Author: Josh

For once, in a long, long while, I can say today was a good day. I think running this morning helped out a bit.

I put a pair of Docs on eBay last night. A guy emailed me this afternoon and told me he’d buy them now for $60. I told him that would be fine with me. I haven’t heard back from him yet. That made me happy – had I not put them on eBay, I probably would have given them to the Salvation Army… or returned them to the Dallas cheerleaders.

I put a little air in the trusty Shadow’s tires this morning – that made it faster and handle better.

I was swamped at work so that made the day fly by. I got a good haircut this afternoon. I don’t really worry much about my hair [style], but a good clipping can make a dude’s day.

I wrote the big check to pay off my motorcycle today – that was a huge relief.

I made some damn good stuffed bell peppers tonight – a pound and a half of once-known cow, diced carrots, a million diced cloves of garlic, chopped cherry tomatoes, an egg, a slice of bread (diced), onion, chili powder, yadah yadah. I mushed it all up, packed the meat mixture into two halved yellow bell peppers, stuck it in the oven, badah boom, badah bing, done. Good good good.

I tried to make chocolate covered Macadamia nuts. I don’t know what the hell I was doing there. Needless to say, I have a sheet pan sitting on my cutting board with a couple dozen, what look like, toddler droppings. I suck at making desserts. There’s chocolate all over the kitchen. I don’t really like eating dessert, so maybe that’s why I’m not very good at it. Now, if I could figure out the secret recipe to making good gummy bears…

Anyway – I’m just in a good mood today. I think I’ll go enjoy what’s left of it because who knows what the hell is going to happen tomorrow.

Last night Elise and I started watching Lord of the Rings. Joanne called around 10… knowing how long they talk on the phone (not that it’s a bad thing), I tried to finish watching it alone. 173 minutes – I couldn’t make it. It’s an awesome movie though! The filming really stood out – I’m not up on my cinematography lingo, but I thought the photography was awesome. We’ll start watching it again tonight from where El left off last night.

We also rented 7 Days to Live. We’ll watch that one tonight as well. I’ve decided that I’m going to watch every horror/sci-fi movie ever made [that I haven’t seen already]. Yep, that’s my goal. We picked up the very first listed video in the horror/sci-fi section at our local Ma and Pa video store. I don’t think they’re catalogued correctly though – why wouldn’t 2001: A Space Odyssey be listed before 7 Days to Live? I’m going to rent each and every one of them in order. Our local video store offers ‘rent one, get one free’ – so I figured I’d use that free rental to view their entire horror catalog. I’m going to document and critique each one as well so I can remember them.

My initial plan is to write [on paper] my critique and the film’s synopsis. Then I’ll try my hand at a movie database. I took my MS Access III class yesterday and think that this would be the perfect opportunity to build a database.

El came home last night and was upset about her job. She actually started working this week. The past three weeks have been training. From what I’ve gathered, she’s on the ‘floor’ now. She sits before a partitioned blue screen and processes student loan applications. After almost a month, most people still have questions that warrant the good ol’ raise of the hand and a ‘coach’ will come by to answer your question. She’s upset because she feels as if she’s back in grade school – she has to raise her hand if she has a question, she has to eat when they say eat, break when they say break and breathe when they say breathe. We both know it’s just a temp job, but I would hope that a hard worker such as my lovely wife would be treated with at least a small squirt of dignity. She told me it took four minutes (she timed it) to have one of her questions answered. This was only after frustration set in and she raised both hands. I think that’s awesome… present a little sarcasm where it’s due.

I’m hoping things will pick up for her. It has only been 3.5 weeks. They’ll eventually figure out that she’s worth more than her weight in diamonds and not just doing this job because she thinks she needs something to do.

In other news… I ran this morning. Man, did that feel good. I was thinking back to this time last year… I was in almost-tip-top shape. I woke up 3 hours early and ran for an hour every day. I was trying to make myself look like less of a slob for our wedding and to make myself feel good overall. I’m far, far away from being able to run non-stop for an hour, but it still felt good to get started. I need to get myself a good pair of running shoes. At the crippling old age of 26, my lower back started hurting just after I stopped running. I guess it really didn’t help that I was wearing canvas shoes either.

