How did I obtain the following items: Two potatoes, fifty biodegradable strips and a popsicle
A.) Late night drunken shopping at Fred Meyer
B.) Payment for watching a friend’s dog
C.) From a box of free stuff in Ballard
D.) Stolen from someone’s yard on the may home from the bar
One of the good and unsound realities of living in Seattle is the plethora of high gravity beer. For conventional people this is a good thing. For me however it is the catalyst for poor decisions and embarrassing behaviour. When I start drinking my sense of responsible consumption goes out the window. This of course is exacerbated with higher alcohol beer, which brings me to my new ex-crony Maritime’s Jolly Roger Christmas Ale. I have no idea what the percentage is in this stuff but I sure react to it. It would help if I didn’t drink it like I was drinking PBR but that requires too much responsibility on my part. Good old Jolly has helped me to make an ass of myself twice in public, the second time causing me to swear him off. I took a couple of pulls of one the next day for recovery purposes then dumped the rest. Yes, yes alcohol abuse or whatever, just bite me. Before my second incident I was staying in one night and wrote a couple of blogs while under Jolly’s influence. Incidentally it was only two but I still had a pretty good buzz. Much more than if I drank a six-pack of Guinness. Anyway the next two posts were from that night. Reading them now they seem pretty raw and because of that I’ve been holding off on posting them. I suppose I should qualify them better or add more explanation. However on the other hand I do like them in their unadulterated drunken form so I’m going to leave them be.
Ok about the whole Seattle thing. I have neither the patience nor desire to spout out a long version of this. So here is the condensed Golden Book version for those of the Republican persuasion.
Actually I like Golden Books, used to at least. I should read some now and make sure they aren’t Nazi propaganda material.
Anyway back to the point. I’ll call this the Short and incomplete version of events because someone, whom shall remain nameless was to lazy to blog about them in a timely fashion as the forthnamed events occurred.
Now that I’ve gotten that out of the introduction out of the way, on to the center of the Tootsie pop. Have you ever heard about the free tootsie pop story? In the past supposedly if you got a wrapper with an Indian shooting a star on it, you could turn it in for a free tootsie pop. I was never sure about this story, especially because almost every wrapper I got had the aforementioned Indian on it. Of course they could have printed more after they stopped the promotion. Or it could of just been an urban legend. I suppose I could Google it but I kind of like not knowing something in this time of immediate reference gratification. In some ways it’s great but then I also tend to spend large amounts of time looking up random useless crap just because I can.
Ok I’m done with the tangents now. On to the point of this post.
My time in Seattle started on October 2nd. I wanted to leave Atlanta for multiple reasons. I was tired of all the traffic, republicans, the rat race mentality, overbearing summers, friends moving away, the city council and mayor killing bars and restaurants but most of all it was wanderlust. I moved around a lot growing up and I won’t lie to you, it sucked. Always being the new kid (on the block) and having to fight to establish myself. Having to make new friends and acclimate to a new school. A byproduct of all this moving around is my boredom of a location after awhile.
Cue melting screen while gentle harp music plays……
I originally moved to Atlanta in late ‘96. Eddie a really good friend of mine had moved there from my previous city of Charlotte. I had visited him during the Olympics and was wowed by the plethora of nightlife and women. I was also told the ratio of women to men was 4:1, add to that the large gay population it made it even better. Of course that was probably bullshit but it convinced my horny nineteen year old mind. The kicker however was the job market. This was during the Tech Boom and Atlanta was hot (insert chessey Hotlanta joke here). Atlanta’s high tech want ads were as large as a small phonebook. Conversely Charlotte’s were composed of a just a couple of pages. Off I went to the phoenix and received two jobs offers my first couple of days there. I accepted the second one because Eddie worked there. Things were great for awhile, lots of parties and work was fun (gasp). But alas all good things….. Some of my good friends moved away, I fell (actually jumped headlong) into drug abuse and ended up quitting my job. I’ll save the specifics for another blog but eventually I was getting close to scraping the metaphorical bottom. Somehow I managed to crawl out of the pit of my own creation and started to put my life back on track. Once again I was a respectable member of society and hated every minute of it. With fewer good friends, disillusionment with life, my fellow man and even computers I knew it was time for a change. Previously I passed up on a possible move to San Diego and negotiations fell apart on a transfer to Ft. Lauderdale with another company. I probably could have went to Tampa as well. Finally I was at the point where I was tired of stagnating in my personal and professional life. After visiting Boston and Chicago as possible candidates, Seattle was decided upon. I was with my ex at the time (yes I’m single now, control yourself ladies) and she vetoed Austin which was also in the running for me. Looking at things now I might have been better off in Austin but I’m willing to give Seattle a chance. So Seattle it is and has been for the past couple of months.
End under-dramatic flashback sequence…..
This post has already run on much longer than I intended so Seattle details will have to wait. In the meantime you can read some of my Yelp reviews. Incidentally *self plug alert* I am now a member of the Elite squad. If you read this on Atlanta Bloggers I will be removed soon. Have no fear though, you can still read me via my Feedburner feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/AlexVernon or on AlexVernon.com of course.
Ok kiddies that’s it for this post, be cool and stop stealing your grandmother’s pills.
