Category: Family

November 27, 2003 /

The band was okay–nice people, just the Motown they usually picked to play was not slow enough to slow dance and not fast enough to fast dance. They did get everybody out on the floor, though, for “Brown-Eyed Girl.” My mom’s song.

I saw Ben McBrayer, whom I’ve been meaning to write, and a million people whose names I didn’t know I remembered. I was terrified I’d read my Corinthians too fast, but a lot of people complimented me on that, and on how much I look like my dad. Instead of best man and maid of honor, they had Best Moms–my grandmother Virginia and my new grandmother Betty Jo. Father Pat started to prompt them, but they already knew the vows by heart.

Maria was kind enough to drive down from Louisville to get me last night, and I’ve spent Thanksgiving with her family today; Ian’s at Noah’s and Caitlan is at our family farm. This week was the only chance they’ll have for a break together before Christmas. I don’t know how they managed to pull this whole thing off in six weeks, but it was…

About halfway through the service, one of the light bulbs right above the front row chose November 26th as its day to expire. Nobody noticed: my mother and stepfather were glowing.

November 6, 2003 /

Context. Ken, DC, Ian and I went to see Revolutions last night. One of the previews was for Punisher, which features Thomas Jane kicking many, many butts in various styles and fashions.

Payoff. Ian, on watching the preview: “Brendan, look! They already made a movie about Sigurdur Petursson!”

November 3, 2003 /

Caitlan was here over the weekend, and I wasn’t a very good host, but it was good to hang out with her again. I’d like to say we went to the circus and fought ninjas, but actually we mostly did homework. We did have some bright spots, though, including Caitlan’s cooking of the first fried green tomatoes I’ve actually liked, and Caitlan’s assistance of Ian and me in our attempt to buy wedding clothes–a grueling journey that involved going to one store, then going to another store right next to it. Okay, it wasn’t actually grueling. It’s harder to find dress shirts with French cuffs than you’d think, though.

Caitlan is doing very well at Georgetown, on track to go to Oxford (Oxford!) for a couple of years, like I never got to do. In fact, she’s already been once, though only for a week. I instructed her over the weekend on the fact that, if she does go and gets the accompanying degree, she’s allowed to trump basically any argument against her by saying “Ah ah! Oxford.” It is also street legal to respond to any attempt at countering this trump with a back-handed slap.

October 27, 2003 /

Okay! Finally after like THREE WEEKS of having to keep it under my hat, It Can Be Said:

MY MOM AND JOE ARE GETTING MARRIED! YAAAY!

In like a month, too. I gotta get a new shirt.

October 17, 2003 /

I was going to write this into something else, but hell, it’s a vaguely embarrassing anecdote, let’s put it in the blog.

The summer after I graduated high school, my sister declared her intention to move into my slightly larger room while I was gone, in Brazil. I was pretty much hapless in this, since I was going to be moving out soon anyway, and so was made a part of the collective clean-and-pack-both-rooms initiative. There was a lot of stuff, because while I’m mildly materialistic, my sister is a voracious packrat.

While getting down to the bottom of her closet, as Caitlan and Mom temporarily went to get something downstairs, I came upon what appeared to be a Magic Eye puzzle. Magic Eyes are (were) stereograms hidden in computer-generated texture patterns; if you stare at them while unfocusing your eyes just right, a 3-d image pops into view.

This one was a mostly purple square, not part of a puzzle book or anything, just lying around. I didn’t feel like working very much, so I started trying to get the image.

I’m normally very good with Magic Eyes, but this one took forever. I’d think I’d caught something, then lose it, then I’d have to start over with the pull-back-from-your-nose strategy. Finally, I siezed something indistinct–a diagonal bar in the left third of the sheet, and some kind of amorphous shape…

“Brendan? What are you doing?” said Caitlan from the doorway.

“I’m trying to get this Magic Eye to come out,” I replied, a little annoyed. “This one’s really tough.”

