I’ve been working on a AAA radio station list for this band’s website. It’s just an easy way for the street team kids to contact various radio stations across the US to request the new album. The weird thing is… almost a third of the stations on the list are named “The River.” I wonder if every town with a river flowing through it has a radio station called “The River.”

Hi. I’m Lance, and I haven’t listened to music on the radio in almost 8 years.

Ugh. It’s a cold. Or a sinus infection. Maybe the flu. Blah. I’m so tired.

SONG OF THE MOMENT: Satchel – “Suffering”

I’ve been watching “Airline” on A&E. Some of the customers are just insane. Like the lady who gets to the counter 20 minutes before her flight, and can’t believe she’s gonna miss her flight – “I’m gonna sue Southwest…” – huh? What planet has she been living on for the past couple of years?

I was at J&R’s today to pick up a couple of items (nothing exciting). While I was waiting for my little USB cable to arrive at the pick-up area, I noticed a little plastic, booth/cage thing. Turned out it was the customer service area. This guy was in this plastic cage all by his lonesome. God I wish we had those back in the day @ Wal-Mart. People get really irate with the customer service peeps. My personal policy back then when I was managing, was that if people came up and were pleasant I’d go out of my way to help them. We even took back items from other stores more than once when people were really nice. But when the people came up with chips on their shoulders before I even got to say “how can I help you” – I didn’t try all that hard. So I’ve remembered that all these years when using customer service, and it usually works. If I’m nice and patient, I usually get what I want. Especially in the south.

Anyhow – I’ve been sitting here working on the computer with my headphones on and I had no idea it was snowing outside. Not that snow really makes a noise, but it did sneak up on me.

PIX OF THE DAY: Sneaky snow
© 2003 permalance.com

SONG OF THE MOMENT: Pell Mell – “Salvo”

I’ve been meaning to do a year-end, best and worst wrap-up, but I haven’t finshed my list yet. I guess I can drop a few random ones here today, and maybe, possibly the rest sometime in January.

Best Night
Tuesday, December 16/17 – NJ -> LI -> NJ -> LI -> NJ

Worst Night
Monday, October 6 – post surgery. Ugh.

Best Concert
tie: Duran Duran @ The Borgata – Atlantic City, NJ
tie: dada @ Triumph Brewing Company – Princeton, NJ

Worst Concert
Interpol & Elefant @ Hammerstein Ballroom – NYC, NY
– just boring. if you’ve seen ’em once, that’s enough.

Best Work Moment
Anytime the whole crew goes drinking

Worst Work Moment
tie: Brenda leaving
tie: Corby leaving
tie: Maria leaving

Best Blackout Moment
The AC coming on at 3am in the morning

Worst Blackout Moment
Standing in line for a 5-minute ferry ride, for seven hours.

Best TV Event
Battlestar Galactica remake turned out much better than I thought it would.

Worst TV Event
The finding of Zoe Bartlett on The West Wing. What a waste of a cliffhanger.

Best New Album
Poster Children – No More Songs About Sleep and Fire

Wost New Album
The New Pornographers – Electric Version
– way overrated

Best Movie
The Return of the King
– despite the length

Worst Movie
Bruce Almighty
– good god I hate Jim Carrey. That’s 101 minutes I’ll never get back.

Favorite Photos

Least Favorite Photos

SONG OF THE MOMENT: Nine Inch Nails – “10 Miles High”

I’ve had difficulty hitting the hay lately. I think it’s just because I got into funky sleep habits during the holidays. I’d like to go to bed at midnight, but 2am is my usual target. Lately thought, I haven’t been able to fall asleep till 3:30 or 4, which is just way too late if I’m supposed to be getting up at 8. I’ve also been really anxious, but I’m not sure for what. There are some books and magazines I’ve been wanting to read, and a couple of movies that I TiVoed… but that doesn’t seem like it. I need to get stamps to pay some bills – again, not the kind of anxiousness I’m feeling. I dunno. There must be something…

SONG OF THE MOMENT: Crowded House – “Weather With You”