My Thanksgiving was spent watching my ex’s house while she went to visit her new boyfriend’s parents. I didn’t mind because I got to hang out with my dogs. Well one of them is hers but I care for him like my own. I was invited over to a friend’s grandmother’s house for dinner but I ended up not going. I was feeling a little depressed and wanted to spend time with the dogs so I chickened out. Instead I had left over pork fried rice and a bag of knock-off Cheetos. Yes I know, the Thanksgiving dinner of champions. I didn’t even go out for beer to drink while I watched the games so it must’ve been worse than I thought. I had a copy of Requiem for a Dream that I’ve been meaning to watch for some time now so I popped it in. Man, there’s nothing like a good depressing movie to get you out of a funk. After watching it I felt like all my troubles are petty annoyances and I felt much better. I was also glad that I didn’t go all the way down that road in the past. I came to the fork numerous times but fortunately also turned the right way.
BTW Since I never announced it I am now in Seattle as of October. More info to come.
There’s a lot of road work going on in my neck of the strip mall woods, because of this I’ve seen lots of surveyors around. So this morning I was wondering what exactly a surveyor does. Off to Wikipedia I went and punched in surveying. I got through the first two paragraphs and skimmed the rest. I’m still mostly in the dark but I have discovered that I’m not interested in surveying and I’m glad someone else does it. What was the point of this post? I’m not really sure but here’s a picture.
The other day I went to my local liquor store to get my fix. As I was checking out the guy behind the counter asked if I was still at Comcast. I’ve had this discussion many times before and it goes something like this:
Liquor guy: Do you still work at Comcast?
Alex: No, I have never worked there, I work for…
Liquor guy: Oh, what do you know about DVRs?
Alex: Not much, I don’t have one.
Liquor guy: Well I’m trying to blah, blah, blah…
Alex: Hmm, try blah, blah, blah…
Liquor guy: Ok see you later.
Alex: Cya.
Since this has happened numerous times before I decided to play along. “No” I say “I’m at … now”. “Oh” he says “What do they do?” “Make enterprise software” I respond. “Wow, better than Comcast, huh?” he declares. “Yep” I remark as I smile and walk out the door.
I was bored today so I decided to go through Creative Loafing’s 99 things to do To call yourself a true Atlantan to see how I measured up. Most of my selections are dead on, although there’s some truthiness in a couple for example number 1. I have run into Clark Howard, just not at Costco. I figured it was close enough for a quiz though. My grand total was 54 which rates me as a “true hipster” according to the Loaf. Not sure if I agree but I digress.
My winning lotto numbers:
1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 11, 12, 13, 15, 16, 19, 21, 23, 26, 27, 29, 30, 32, 34, 36, 40, 44, 45, 47, 48, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 66, 69, 71, 72, 75, 76, 77, 78, 81, 82, 84, 85, 86, 88, 92, 93, 95, 99
I quit smoking again yesterday. So far it hasn’t been as bad as previous attempts. I have stopped for over two years before so hopefully this will be the last time. To help me succeed I have hired the woman below to kick me in the balls everytime I think about a cigarette (no you can’t, only her). If it works I plan to patent the method and start spamming you so keep an eye out.
“Of all the stratagems, to know when to quit is the best”
-Chinese Proverb
Looks like I’ve been kicked off the Metroblogging Atlanta Team. I received no notice, my account was just unceremoniously deleted. Not that I blame them, considering I was barley posting as of late. It would’ve been thoughtful to send an email though.
The problem (for me at least) is the lack of interesting Atlanta based material. Yeah you could post about concerts or events but that got boring real quick. Plus inevitably someone received the same email as you two minutes prior and already posted about it. Numerous times I would plan on posting about something for the upcoming weekend on a Thursday before but someone else would post about it a month in advance. This got much worse when the started offering money to the top posting cities. However LA seemed to always come out on top. Atlanta was usually in the top three before the money incentive though.
I guess a lot of it is my disenchantment with this city. I could care less what the Braves did last night or what Shirley Franklin said. Also there’s no point to post another traffic bitching post. All in all I found the blog very boring, however I do like some of the authors personal stuff and read their sites on Atlanta Bloggers. On a positive note it has allowed me to delete the feed from my Bloglines account. For a more entertaining Metro blog check out Metroblogging Seattle, or even better along the same vein Seattlest.
I know it’s been over two months since my last post. I was trying to receive the rank of Shodan in Procrastinationdo. I almost made it but couldn’t quite seal the deal. A lot has happened since my last venture into the Blogsphere, I was in a hit and run accident that totaled my Aurora and broke my girlfriend’s hands. This event also started me smoking again. Ok I used it as an excuse to start smoking again. Then Aradia’s transmission died on her Scooby two days later, so we were both without cars. The good news is we ended up getting awesome new cars. A ‘99 Saab 9-3 for her and a ‘02 Saab 9-3 SE for me (I know don’t say it). I am loving mine so far. I have already upgraded the suspension the brakes and had it tinted along with a couple of performance mods. I’m going to have a CarDomain site on it soon. However I do not have any pictures yet. Yeah, yeah a photographer who loves his car (too much according to Aradia) that hasn’t taken any pictures yet. Yes I’m lame, they’re coming though. For awhile we were kicking around the idea of moving out of Atlanta, we were going to move to Chicago then Boston but now we’re staying here (for now) and trying to move back into town. I’ve seen a few good movies and shows, maybe I’ll get to reviewing them maybe not. If I don’t do it soon after I get lazy about it. As for the site I upgraded to WordPress 2.0 and K2 Beta Two. It went relatively smooth, I had a little trouble with K2 but eventually got it to work. Anyway that’s enough rambling, hopefully this will get me off my proverbial ass and make me start posting more.