I don’t know why I’m compelled to mention this here, but Katie Couric’s mouth looks like a bumhole. After my jog, I walked into the apartment and caught Ms. Couric’s interview with Priscilla Presley on the Today Show. I told El: “Katie Couric’s mouth looks just like a butthole!” El said that it looked like she had been doing a lot of tanning. It looked really sick. It looked like her mouth was completely surrounded by crow’s feet. I hope the next time that Katie undergoes a colonoscopy, the doctor knows which end is up!

Tonight I made some awesome baby back ribs. They would have been awesomer (?) had I actually barbequed them. I knew when I came home that I should at least sear them on the grill – but I wasn’t up for cranking up the mini pit.

I like to call them my double-dose of Austin baby back ribs. I started marinating them last night in Lawry’s seasoned salt, garlic powder and Stubb’s Spicy BBQ Sauce. They sat in the fridge for about 18 hours. I came home from work, wrapped them in foil, stuck them on the top rack in the oven with a sheet pan full of water underneath to keep them juicy. I cooked them at 300º for an hour and a half. After pulling them out, I sopped them with some Rudy’s Sause. I really wish I had a smoker. That’s probably the first thing we’ll buy when we get a house. Actually – I don’t want to buy a smoker… I want to build my own. I’ve already drawn out a diagram.

Anyway – nothing new or exciting happened today. It was just another Monday. I hate Mondays.

I found out on Friday that Mardi Gras Seafood Cafe has closed – or actually moved out of town to Canton. Good riddance. Good grief, that place was horrible. I told Chas that I would be willing to go back and try their food again [I was only out for a free meal] – I’m glad I don’t have to do that. Seriously… Mardi Gras Seafood Cafe had the most horrible food I have ever tasted. Mardi Gras Seafood Cafe’s food was disgusting. I hated Mardi Gras Seafood Cafe’s food. Sorry – just want to make sure this entry gets a high ranking in Google. Innocent people need to research this place before they eat there and endure an episode of life threatening excrementation. Sorry, that was gross – but so was the food. Chas… you might be a good cook [only if you weren’t cooking the night we ate there] – I hope you didn’t follow those people to Canton.

Enough slandering. El and I are going to try to rent our Harley this weekend. My friends from Vidbook gave me a gift certificate for a 24 hour, unlimited mileage, big V-twin Harley Davidson motorcycle rental for a wedding present. I need to call Eagle Rider tomorrow and reserve my scooter. We’re looking forward to it. El said she wants to ride out to Enchanted Rock. I don’t really care where we go… FTW.

What a weekend. Elise and I had a lot of fun on Friday. We stayed up really late, just hanging out on the porch and talking. It was a great way to start the weekend. El spent most of the evening just telling me how great I was and how much she loved me – she talked about my ‘cute’ id·i·o·syn·cra·sies. My wife is pretty amazing.

So… seeing how we stayed up so late on Friday, we slept in pretty late on Saturday. We woke up, lazily watched a little tele and went to Subway for lunch. Shortly after eating, Tommy called and asked if we were leaving soon. Tommy acquired tickets to the 93.3 FM birthday party at Sub Zero in Austin. Elise and I hopped up, got dressed and headed to Austin. We stopped to pick up Philip and headed to Sub Zero. We received the V.I.P. treatment… we got name badges, three free drink tickets per person, free Asian marinated meatballs, mini roast beef sandwiches and vanilla cake.

Jeremy and Victor accompanied Tommy. Shortly after arriving, Tommy and Victor left the club to seek ‘companions’ for the evening. They found two young ladies and brought them back to the club. Needless to say, they weren’t very entertaining, so everyone pretty much established that they weren’t of much benefit to our ensemble. They eventually left. The six of us decided to leave Sub Zero after inhaling helium from the birthday balloons and chiming “Follow the yellow brick road” and making nunchucks out of glowsticks. We went to Paradox. We didn’t last long. It was getting late – it was time for a night cap and for El and I to head back to bustling Temple.

We all went back to Tommy’s and philosophized about domestic affairs loud enough to wake up the next door neighbor. After that, it was time to go home.

Elise and I got home late. We slept in [again] and went to Walmart to get some odds and ends as well as a few grocery items. We came home, I watched some cheesy documentary on Eminem and the last series of AMA superbike racing (Kawasaki ZX7 won!!!)

For once, we had a weekend that was actually long. Now it’s time to go to bed and watch the clock – waiting for next weekend.