I have lots of bad habits, but the most annoying to me lately is not writing stuff down when I first experience it. I have a fear I’m going to forget things, experiences, emotions, bits and pieces of my life. Everyone forgets stuff, but I keep having this sense that I’m losing a lot of stored memories. This probably explains the compulsion to back up all my old CDRoms that I’ve been going through. A lot of it has to do with the Alzheimer’s that is rampant on my mother’s side of the family. To see strong people gradually losing their identity & a lifetime of experiences… it’s ugly. Part of the reason I got started doing LiveJournal, and now this blog, was so that maybe I’d feel compelled to jot down the day’s events, or observations – journaling. I know a blog should probably be more about the observations, rather than a bullet point of what happened, but I was hoping that I’d start writing stuff down in order to fill my public place, and then be so into the groove that I’d actually let the overflow drip into a personal journal. I have a hard time keeping a personal journal, but if something is public, maybe I’ll feel the urge to keep it filled? Anyhow, the personal journal is still collecting dust, but the blog is moving ahead, maybe I’ll make the transition in the new year. Anyway, this rambling piece of text is just a preamble to get across that the reason I’m now writing about Thanksgiving in January, is because I have bad discipline (currently) when it comes to jotting down stuff when it happens – but I’m working on it. Ahem.

So, Thanksgiving – instead of flying like I do the rest of the year, I always drive home. Since I haven’t taken a restful, exotic vacation since, ever, I use the 15-hour drive as my actual vacation. It’s just me, the music & the road. For me it’s relaxing, a nice break away from work, and a buffer before I get back home. Nothing exciting happened on this road trip, which is fine. But thankfully the road between here and there is chock full of Waffle Houses and truck stops.

I should clarify that I didn’t go home for Thanksgiving, but actually the week before that to celebrate my grandmother’s 100 birthday. It’s funny because in the past, Nana didn’t want to discuss here age, but as the century mark drew closer she shocked us all by looking forward to the event. Not everyone made it to the event, but a lot of people did. My sister and her family we able to come – I hadn’t seen her in two years. It’s hard for us to get together because we live nowhere near our parents & grandparents. I actually saw my niece for the first time ever. She’s gorgeous and can really light up a room. My sister and have never been as close as either of us wanted I think. She’s eleven years my senior, so she was always gone when I was beginning to get interesting. There was a point in college – I think around my sophomore or junior year – where she worked in the same town I went to school in. We were able to have lunch once a week, and were starting to get to know each other better. But of course things change, she moved and got a family, and eventually I came up to New York. I love her, but right now, there’s not a lot that we have in common. I expect we’ll grow closer as we grow older – when I have a family and I call her for advice…

Anyway, like I said, most people made it. A cousin of mine flew in for the event. For background, the closest airport is about 60 miles & one state away. He’s already running a bit late, but when he finally lands and rushes to the car rental counter he finds out his license is expired. Of course they can’t rent him a car. He’s beside himself, pleading with them to let him rent, after all, he has to get to his grandmother’s 100 birthday party. The manager says there’s no way they can rent to him, but they can drive him up there. 60 miles. For free. The driver wouldn’t even accept a tip. I’ve never rented from them, but the Avis folks seem nice.

It was good seeing all the cousins and aunts & uncles. I heard a lot of tales and family – gossip I guess. An aunt is dating another aunt’s nephew (this all by marriage, not blood). The nephew is 20 or 30 years her junior. A cousin’s husband left her for the babysitter. I found out there is some history of mental illness in my family – that’s an upper. But the really interesting stuff happened when my sister and I went visiting the grandmothers.

