, I never knew I was allowed to use a flashlight for THAT purpose.

I can't get out of my head that the lyrics for the song "It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas" include the lines "And the prettiest sight you see.. is the beggars that will be ... by your owwwnn froonnnnt doooooor". Anyoneknow the real words?

Another thing about Florida drivers. Left lane is used like right lane elsewhere. Loads of cars not going fast at all. You'd think the solution would be to jump in the right lane and pass all those fools. But there's some yokel in the right lane up ahead, now you can't get in the left lane cause it's packed, and they're going just as slow.

I HATE THE TRAFFIC HERE.

06:48 pm: exercise gives you endorphins. endorphins make you happy. happy people don't kill their husbands
Nor do people who don't have husbands... ie, me.

I went to the grocery store this afternoon, as I had the day of work off. I was thinking that maybe I'd meet some nice, cute local girls around since I was by myself (I wonder how many people think Jess and I are together when we go out). I ended up seeing plenty of women, however they all were able to get the senior citizen discount. Publix around 3 pm = bad place to meet others.

Publix has a service where they bag groceries for you. I don't mind this, except I tend to feel really bad when the bagger is a women old enough to be my GRANDMOTHER. Don't grocery stores usually give these jobs to kids who need some extra cash? I hope the woman was just sitting at home bored and picked this up to make time go by. In the parking lot I witnessed both a middle age bagger female carrying grocery bags for an elderly lady to her car, and also an elderly lady carring bags for a middle age female to her car.

I also saw some "parking lot" rage exhibited by one elderly lady towards another. One cut the other off as she pulled into a HANDICAP SPOT. I would think that it's universal, if you need to park in a handicap spot, then you don't get mad at other people because you should be a kinder person. Maybe not.

Let's talk about bathroom urinals and their height. I used one once that had the bottom of the urinal basically at my crotch. And I'm 6'2", so I don't know how the average person would have used that except to stand back and aim up. Conversely, at BW3's in Fort Walton Beach Florida (City Motto: If your car isn't parked on your lawn the rest of the hicks are going to vandalize it), they had an extremely low urinal. Both of them were low, which is unusual. After I used it I thought, "now what is the point of making a urinal so ridiculously low in a bar full of grownups?" As I exit the bathroom, a kid about half my height walks in and heads for the urinals. A perfect fit. "Oh," I thought.

But really, what's a kid that size doing in a sports bar like BW3s?

I was in Outback Steakhouse eating and I glanced up at another patron. She returned a quick glance right as I took a bite and spilled half the food from my fork onto the corner of my mouth and plate. She looked back to her dinner companion. My one opportunity to make a first impression wasted.

11:50 pm: attn radio stations + greenday: It is almost the end of OCTOBER. stop playing the song.
I'll start tonight by saying one of our kittens killed a moth tonight, and I have never been so proud. He kept looking up at the ceiling as it flew around, so I humored him and picked him up, holding him above my head so he could try to catch it. For some reason, I guess being that moths either don't have brains, or they're very small, the moth decided to fly several inches from the ground. I let the kitten down (may or may not have dropped him) and lo and behold, he swatted the moth. He swatted it dead. So here's some news for you all: Kittens = fly swatters.

But you have to feed them and take care of them.

Incidentally, the kitten that did this, I'm pretty sure, is a bit .... slow. Up in the head. He doesn't know how to bury his poop, which, as it turns out, is a skill taken for granted by anyone that has a pet requiring kitty litter.

As I was cooking dinner the other day, I gave raw meat to one of the cats. After thinking about what I had just done and how it's pretty bad for humans, I asked Jess what she thought. Yeah - animals have been eating raw meat for a while, and they will probably continue to do so.

Must be the lack of opposable thumbs.

Jess I apologize for my singing, but I'm trying to get back into it.

Does anyone else think 100% of cell phone goodbyes are awkward? It's that delay that you don't have with a landline. You say goodbye but are accustumed to getting a reply in about a second. It takes longer with the cell phone to get that, so you say goodbye again (in most cases, accompanied worrying that the other person thinks you're trying to get rid of them by repeatedly saying goodbye). In reality, the second goodbye is never heard because they are saying goodbye themselves, which you don't hear. So then it's the awkward pauses and goodbyes several times too many. This has happened to me all too often, usually with Jeff.

But now that I think about it, I only notice it with people I don't want to have feeling I'm trying to get rid of them. Everyone else, if you hear one goodbye from me and that's it, then I'm trying to get rid of you.

Has anyone ever gotten in someone's direct path while walking and kept moving to the same side as the other person for more than 30 seconds? I think I have. Most awkward situation... ever. Next time, here's how it goes down. Either stay where you are and let them choose a side, or just punch them and knock them off their feet.

Family Guy quote: Brian (on phone with Lois): "No, no, we traded our plane tickets in for train tickets. Yeah... apparently you can do that"

And let's get this issue out on the table. Paper towel rolls or toilett paper rolls. What is something common between them? Well for starters, more than a few times have I gone to the store to buy one and come back with the other. It's hard to say which is more surprising: wiping your butt with a Bounty, or cleaning up spilled juice with a Charmins. Although From what I see, diapers work really well for both those problems!

But there are two types of people in this world (diaper wearers notwithstanding): Those who replace the roll so the lose paper is on the outside, and those who do it on the inside. I'm an outtie myself. Perhaps cause I'm tall, I don't like reaching under the roll to try and locate the loose sheet. Will someone please explain the logic of having the lose side on the inside, under the roll? Do people just not make a conscious effort when they replace the roll?

"Son, we raise a lot of dogs... which were you?"
"... the one that could talk..."
"Brian!!!...."