Oh yeah, looks like I will be getting the PS2. Mom sent me a couple links to some eBay auctions for PS2’s. I decided not to buy a PS2 on eBay because I wouldn’t have the comfort of returning it to a store should something be wrong. Instead, I bid on a Dual Shock 2 controller (a stock PS2 only comes with one controller). A Dual Shock controller retails at $24.99 – I won a brand new, factory sealed controller for $6.99.

I was checking out my buddy Kirk’s site today and came across some of his newer caricatures. I think Kirk is pretty darn good at this form of art. I’m hoping one day, whenever I get my Kawasaki ZX7R, I can get him to do some custom airbrushing on my helmet. He’s trying to pull in a little extra cash from his two sites, www.learn-to-draw.com and www.cartoons-caricatures.com.

Kirk was the ‘original’ multimedia editor at Vidbook and trained Reid and me. Luckily we all keep in touch after we all lost our jobs – usually to just say “hey”, or engage in geek-talk and exchange JavaScripts and design ideas.

If you’ve got some extra cash under the couch cushions, I’m sure Kirk wouldn’t mind the work! kirktoon_2000 at yahoo.com

I have to interact with a lot physicians here at work. I really wish that they would all introduce themselves as doctors. I hate meeting someone and not knowing if they’re a doc right off the bat. I try to be polite and feel them out so I’ll know whether or not to refer to them as Dr. Soandso. So far, that has worked out okay. I wouldn’t hesitate to ask if he or she was a doctor if I wasn’t certain. If I spend four years in med school after earning my bachelors degree, then four years as an intern, two years as a resident, two years as a fellow and was hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt with school loans, I would make sure you called me Doctor, thank you very much…

I wish I had some cool initials that I could put at the end of my name. Maybe for web development I could be Josh D. Janicek, W.D. Or WWW Josh Janicek. I’m probably not versed enough to have earned my doctorate, so I’d probably just be Josh Janicek, L.W.P. (Licensed Web Practitioner) or something like that.

Speaking of high degrees and respectable professionals. I’m proud to announce that Elise has earned a 4.0 on all of her skills tests at Sallie Mae. She was informed yesterday that she was the only one to achieve such a high score in her group. She told me on day one that it was her goal to get 100’s on all of her tests during her training – and she did it! I’m really proud of you El!

Sallie Mae would be crazy if they didn’t hire her on after the contract for this temp job is up. She seems pretty excited about this job too. She comes home and tells me all about her day every evening. She’s taking what she does very seriously and has been learning a lot about loans and credit.

I received this message in an email this morning. I did this for Elise and myself a few months back and opted us out forever:

The four major credit bureaus in the US are allowed to release your credit info, mailing addresses, phone numbers, etc., to anyone who requests it. If you would like to ‘opt out’ of this release of your info, you can call 1-888-567-8688. It only takes a couple of minutes to do. Once the message starts you’ll want option #2 and then option #3 – Be sure to listen closely, the first option is only for a two-year period. Make sure you wait until they prompt for the third option, which opts you out forever.

My parents taught me that your name is all that you have. For a year now, I have been working hard on getting Elise’s and my credit reports in tip top shape. Elise did a little onside recognisance for me and found out that I’m only 4 points away from having an ‘Excellent’ credit score. From what I’ve heard and read, there aren’t that many out there who have and excellent rating in our debt-based economy.

Now that we’re married, I’m going to order our credit reports once a year to ensure that we’re doing well. Last year it only cost $7 per report. That’s a really small price to pay to protect your name. Here’s a list of the three major credit bureaus. I used Experian last year. This year I think I’ll order through Equifax.

I just finished cooking some mini chicken fried steaks. I’ve been cooking too much chicken fried steak lately. El is going to have to start cooking her diet food for us more often.

Anyway, Mom and Dad gave me some beef when we were at their place this past weekend. Since my Dad has retired, I guess they’ve decided to make a little personal profit with their livestock (brangus cattle). A couple of weeks ago, they had one of the cows slaughtered. They gave me a roast, a couple of t-bones and one gigantic round steak. I thawed the round steak last night and made the CFS out of it this evening after cutting it down into smaller pieces.

It didn’t dawn on me until after I inhaled a couple of my little bite-sized golden brown slabs of beef… I’ve probably once looked that cow in the eyes. I probably once helped Dad in dumping range cubes into the trough to feed it. I probably drizzled worm medicine on its back a couple months ago. I probably looked at that cow one day and said: “You look funny cow, just standing there, being all cowlike, slapping your tail against your rear end to shoo away flies.”

