Even though I felt lousy when I left work and the temperature had dropped more than I expected when I had dressed in the morning, I hopped off the train at Arts Center and started my walk toward George’s. The plan was to have some dinner and and two beers, say my “Good-byes”, and walk the remaining distance to my car.
Unfortunately for me (well, my weight anyway) two beers turned into three, four, and five (and six?). By the time that I was one of the final three hashers in George’s (what has happened to the hash when I am last!?!) I had accepted a ride back to my car.
ITP Flickr Pic
I was smart enough to bring my camera along with me for the walk.
This may sound stupid, but I think that I am finally starting to understand some of this photography stuff. I would like to have had the foreground of this shot a little brighter but then I would have blown out the sky. I tweaked this photo slightly in Lightroom but you might imagine that I didn’t have much time to play around with it when I arrived home.
Momma Told Me “You Better Shop Around”
For as much as I scream to the masses “Back up before it’s too late!!!” my own strategy is feeble. I have started making strides to correct this. I have eliminated one computer from my collection, thus eliminating a place for documents to go, be forgotten, and never get backed up. I have started looking into Apple’s Automator so that I can create an action which will move all documents (read “documents, music, videos, photos”) to a centralized hard drive (my Hammer Storage NAS). And finally yesterday I ordered two external hard drives that I will use as off-site storage (Yes, you need this too. What would happen if your house burned/flooded, or in my neighborhood got broken into?). In my situation burning to CDs or DVDs is not a great option.
My first stop for computer equipment purchases is Newegg, followed by Amazon (because I get free three-day shipping). For the 320GB external drive that I had in mind Newegg provided the best price, but was charging $7+ for shipping (and I planned to buy two). Unfortunately, Amazon did not sell the same item. My next move was to go to Pricegrabber for price comparisons. According to Pricegrabber Buy.com had the same item for about $5 more than Newegg, but they provided free shipping. As seems to happen too often on the internet, when I went to Buy.com they did not have the item in stock. I then returned to Pricegrabber to see that B&H Photo, one of my main sources for camera gear, also sold the hard drive for around the same price as Newegg. With the knowledge that my NAPP (National Association of Photoshop Professionals) membership gets me free shipping from B&H Photo I headed over and made the purchase.
A complicated story which took me longer to type for this blog than it did to execute.
Baby Talk
Ladies, look out!
In the last three weeks I have gotten confirmation that four different couples have become pregnant — each with their first child. Remember the two weddings I went to last year? They are both expecting.
This just in!: I have just found out that another of my friends is expecting. This will be her second, so make that tally five.
It’s not often that I will tout my inability to meet women as a “benefit”, but I’ve not had the fear of impregnating a women in “some time.” Of course I wouldn’t have non-marital sex without “protection”, that would be silly.
I’m just saying…
Some Dreams Faltering, Some Dreams Forming
The signs are there. My efforts are pointless. Should it be time to move on? I hate this part of my life. Argh.
On the positive side, I am starting my planning for Paulie Tour ’08. Currently I know that I will be in southern Colorado for Labor Day in September attending the Colorado Invihashional. I am contemplating tacking on time in New Mexico following the event to do some photography. Other thoughts are going to Canada’s Maritime region (Halifax, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island), or Ireland and/or Scotland.
Care to offer some input?
And now for some ideas stolen from LiveJournal…
Current Mood – deflated mentally, inflated physically
Current Music – Sirius Satellite Radio, Channel 26 playing Akron/Family — “Ed Is A Portal”
Website Of The Day – Because I adore Luria Petrucci (aka Cali Lewis) I will pimp two of her websites today iCali TV and Dear Cali.
Exercise (b)Log – walking, approximately 2 miles
Monthly Mileage – 11 miles
Mode Of Transportation To Work – My car
October Goal
1) Find happiness
Cheers,
Paulie [eatl/ga]
I’d forget Automator. I’d use Time Machine when Leopard is released tomorrow.
http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/timemachine.html
Of course if you’re using any Adobe CS3 products, you might want to hold off until Adobe releases their Leopard patch (the two aren’t playing well at the moment).
Insert new-OS-wait-a-week-for-bugs comment here.
I will probably hold off on Leopard until ’08. If my financial planning goes as planned I will probably be getting a new Mac laptop then.
Of course I have also consumed the Adobe Koo-Aid, I am a Lightroom and (a really lousy) Photoshop CS3 user.
I have this book (for CS2) and it has a lot of great info specifically geared to the things you might want to do. Worth checking out the next time you’re in Borders…
http://www.amazon.com/Photoshop-Digital-Photographers-Voices-Matter/dp/0321501918/ref=sr_1_1/102-5949513-3354528?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1193317355&sr=1-1
I will check it out, although my reading history is notsogood.
Would any of these women be hash types? I haven’t heard of any, but I don’t consider myself in the loop.
-FP
I know 1 hasher that is prego, and it is no secret anymore…… Trick!
@FP: That exercise is left up for the reader to solve. Oh nevermind… Barb identified one. The other “wedding pregnancy” is a non-hasher. Two are co-workers. One is a long-time Turner friend.
