Month: June 2002

Man… I’m tired today. I don’t know why, but I just can’t find any motivation. My stomach hurts too. I think it’s because I forgot to eat breakfast this morning. I don’t have anything to eat for lunch either. I think we have some Cheese Nips or something – guess that’ll be my lunch. Or I could truck on over to Subway for a “healthy” lunch. Boy am I hungry.

Elise and I had a nice relaxing weekend at my parents house.

Friday night, her and I sat on the driveway until almost 3 a.m. We just sat there and talked about everything and nothing. That was pretty nice. It’s nice to have a wife who’s your best friend.

Saturday we got up, ate breakfast and El mowed the lawn. I volunteered her to do it (she said she wanted to… I wasn’t going to argue). I unloaded all the stuff that we hauled down to store in my parent’s barn. Then I cleaned the inside of El’s truck.

It got really hot outside, so we all rested inside for most of the day. In the late afternoon, Dad and I fried some catfish and hushpuppies on the back patio, then, well… we ate catfish and hushpuppies. El and I stayed up late again and tried to watch Dr. Hollywood but fell asleep.

Sunday we got up and we washed El’s truck. I went inside and checked the final sales price of my original NES Gameboy that I had put up on eBay. I only got $31 for it. That bummed me. I “sold” it a few weeks back for $52, but the winning bidder decided that he didn’t want to pay for it. After following eBay’s policy on reporting a non-paying bidder, I went to leave negative feedback on the bum only to find out that he had cancelled his account. Megamanmegaman, watch out punk…. you owe me $21. Now I have to go through all of this crap with eBay to get credit for the items Final Value Fee. Some people… sheesh.

Anyway – we vegged out the rest of Sunday. I slept on the couch for a couple hours, read the paper, watch a little TV. El and I played a couple games of Horse and 10 point one-on-one. Wish I had some video of that… Elise and I looked like a couple three legged cats trying to bury turds on a frozen pond.

We stayed at my parent’s place until around 8, then left for Temple. The drive back here (I’m not willingly going to refer to it as home) was really depressing. I guess I miss being out in the country, having no cares in the world.

So, the mad world greeted me at 6:45 this morning – again. Elise went to a temp agency this afternoon. I think she’s getting a little stir crazy being cooped up in the apartment all day. And I think there’s only so many episodes of “A Wedding Story”, “A Baby Story”, and HGTV that my wife can watch.

We talked to Steve (El’s dad) last night too… he and I wished that the day would hurry up and come when we can all look back on these days and laugh. Hurry up day.

Elise and I came to my parent’s house for Father’s day weekend. We hung out on the driveway for most of the evening and spoke a little existential mumbo jumbo. It was really nice to be able to sit underneath the stars and amongst the locust-speak and just talk about any and everything like the best friends that we are.

We seemed to have solved most of life’s problems as we see them in just a short amount of time. I’m so happy to have my soul mate.

I made some pretty mean soft pretzels earlier this evening. It doesn’t get much better that this… a sucessful culinary endeavor, being out in the country where life seems to work itself out and being with everyone that I love…

My wife is such a loser. Seriously… the biggest loser I think I’ve ever met.

By loser, I mean the weight she has lost in the past five months. I’m so proud of her. El is officially a lifetime member of Weight Watchers. This means I no longer have to pay for meetings.

I really am proud of you El – I know you’ve worked hard. I love you babe!

The Lakers swept the Nets for their third consecutive NBA championship. I have to admit, it was a kind of boring series. I was really hoping the Nets would win tonight so there would be a game 5 in Los Angeles. When a team wins the championship, it’s more exciting when they do it at home.

So, to make the night of television more entertaining, we quickviewed MTV to watch part of the Movie Awards. That was pretty lame too. We also watched Cribs, that was pretty boring too. MTV has resorted to stars of shows on the WB and dated hip hop artists.

Anyway… onto the actual entertaining stuff. Out of the 4+ hours of straight TV, I’d say there was about 10 minutes worthy of my attention. First, the new Mountain Dew commercial… the one with the Trans Am. I don’t know how to explain it, but I like it.

Then there was the premiere of Kelly Osbourne’s video rendition of Madonna’s ‘Papa Don’t Preach’. I thought it was really weird that I had a dream about her the other night. Anyway – I thought her version is really good.

Time to finish watching the post game show.

Tonight I made a chuck roast dinner. I seasoned the roast generously with some salt and pepper, then stuck it in a skillet on med-low. Then I threw in some pototos, a few cloves of garlic, a whole onion, a couple roma tomotos, a dried chili, a bayleaf and a couple carrots. I cooked it really slowly… turned out awesome. I bought some McCormick brown gravy mix – simmered that up and dumped it in my skillet.