So, we ate part of one of my parents’ cows tonight. It was kind of weird. It probably tastes the same, but there’s something that goes on in the old thinker that makes you think it tastes different. It’s like eating someone that you know.

I wonder how John would taste with some fava beans and a nice Chianti…

We just finished watching The Fast and the Furious, again. Elise likes it more and more now that she’s decided she has a crush on Vin Diesel. I just like the cars and the loud audio track. We’re both hoping that TF&TF II is as good. I’m hoping for motorcycles. Elise is hoping for Vin.

I went to an Excel I class this morning. I re-learned how to create graphs. Tomorrow morning I have an MS Access class. Better get to bed…

Monday. Nothing really happened on Monday. It was a typical Monday – got up, went to work, went through the motions.

Elise made shredded chicken taco salads for dinner. After dinner, El shopped for airfare to Minneapolis. She’s going to her friend, Kari’s house for Labor Day weekend. I don’t mind her traveling to visit her friends – I encourage it. I married a foreigner, so I knew what I was getting into. At this point, it’s too expensive for us to both travel, so my Midwest vacations will be temporarily limited to every other Christmas.

El was concerned that I might not want her to fly to Minneapolis. I don’t know if it was because she thought I didn’t want to spend the money on a plane ticket, or she thought I would be overly lonely while she was gone. Either way, without hesitation, she bribed me with a Playstation 2.

I’m really not sure if I should get the PS2 or not. I don’t know why, but part of me says: “Josh, be responsible, save your money”. The other part says: “Josh, you buy your clothes at Walmart, you haven’t bought yourself anything in a long, long time – get the PS2”. I’ve really wanted a PS2 since before they came to stores. How long has that been, two years or so? Mom always said: “Sleep on it – see if you still want/need it tomorrow.” We have the cash (no BestBuy line of credit needed) and believe me, I’ve slept on it….

Saturday didn’t turn out as hectic as I thought it would. My parents, Elise and I went to the Sealy Outlet Mall around 11 o’clock. Talk about a ghost town. I think this outlet mall was opened five years ago. On a tax free Saturday, the parking lot was 5% full. We went to the Reebok outlet and the Bass outlet to try to find some shoes for El. Both stores were having 50% off, going out of business sales. All but probably ten stores had been completely shut down. I don’t know how many store fronts there once were, but if I had to guess, I’d say close to one hundred. Now they were all empty facade clones with no “For Lease” signs. I guess Katy Mills has run this place out of business. I’m thinking that within the next few years, the Sealy Outlet will be littered with vendors selling day old bread, dented car rims, bison jerky and camouflage statuettes of the Virgin Mary.

We couldn’t find any shoes that Elise liked. We drove 30 miles east to Katy Mills. We drove into the parking lot and immediately turned around and headed home. The crowds were worse than the day after Thanksgiving.

We got back to my parents house, ate some left over lasagna and then we all started making more food. Elise chopped up a big watermelon, Dad started making ice cream, I started making a pizza and Mom supervised the operation. I guess it goes without saying that we had steak pizza for dinner and homemade ice cream for dessert.

I setup a spam filter on my Mom’s computer late that evening while everyone else watched TV and talked. El and I stayed up and watched a Saturday Night Live rerun after my parents went to bed. Pink was the musical guest the night that the show originally aired. What do you get when you cross Hanson, Linda Perry and a tablespoon of white soul? Pink. I wonder what I’d be listening to if I were still in high school – where the music that you listened to was half of who you were.

Sunday was a lazy day. I laid in bed for 2.5 hours on Saturday night. I couldn’t fall asleep. I got up on Sunday to eat breakfast, read parts of the paper and take a nap on the couch. I got up and glued parts of the Trooper back onto their respective locations.

Elise and I left my parents house and headed back to Temple at 2 p.m. We got home around 4:30 and I installed the 8GB hard drive that my Mom gave me. Elise started cleaning her closet. We went to bed around midnight. Now it’s Monday. Mondays……

Elise and I arrived at my parents’ house around 10 p.m. last night. We ate lasagna and salad. We all sat and talked for a while. Dad went to bed around 11, Mom and El sat on the couch and talked for another hour while I goofed around on Mom’s 48k connection. El and I went to bed around 1 a.m.