First we visited my father’s mother. Her physical health has been on the decline the past few months – nothing specific, she’s just aging. When we first got there she was telling us all about her recent completion of her funeral plans. “It’s all paid for, so if no one is around, I’ll get taken care of.” I guess she’s planning on outliving all of us. That was kind of depressing, so we got her to talk about old times, old stories. Some of my fondest memories of being little were centered around visiting my grandparents at the lake. He was a retired policeman, she had worked at a sewing plant for a lot of her life. At some point (I’m not sure of the year) they were hired by one of the factories in town to run a ‘resort’ area down on a major lake. The term resort translates here to cabins (with plumbing & electricity) on a lakeside with a dock. It was wonderful going down there. There were frogs, snakes, all kind of critters and great fishing. We got her talking about her pet squirrels. She had them on more than one occasion. Once, my grandfather was cutting down a dead tree, and once it was down, he found a squirrel’s nest. He kept pulling out little baby squirrels, and my grandmother nursed them all until they were old enough to fend for themselves. Another time they had a single squirrel. This one ran lose in their cabin, but they’d put it in a bird cage when they had to run to town to pick up supplies. She told us about how they would put out nuts for it, and it would grab one, and then run off and hide it in the cabin somewhere. Then he’d run back up to the table where the nuts were and would kind of stare at them, like he was counting them to make sure they were all still there. Once they had to leave to pick up some groceries or deliver some fish, so they put the squirrel in his cage. When they came back, they walked into a disaster area. Apparently this particular squirrel was a locksmith and had escaped. As they walked through the cabin surveying the damage – cabinets pulled open, nuts everywhere – they found him, lying on the couch with a “it wasn’t me” look on his face. Or so she says.

Then we went to visit the century girl. For being 100, her mind is still pretty sharp. She might not remember the old stories right off the bat, but with a little hinting she’ll start spilling the beans. When my sister was little, Nana used to tell here about her life as a little girl back in the 1900’s. My sister remembered all these stories, and compiled them into a little book, a sort of long birthday card that was then illustrated by my nephews (cute huh?). Nana had a hard time hearing the story my sister read at the party, so my sister got the card and told the stories again. It was a grand time. Nana started expanding on some of the stories. My sister at one point asked my aunt who was there, if she had seen a book in the house that she had remembered and wanted to borrow. My aunt wasn’t sure, but she had a box of bunch of stuff and said we should look through that. She brought down this big Tupperware box with all this amazing stuff in it. Old garments, a bussell, an MD degree from 1910 (or around there), etc. Amongst the documents, we found some court papers. When my grandmother was young woman, her brother, the doctor was murdered. He had been treating a sick girl in the county somewhere. He was on his way to make a house call, when the deranged father of the sick girl, jumped out from behind a tree and shot him off his horse! Amazingly, a similar thing had happened to his grandmother. She was helping out a sick youngster, when a crazed family member shot her. In that case, there was no trial. A posse went after him and strung him up in a tree. But in the case of my grandmother’s brother, there was a trial. The deliberations lasted 15 minutes and they came back with the death penalty. It seems as if my grandfather even was a witness at the electrocution. So my sister is glancing over some of the court paper and my aunt makes an odd face at another find in the box. She mentions something under her breath and hands the object to my sister. Come to find out later, it was pieces of the gun from the murder trial. Wild. My sister now has the court papers and parts of the gun in her possession. Wild.

The rest of trip was made up of a lot of little moments, hanging with my parents, my sister and her family. It was fun.

Oh, and we saw the Northern Lights, which is odd because we were below the Mason-Dixon line. The skies are so clear down – no light pollution whatsoever – that with the right atmospheric conditions, you can see the Northern Lights. It was wild.

SONG OF THE MOMENT: Poster Children – “One of Us”

I finally went through the rest of the photos from my flight back after Christmas. They’re not great in terms of clarity or composition, but it’s an interesting perspective. I always enjoyed looking at planes & helicopters flying overhead when I was a kid (and still do) — just wondering where they were going, and if they could see me down on the ground. It’s funny, when you’re down on the ground, you’re concerned with the 10 feet or so immediately surrounding you – you’re not aware of the big picture – I’m rambling and not making sense. I sat on my bed today for the longest time and just looked out my window at planes flying overhead.

PIX OF THE DAY: Images from flight 2530
© 2003 permalance.com

last night i dreamt of flying
over hillsides in the snow
and i dove down through the clouds
into the valley there below
when the fields turned into parking lots
my freedom turned to dread
the ground rose up to greet me
and i jumped up out of bed
  “fear of falling” – the badlees

So on my flight back to Newark from home, I decided to stick my camera up to the glass and see what kind of pictures I could pull off. Everything came out hazy, which was a combination of the cloud cover and the film they put on the windows. Every few minutes I would snap off some pictures. Mostly it was just rolling hills full of leafless tress. I’d get some small airports and a baseball field here and there. I didn’t really look at them till today, when I was on the phone chatting with a friend. I’m looking at a picture of a city I took, and I’m thinking to myself, “I wonder where that was.” So we’re chatting and I’m zooming in to the image, and then I see it.