@Barb: I jumped to that conclusion once I heard that Bob had stopped drinking. 😉
OK wait — Bob STOPPED drinking when Trick got preggo? What a nice hubby. Brenan was thrilled to have a DD when I was preggo 🙂 Come to think of it so were all my friends. What a bunch of drunks I hang out with!
BTW Paulie I’m heading down to Gatorland today for the UF Debate Tournament. I won’t be able to watch the game but at least will be in friendly territory!
” two beers turned into three, four, and five ”
That is why I didn’t go last night, I’ve been fighting this cold and I wanted to make sure I was well rested for this weekend’s activities.
I have no self-control. 🙁
@Martha: Apparently I have none as well. I know, that’s not exactly “news”.
@Beth: I heard that he stopped drinking, thus I assumed Trick was preggers. Have fun in Gainesville.
I can’t remember how I heard about Trick & Bob, but I’ve known for a couple of weeks. How wonderful!
And I giggle at how we all are calling him “Bob” but her “Trick.” 🙂 It never ceases to amaze me how hash names kinda just end up being real names.
> It never ceases to amaze me how hash names kinda just end up being real names.
Maybe we just hate the name “Laura” because we do the same for Martha. 🙂
Nah, that can’t be it. Otherwise that would mean that Easy’s first name would be “Laura” instead of “Andrew.”
You know, I never realized that — but yes! I totally use Martha and Laura interchangeably too. Wicked funny.
Now I’m trying to think who else I do that to… it doesn’t count if I don’t actually know their real name and that’s why I don’t use it.
Even I use Martha and Laura interchangeably. I have to stop myself most Mondays from answering the phone at work with Martha.
I’ve been called a whole lot worse than Martha over the years. I’m perfectly fine with it.
Other hashers whose names I know but rarely use
Bean, aka Coffee Bean (David)
MC (Sonya)
Whiner (Ron)
Sanitary, aka Sanitary Not! (Jean)
Bunny, aka Bunny Banger (Bill)
At the wedding Sunday I kept having to whisper to Larry (aka BigBore) everyone’s ‘real name’ and I know a couple of people asked me his, it was pretty funny, there was only one I couldn’t remember right away.
When I spent my summer working at Home Depot with AutoErotic (Nicola), we worked in the same area as Sani…Nicola and I had to remind ourselves to call Jean by her real name and not Sani. She would still slip and call me Star (not my full name, thank god!). Thankfully, Sani’s name is not obscene…HOWEVER-
We also would run into Everqueer quite frequently. We would shoot each other knowing glances, but never knew how to address each other. I couldn’t exactly shout “Hey, Everqueer” across the Big Orange Compound. We eventually discovered, through Sani/ Jean, that his name is Bill.
There are five named hashers at our school…good thing we all knew each other before the hash :)!!
Funny!
A few years back I went on a date on my birthday to The Highlander. As we passed Jackass who happened to be there (no surprise) I said “Hey Jackass” and kept walking. It wasn’t until a few minutes later that I realized what I had done and had to explain hash names to her.
just to clarify- Bob (or Check My Bag) quit drinking to get her preggo. He said it was to lose weight (which did work, he has lost 20-30 lbs., but I think part of that came from riding his bike 10 miles to work). I guess the little swimmers swim straighter if they aren’t drunk. Now that she is knocked up, he is drinking again…………
I thought booze was the leading cause of pregnancy??
Y’all are crazy. CMB, Bob, Slutty Magilacutty (spelled phonetically since MC made up the name), didn’t stop drinking to get me pregnant or once I got pregnant, but I like the selflessness of that thought. The plan old fact was that Hedon did it in for him and he decided he needed to cut back. Speaking of beer, my EDD is 4/19, but we’re pulling for the baby’s birthdate to be 4/20 and then he/she can get free beers from Sweetwater and be high all of the time (sorta like Lil Sister). Is that a bad thing to wish for your own offspring?
fantastic!
I like my story better – I hate when we get to the truth of the matter……
Too funny! Now, Trick, if you actually set that date to go in to be induced, THEN it’s probably getting on the iffy side…but now it’s just funny.
You know, I bet people do do that. Huh! Never thought about that before.
Back to the names….I remember a hasher once (man! I can’t remember her name. she was one of the many Cox hashers way back when) telling me she saw Crack Pusher at a UGA game and, totally drunk in the stands and not thinking, she kept yelling at him, “Crack Pusher! Over here! Crack Pusher!” trying to get his attention.
And Paulie? Sheesh! How many comments CAN we write on just one of your blog pages? 🙂 What is the highest number you’ve ever gotten for just one day anyway? Do you know?
This might be a new ITP.com record. I could go through the list of entries in reverse order, but that would cause me to have to do work. 😉
My problem is, I suck at remembering names anyway… expecting me to know hash names and nerd names is just too much responsibility!
Speaking of names.. I was chief referee at a bike race in Savannah a couple of years ago (wearing my officials shirt with my name embroidered on it) and met with the police captain assigned to the race. As we finished up, he asked me my name again and I pointed to the shirt. He said, “Do you know what we call that in police work? A clue.”
I about fell out…
-FP
I used to be really good at remembering names and faces. It’s another of the side benefits of not meeting many women — fewer names to remember.