This morning we got up around 8. We ate breakfast and I went outside and watched some of those really big hairy bees suck the sweet juice from the flowers in the garden. They’re those bees that are the size of you thumb – the ones with the deep yellow thorax (I think, I don’t remember my insect anatomy) and the solid black abdomen.

I petted Simba and found a locust resting on a morning glory leaf. I went inside to get El so I could show her the locust. We went back outside and I pointed out the bug to her – he attacked her. He flew off of his leaf and hit her in the stomach. I guess it was because she hadn’t yet brushed her teeth.

We’re about to leave to go to Katy Mills (gigantic touristy outlet mall). It’s a tax free weekend. The women have informed us that it is our job as consumers to go out and spend money.

El needs a new pair of shoes (sheeesh). I’m hoping to make out with a semi-automatic rubber band gun so I can blast through the rabid shopping masses and get my place in line at a kiosk to listen to the new Lil Romeo and Jerry Jeff Walker compilation CD. Or I might opt to sit in one of those massaging chair displays to contribute in the spreading of head lice, butt weavles and scabies.

Friday evening I came home and started downloading my Danzig mp3s. It started pouring down rain outside. I mean it was coming down in sheets. Around 7:30, we left to have dinner with Carl and Mindi. After dinner, El and I went to Bum’s Sports Bar for a couple beers. There was a young band from Dallas playing that night, so the joint was packed with high school kids with big “M”s (for minor) written on their hands with magic marker. El and I thought that Philip would have had a nice time there… We had a good time anyway. We didn’t stay very long.

We got home a little before midnight and El talked me into going into our apartment complex’s communal hot tub. Having rained as much as it did ealier that evening, there wasn’t much heat to the hot tub. We stayed in the small, warm pool of other people’s germs long enough to get pruney, then headed home to get some sleep.

I woke up relatively early on Saturday to go on a much needed motorcycle ride. My plan was to get somewhat lost and eventually find myself in Killeen where I would stop at the local motorcycle shop. I got lost alright, and I wound up nowhere near Killeen. I’m used to getting lost in the hill country near Austin, where you can drive a good ways and you’ll eventually come upon a really nice neighborhood, a river, a golf course or a lake. Well, on this Saturday, I found myself coming upon blacktop roads, scattered mobil home communities, baron land occupied by leaf-eating goats and more blacktop roads. I tried to head towards what I thought was south by way of a secluded road. While still hoping to make my way to Killeen, I guess I had travelled far enough east to where I was greeted by an entrance to Ft. Hood. The posted sign deterred me from taking that route.

So, I turned around and took the same boring way back home. Since I had already experienced this route, I crossed my left leg over my gas tank and started singing to myself. I rode almost 60 miles. A boring ride, but a nice and therapeutic one nonetheless.

I came home to find that the guy in the mirror had a pretty nice shade of red on his face… I hadn’t expected to be out that long – guess I should have slapped on some sunscreen.

El and I spent most of the day geeking out in front of our respective computers, mostly to download mp3s. El decided that she wanted pizza for dinner, so we went to HEB and bought the ingredients I needed for a veggy pizza. Turned out pretty good – onion, tomato, bell pepper, garlic – jalepenos and green olives on my side. Then we watched a movie and went to bed.

Sunday was a lazy day – watered the plants, I cooked some pork chops and potatoes, downloaded more mp3s, watched another movie.

So that was our weekend. Once again, Monday reared its ugly head too soon.

I saw a wreck on my way into work this morning. Some moron driving a blue, newer model Suburban flagrantly ran a red light at the intersection of Loop 363 and S. 31st. An old white pickup truck was this first off the line from the middle lane as the light turned green. He apparently couldn’t see the Suburban as there was another pickup truck to his left, blocking the view. I was two cars behind this truck. He pinged the passenger side quarter panel on the Suburban and knocked it halfway into the other lane.

I immediately laughed after I could determine that nobody was hurt. The light stayed green while everyone paused in the standard “I just witnessed a wreck” dumbfounded state. Traffic finally started to pass through the light. I went ahead and continued on my route to work. As I was passing the white truck that was the ‘victim’, an old man in tight Wranglers and a cowboy hat got out of his truck, looked towards the Suburban and exclaimed: “Bashturd” [image Will Farrell’s voice impression of George W. Bush]. One more good thing about riding a motorcycle – you can see, smell and hear everything. I didn’t look back, but I’m sure the old man’s good ol’ pickup truck didn’t even receive a battle scar. The Suburban – I’m sure that’ll cost a pretty penny.