I have more to say about my trip and some other year-end observations, but I’m wrecked and need to get some sleep. But I leave you with a couple of pix to illustrate the first paragraph.

PIX OF THE DAY: The picture that made me go ‘hmmmmm’
© 2003 permalance.com

PIX OF THE DAY: and the magnification that made me go ‘ahhhhhh’
© 2003 permalance.com

So I had a leak on Thursday morning. Water was coming through the window. Today I saw a mouse poking around. Blah. I set the traps. I guess I’ll call the management guys today and let them know. There are holes in some of the rooms where there used to be radiator piping – I’m hoping they’ll come plug those.

I need a cat.

Now I can’t concentrate on the crap I need to concentrate on. Not really worried about the mouse – I used to have rodents as pets – I’m just annoyed. Now if he wanted to split the rent, that’s a whole different story.

On a positive note, I’m going to see the girl Monday or Tuesday or both. I’m very excited. She makes me feel all warm and fuzzy.

This morning I was looking for a weather forecast and my old standby The Weather Channel was all goofy with this endlessly repeating commercial, so I started flipping through the local stations, and I catch this scene on the Today Show, where the topic was wine tasting. And I quote:

“…you should swirl the wine around in the glass. What this does is to release all the aroma, kind of like taking off your pantyhose at the end of the day.”

Errr. TMI.

I left work at 6:15, and after stopping by the dry cleaners to pick up my clothes, I was upstairs in my apartment by 6:45pm – HA! I rule. Well, the bus driver is actually the one who rules, but either way, I’m home before all the Brooklyn people in my office.

PIX OF THE DAY: Still experimenting with the super small camera – the bus ride home today.
© 2003 permalance.com

I went to bed relatively early last night, so I had assumed I’d get up early enough to run downstairs, pick up my laundry, dash back upstairs and then head off to work.

Of course I hit the snooze button. Six times.

So I rush out of the house and start trudging through the snow. Sometimes as I’m walking to the bus stop my mind is completely blank. Other times I’m thinking about what’s coming up in the day. Sometimes there are just dozens of random ideas bouncing around. But this morning, about a block from my apartment, this thought popped into my head, “my wallet is upstairs in another pair of pants.”

Back upstairs. Wallet. Lock door. Trudging through the snow. Again.

I got on the bus and totally clocked some guy in the head with either my bag or my elbow… I can’t remember now. I said “sorry, sorry” and made my way to the back of the bus trying not to crack up. Not sure why I found it funny, I think it was the look on his face after I hit him.

On the bus. Bundled up. Now it’s too hot. Sweating. Ugh.

Finally I’m in the city, and walking up 8th Ave heading to work. The Poster Children are in my headphones, and I’m feeling all bouncy and happy. The guys in the bodega are hilarious this morning. The guy behind the counter is telling the guy stocking the Pepperidge Farm cookies to quite busting his balls. And the cookie guy is giving it back to him. So things are enjoyable.

Then I come into work. Blah.

Big snow this weekend. I don’t really have anything poetic to say about the snow. I like snow. It’s pretty. I like winter. I liked the cold. This weekend felt like Christmas vacation. I just sat around eating cereal and reading magazines. And still archiving CDRs.

I have no real profound statements to make.

No observations to pass on.

Well, maybe one – my feet are cold.

I’m going to bed.

PIX OF THE DAY: It would suck if they had to use that fire escape today.
© 2003 permalance.com

So I got my Zippo-sized camera a couple of days back. It takes fairly crappy pictures, but honestly what can you expect from a $99, super-small, spycam. Outside the pictures actually aren’t that bad if you reduce them. They’re unsuitable for print, but knock ’em down to 400x300px or smaller, and they’ll pass for a really bad digital camera, or a poorly scanned print. Inside pix, different story. It needs a lot of light, no flash – but you can get some interesting stuff. Not pretty, but interesting. It’ll be fun to play with, but I can’t count on it for documenting anything.