The best part was taking the rosemary bread and soaking it in the juice.

I think Riley’s stashing some junk food around the house. To spare you the details, we have no place to put his litter box other than in the office (where I spend most of my spare time). He went in his box and did his business… I had to leave. I came back, I had to leave again. So, I decided to use up some of our incense… I don’t know which is worse…

My Mom forwarded this to me today:

Here is a good thing for the summer, for those people who like to sit and enjoy the out of doors, but don’t like those pesky mosquitoes. Put some water in a white dinner plate and add just a couple of drops of Lemon Fresh Joy dishwashing soap. Put it on your patio. I don’t know what attracts them, the lemon smell, the white color, or what, but mosquitoes flock to it, and drop dead, and fall into the water, or on the floor within about 10 ft. If you have problems with mosquitoes getting into your house, set up one of these traps in your kitchen, on the counter. Works just super! Enjoy the mosquito free summer.

Today took forever. It was just one of those days that wouldn’t come to an end.

I’m trying to come up with some designs for the S&W construction updates site. I’ve been having a hard time getting into ‘creative mode’. I finally started getting into a groove, then I had to go to a meeting. Hopefully I can get back into my groove tomorrow – but then I have to tackle some stuff that was brought up at said meeting. You know how it is… work.

I had a nice lunch with David and Luciana this afternoon at Mazzio’s. It’s good to get out of the work environment with those guys every once in a while – we’re pretty good about cracking each other up.

Anyway – I didn’t get enough sleep last night. This weekend I stayed up to late and slept in, so I’m suffering now. I took some Melatonin last night because I knew I would have a hard time falling to sleep. Well, then The Omen came on around midnight and I was trying to watch it and fall asleep at the same time. I finally gave in to sleep around 1:30. I’m a sucker for horror. I had a weird dream about Kelly Osbourne – I think that’s what happens when you watch horror movies right before bed. I know I’ll be ready to crash around 10 tonight.

Speaking of movies – Mel Gibson’s got a new one coming out called Signs – looks like my kind of flick!

The Lakers won [again] last night. 106-103 to take a 3 game series lead. I was really hoping New Joyzee would win. It would be really cool if the Nets won the next 3 games (yeah right) to take the series to game 7. Those are always the best series… when the underdog comes back with a vengeance and makes the big dog really work.

Elise and I went to Tommy’s last night and watched the Tyson vs. Lewis fight. It was pretty boring until Iron Mike hit the canvas.

I think Jeremy and I were the only ones who thought Lewis would win. He guessed that Tyson would go down in the 7th round. I guessed he would go down in the 9th round. Tyson’s bleeding head hit the ground in the 8th. We were both close enough. Everyone else thought Tyson would KO Lewis early in the fight.

On Saturday, El and I took the trusty Shadow out for a ride. We rode out to Lake Belton and had a late lunch at Frank’s. I had the platter of unrecognizeable fried seafood, El had the broiled stuffed shrimp. I thought mine was good, El didn’t like hers that much.

After lunch we cruised around for a while, looking at the nice houses by the lake. Then we scooted over to Circuit City where we looked at DV cameras. I picked up a buyer’s guide. I figure by the time we save up enough money to buy one, we’ll either not really want one anymore, or something better will be out (and prices will have hopefully dropped).

The Lakers are playing tonight in New Jersey. They’ve won the first 2 games in LA. I’m hoping they lose tonight (I’m a weird fan) so it will make the series more fun to watch.

I just got my lazy butt off the couch from watching another AMA supersport bike race. Honda always wins. Let me rephrase that, the Honda RC51 bikes always win. It’s a 1000cc sport bike that, well… wins a lot of races. I think it’s awesome though that my dreambike always comes sooooo close to winning… and it’s only a 750cc. Ahhh, one day, oh yes, one day it will be mine. In the meantime, thank heaven for Speedvision.

Anyway… Janicek.com is back up and in good working condition (knock on wood) – videos and pictures are back up and I’ve included a link to the old Janicek.com at the bottom of this site.

I’ve been selling a bunch of stuff on eBay… El and I have decided that we’d like a digital video camera.

My next auction is going to be for the Pinnacle DC30 video capture card. The next will be our Hitachi VM-E545LA 8mm camcorder. If anyone is interested in either, let me know and make me an offer before I sell them on eBay.

Here’s the stuff that I’ve sold – trying to raise the funds to buy the DV camera. I think we’re going to have to raise over $600.

Calvin Klein Blue Jeans $3.00
Slates Khaki Pants $1.00
Swiss Army Watch $3.75
Argus Autronic 35mm camera $1.00
Justin Western Boots $41.02
Samsung Cellular phone $66.01
Curve Cologne $15.50
Nintendo Gameboy Hasn’t sold yet, hopefully $50

I’m hoping I’ll get over $200 for the 8mm camera and the capture card.