She said “Brendan. That’s wrapping paper.“

October 16, 2003 /

I hardly ever remember my dreams, so when I do they always seem bizarre way out of proportion. Last night I dreamt at some point that I was a superhero who worked in an office, and that a quasi-friend of mine was trying to catch me in my secret identity by going through my computer while I was in the bathroom. Fortunately I could monitor his actions via my wrist-camera screen. At another point a bunch of people, including Ian, Arnold Schwarzenegger and my cousin Josh, were at a Lowe’s that doubled as a toy store, and which sold Play-Doh and other modeling compounds in enormous quantities. (It was part of a mall, but we never actually made it that far.)

And I woke up repeating to myself “the principle of recursion is founded on the fact that some Mexican food can be made without any food.” Which almost makes sense.

October 2, 2003 /

And I pulled another all-nighter (bringing our running total for this week up to–yes!–two) and I finished the whole thing this time, and it works, and it’s 18 pages of code and 10 pages of report in fourteen hours, and I am fuck yes proud of it.

Actually I’m mostly proud because last night, I learned Java. Like all of it. I’d never written anything besides a Hello World in the language before, and last night I sat down and implemented polymorphs and overrides and extensions like a fucking Sun cowboy. I’m thinking I probably won’t go to my last class of the day too often anymore, because it’s basically How To Do Java When You Only Know C++, and I think I just made that whole concept call me daddy.

It was a long night, but hell, I know a new language now. And although yes, I took a half-hour nap that turned into a one-hour nap and I was late for the class where I had to hand it in, I biked like a demon (on one hour of sleep) and got there without being too late at all. My professor didn’t seem to mind, at least. He’s bland, but he’s awfully nice.

Tonight I clean and nap and clean some more, preparing for my mother and sister to descend upon my apartment and find it wanting. Then tomorrow it’s Ian’s birthday. Happy birthday, Ian! I didn’t get you anything.

August 28, 2003 /

I didn’t write anything Wednesday, because Wednesday was Secret Project Day and I’m sorry but you’re just not cleared. Talk to Ian–I’m sure he’ll have something for you eventually.

Today was my second day of classes. This morning, I hadn’t quite done the reading for my first class (Artificial Intelligence). I hurriedly flipped through it on the bus, worrying that I’d be behind already in my first week.

Then I got to class, which turned out to be about… truth tables. The fourth time I’ve learned truth tables. I know, they’re important, first principles, et cetera, but four times in four different classes? They should just have a one-day truth table seminar for everyone who declares a major related to math or philosophy and have done with it. I demand an end to redundancy! I demand an end to redundancy!

During my last class (Object-Oriented Information Technology), it started raining really hard. Like, New England hard. I had to walk several blocks to and from the bus stop; by the time I got home I was actually soaked directly through my underpants. At one point, the wind was at my back, and that and the rain were so hard and horizontal that I appeared to be going backwards through hyperspace.

August 2, 2003 /

We spent all of yesterday moving the entire world from Richmond and my old apartment into the new apartment with Maria. My forearms are killing me, and our living room is choked with stuff, but my room actually looks fairly good and my bookshelf is full.

I literally did move everything I own this time; I no longer have any possessions in Richmond, and only a few boxes in storage. There was a big ordeal with getting a moving truck (notice: when U-Haul says “your reservation is confirmed,” what they actually mean is “eat a fuck, shitbrains”), but Ian’s roommate’s family had one that was bigger than what they needed and they were kind enough to help.

So it all worked out eventually, but the process took so long that it was 2030 hrs by the time Mom could head back home. Needless to say, it was also a little late for me to go home and pick up the half-day of work I’d wanted. That’s why I’m in the office alone on a Saturday, putting together my presentation for the CEO ‘n’ company on Monday morning. The fact that I’m in the office is in turn the only reason I can post this, since we have no interweb at home for the moment.

Why isn’t there some source of free crappy broadcast interweb, like there is with TV? Ad-supported. Big networks. Come on, it would be so convenient for people who just moved in.

Also, why not make cell phone rings work like my cell phone’s alarm? It starts off by vibrating, then gradually makes its beeping louder and louder until you wake up. It obviously isn’t hard to do, and that would give you a little notice so you could go for the phone before it just jumped in at the same annoying volume immediately. I hate cell phones. I love my cell phone.

Probably no more activity until Monday at the soonest (although of course I make all my posts from work now anyway).