I’m in some kind of mental fog/funk lately. I hope it’s just vacation-lag… I just can’t seem to concentrate on anything. A couple of projects at work were fast-tracked, and I did them as quickly as possible, but now I have to wait for someone else to kick in and sign off. In the meantime, I should be finishing up some of the other dozen or so non-rush projects, but I just can’t get into work.

This cloud is starting to drift into my non-work life as well. I haven’t really done a lot at home lately. I shot some pix & video with my friend James a few weeks back – and I keep meaning to edit together some rough footage so he can see what we have — we’re thinking about shooting some stupid projects in the future — but I haven’t. I’m also stalled on the CDR archiving project. Plus I owe a lot of e-mails.

So tonight, one of the vendors was having its holiday party. I planned on going and wanted to leave for it right after work. I was waiting for a couple of friends from the office to finish up some work so I could head over with them. Fast-forward a couple of hours later, and we finally head over. I go in, do the coat-check, walk upstairs to the buffet & drinks, stand there for a five minutes, then go back downstairs, grab my coat and leave. I didn’t even have a drink or food. I don’t know what it was, but I just couldn’t be there.

Let’s hope for this being a mild case of vacation-lag…

PIX OF THE DAY: Indoor shot with the little camera.
© 2003 permalance.com

PIX OF THE DAY: Outdoor shot with the little camera.
© 2003 permalance.com

PIX OF THE DAY: A portrait of the little camera with Chapstick for reference. Taken by the bigger, badass camera.
© 2003 permalance.com

So today was my first day back at the office after my little vacation jaunt back home. I had plenty of stuff to do, but I just couldn’t get back in the groove to get any of it done. I guess tomorrow will be my catch-up day.

I talked with a friend this weekend, and we kind of both had the same plan to quite working so much… to start keeping normal hours. I kind of blew that today. I mean, I didn’t really do anything, but I always get these little bursts of energy at the end of the day, so I finally started doing work around 7pm. Ugh. I e-mailed her to see if she made it out, and not response so hopefully she pulled of her exit strategy.

I keep meaning to give some highlights of my trip back home, but I never quite feel like jotting them down when I’m sitting near the computer. Here’s something… I had planned on jamming with the iPOD all the way home, but the rental car I end up with only had a CD player. I grabbed a few CDs before I left, but not nearly enough. So, while I was home, I made a couple of trips to some used CD stores and bought some stuff for the trip back. It’s fun to buy stuff you’d have no intention of paying full price for. Many of my selections were stuff I had on cassette way back in the day. Stuff like Pseudo Echo’s Love an Adventure – they covered “Funkytown” — it wasn’t nearly as cool as I remembered. The CD that is suprising me now is David Lee Roth’s Skyscraper. It’s actually holding up suprisingly well.

In an effort to waste even more money, I ordered a tiny, really, really cheap, digital camera today. It comes inside a Zippo lighter. It holds up to 300 pix. I figure if it takes even fair pix, it’ll be fun to carry around everywhere when I don’t feel like lugging around the big one. Plus, since it looks like a Zippo, I’ll be able to take it into shows. No flash, but maybe if i can get close enough, the stage lights will be enough. Of course this thing might be a total loss, like X-ray Spex… we”ll see.

PIX OF THE DAY: What was waiting for me back at the office.
© 2003 permalance.com

Okay, so I’m kinda having one of those moments where I feel particularly alone. I was on the phone with a friend talking, and drinking a bit. We had a fun conversation, but now I’m left with knowing that’s the last good conversation tonight. Everyone I could talk to is otherwise engaged right now. I need to know more people.

Yes, I’m still digging through the discs. I just found an old archive of e-mails. Here’s a choice selection:

—–Original Message—–
From: Me
Sent: Thursday, September 23, 1999 4:34 PM
To: A friend
Subject:

i’m bored… let’s kill everyone in the office using a hammer, and then go see a movie
————————-

Man I miss that job.