As you can tell, that’s nowhere near $600. Guess I’ll have to find more stuff to sell! Maybe by Christmas we’ll be able to afford it.

If anyone wants to contribute to the Janicek DV fund, I promise I’ll make some really good movies and post them here – like Cribs. BTW, the video section is still hosed… hopefully I’ll have it back up tomorrow.

We’re about to leave for Austin and watch the Tyson vs. Lewis fight at Tommy’s.

Yesterday I got up early and did laundry, returned a movie and officially began saving for a house. I went to the bank and opened another savings account – specifically for a down payment on a house. We’re pretty excited about that!

Then we loaded up and headed to Austin. We stopped in Georgetown and returned some pillows to Garden Ridge. Then we went to Fry’s Electronics. Talk about a kid in a candy store… Fry’s Electronics is like Radio Shack, Best Buy, CompUSA and Crutchfield thrown into a big pot with steroids.

They have EVERYTHING electronic that you could possibly imagine – from the smallest ceramic capacitors to the largest, tens of thousands of dollar Bose sound systems. I can’t even begin to explain all that they had. It was really overwhelming. They even had a trendy little coffee shop.

While we were purusing the ‘Radio Shack’ part of the store, we walked by a really strange looking redheaded guy. He had a ungroomed beard and was wearing an OpenBeOS t-shirt and talking to himself while comparing motherboard components… Guess you had to be there. Though I really can’t say much – I was standing there, ogling over all of the ethernet hardware, trying to explain a wireless network to Elise… she laughed at me and called me a nerd [again].

Anyway – we finally got into Austin around 7. We drove down the the S. Lamar area where I used to work @ Vidbook – I needed to get my haircut and wanted to go to my ‘regular’ place… they were closed. BTW – any former Vidbookers reading this – Suite 103 of the Lakehills office complex is now owned by Harrel Family Services (the funeral home across the parking lot).

We drove around for a good hour trying to find a place for yours truly to get a haircut. We finally decided to go to the mall – they stay open until 9. I never, in my wildest dreams, saw myself getting my haircut in the mall.

That was pretty funny. El and I are so far from high maintenance. We both got our haircut by a Junior E-2 Stylist Sergeant with a specialty in Gel and Mousse deployment. I couldn’t help but laugh. The place was one of those trendy mall haircut joints – mirrors all over the place, piped Muzak playing late 90’s pop/dance music.

Alicia (uh-lee-see-ya) was our whatever-her-cosmotology-rank haircutter person. She gave me a trendy, uppity shampooing. The whole time she’s trying to sell me on some peppermint, ostrich estrogen fortifying shampoo crap, telling me it would help keep the rest of my hair from falling out. I could tell she was afraid she was offending me, so I played on that and just wrinkled my forehead at her for the rest of the ‘experience’. She finally asked if I was mad about something – I told her “No, I just woke up too early this morning”.

After that, it was like trying to have a conversation with a brick. Uh-lee-see-ya was trying to rush because she needed to be in Del Valle by 9pm. Her boyfriend is in jail for a P.I. and she had to be there by 9 or she wouldn’t be able to see him that day…

Anyway – I got a rather good $16 haircut. Elise got her haircut too. Nothing fancy.

After that, we went and ate at Rudy’s – our favorite barbecue place. As always, a real treat for us.

Then we went over to Tommy’s. We watched the Holyfield vs. Rahman fight. Holyfield won in the 8th round by a TKO. The two headbutted each other and Rahman suffered a severe hematoma above his left eye. It was really gross. This thing grew to the size of grapefruit in 10 seconds.

We hung out at Tommy’s for quite some time after that – then we all piled in and went to 6th street for the annual Republic of Texas Rally & Races. What a disappointment that was. There were hardly any bikes out. El and I had even loaded up our video camera and the 35mm, hoping to get some good footage. It was pretty much a dry run. El took some good photos – though we won’t know until we get the film processed.

So we called it a night and El and I came back to Temple. That was our Saturday night on the town. We slept in today – now it’s time to go have lunch and watch the Lakers kick some Sacremento butt this afternoon.

Lakers won!!! The western conference finals are tied at 3 games each. Lakers won 106-102 against the Sacremento Kings.

I’m stoked, but I’m a little confused as to why Kobe Bryant goes to the free throw line after elbowing Bibby in the nose in the final seconds of the 4th quarter…

The Nets won the eastern conference finals… looks like I predicted it (the Lakers will win, oh yes, they will win) – it’ll be the Lakers and the Nets in the finals. See my vote in the poll – I’m the only one who voted Lakers vs. Nets.