I'm a big boy and have been left home alone before. So Shelby and I sit here in this apartment staring at each other. Shawana has been gone for awhile. She is enjoying the holiday time at home in MS. Lounging around on her mom's couch and doing nothing is her plan. She'll see all her family and friends while Shelby and I tend to eating everything in the house.
Lately, Shawana has been leaving for work earlier than my 7:50am. So by the time I convince my body to physically wake up and get showered, she is on her way out the door. It's routine for us to talk, or remind each other about random stuff before she leaves and while I'm singing horribly in the shower. This morning is when it got funny.
Shelby, our beloved house cat and valued entertainment, has grown quite interested in the tub. He still hates water, but for some reason he is drawn to shower. After a shower he will jump into the tub and drink the water around the drain. Now Shawana and I are not bad cat owners. We keep his water dish fresh with PUR water from the refridgerator, but that doesn't stop him from seeking other sources to drink from. Like the toilet. I can only say poor Shelby might be retarded.
Anyway, I can't recall what we were talking about because I got startled in the shower. I was talking to Shawana through the shower curtain when I felt something pass by my leg. Ah shit it's Shelby. There was our cat standing next to me in the shower. Suddenlingly realizing he was getting wet he took off out of the shower. Normally Shelby would sit on the ledge of the tub and peer into the shower to see whats going on. I guess his curiosity finally won over and he jumped in to check out the scenery inside the curtain. And once proved not to be enough. After he jumped out he ran into the bedroom and came charging back to the shower, apparently to sit on the ledge again. But he obviously overestimated his wet paw traction, because when he jumped he couldn't stop. And there was Shelby once again inside the shower with a dumbfounded look on his face. What a silly cat. By this point Shawana and I are doubled over in laughter. Shelby just isn't cute when he is soaking wet.
"Women," a drama I do not yet truly understand. I was reminded by my girlfriend that I can only get better at doing this weblog by being truthful with everything that happens in my life. Sunday wasn't gloomy because of the weather. It was a dreary day due to what we now call unwarranted madness. Its very easy to label it as that after the fact.
I won't get into the issue, but Saturday night is when it all started. After Shawana and I got home from dinner with her local friends Sherita & Onekki, the lack of communication commensed. A volley of misdirected tension quickly followed by hurls of anger struck down our relationship. Making it resemble a deserted town after a bomb dropped and killed all of its inhabitants. Now we aren't perfect and like many couples starting out, we've had skirmishes in the past, but come Sunday morning I felt our lives together had truly come to an end. I went through a dictionary worth of emotions, from hurt to anger. From worry to hatred, but never did the proper thing of finding the real problem. I looked for guidance in this matter from my friends, my family and I received alot of support. But that didn't solve the situation, because we didn't talk.
I may apologize, but I've learned that proper communication between two people is not tossing emotional outburts towards one another. Its more like leaning on each other's trust and really finding it. So another day, and I'm still a student of life.
Sunday morning the world heard the news that Saddam Hussein was captured. They found him in a "spider hole" living like a rat. I had mixed feelings like always when I heard the news. Like many things in the news, the masses are kept content by a constant feed of what they want to hear. The truth isn't always mixed in with the constant blabber spread on our great news channels. For many years we have been told that Saddam is a bad man and he has to be stopped. I don't disagree that he was an individual with more thoughts for bad things to happen than a hollywood stunt coordinator for John Woo film. But we are told by the media that this one man is the key, the devil in the midst of a good world. We get so interested in the one man theory because it has been used since history began.
9/11/01, brought Bin Laden into US focus. Weapons of Mass Destruction or Iraq draws our mind to Saddam. We can't forget these people because their names are engraved in our minds and the focus of those unfortuanate to not be home for the holiday season this year. Will the "forces of good" find Bin Laden, will Saddam give up the location of those weapons of mass destructions? I don't know. No politic talk to be written here, but lets not forget the people affected by the world's drama!
My weekends are normally quiet and relaxing. Last weekend, on the other hand, was completely different. Friday's fun started with an ex-Hydrogen Media employee party hosted by Kris. The gathering took place at his new abode in Tampa, which he shares with younger brother Casey. Who of late doesn't really live there because all his time is spent working in Milwaukee. The event also was for Eric Shinn and his wife Kyoko, as they kicked off their one month vacation in the US, leaving little old japan for awhile for a view of the sights in Clearwater, St. Pete, Ocala, Oralando and New York City. Its a rare thing that such a large group of friends can develop by those working together when a dot-com company goes bust, like in the case of Hydrogen Media. The fun didn't stop until all the cheese and sake were gone, about 2 in the morning. After a rather late night, I was gracious for Saturday to be a relaxing day. I went to the movies with Shawana and a couple of her friends to see Love Don't Cost a Thing. It was a modernized, urbanized remake of that 80's movie. My opinion on remakes varies, but for this film I'll give it an okay. The makers of the film fell short on making me love it and then again I'm no critic, so seek your own opinion.
As for sunday, it sure started out dark, rainy, and gloomy (for a reason), but I drove a little ways down the road from the apartment and took some quality shots on the old gandy bridge. I've found that grey days make for really good lighting, as long as you can keep the camera dry. I got the shots developed but I got lazy watching the Bucs beat the Houston Texans that I didn't get them scanned in. The day ended really good with yet another quality movie. If you haven't seen The Last Samurai with Tom Cruise I strongly suggest you do. I won't tell the details, but the movie has great fight scenes and a good story of Honor. Quality.
The more activities you pack into a weekend the more dreadful monday morning feels. Add a slight case of oversleeping and another dose of passing out in the shower while standing, and thats when things get worse. I don't even feel like typing anymore, I'll get some coffee and try again.
Its good that Friday is here. A week long journey that ends in the accumulation of the week's joys and a grande ending to the week's woes. My friday almost got started the wrong way by having a Jerry Springer themed dream. I fell asleep last night with images of not so lovely people that were sharing their stories of messed up lives on Jerry last night. I will say I finally matured enough to not enjoy total fools and this moment of clarity didn't just happen. Anyways, I was at work and the our boss was telling everybody that the business is closed for good, and thats when a big brawl started and people I've never seen before were swinging at each other. Bam, I wake up startled. What does it mean, I don't know, but Happy Friday to all!
December is rolling along fast which brings upon Christmas. Okay we'll skip Christmas and think about New Year's. 2003 is over and we begin fresh thoughts, hopes and dreams for 2004. My biggest hope is to make it home safely from MS after the holidays. Just kidding, I have my standard list of the yearly 'declarations to perfection' to be completed. I did really well this year and have nothing but good signs to making 2004 even better.
I read about Cerritos, California. According to CNN they are in the works at making their whole city a wifi hotspot. Maybe Dunedin will follow suit, so GMRI can get me an Apple Powerbook and I'll be working from the coffee shop in the downtown area.
In 2001 I shared a house in North Clearwater with my good friends James, Mandie and Kris. And Roscoe, James' crazy minature schnauzer came later. It was on Poinsettia, which is right off of Union Street. This is significant because Union Street marks the border between Clearwater and Dunedin, which is near where I work now in Dunedin. Having an hour long lunch break gives me time to relax and have lunch, or grab a quick bite and run errands. The other day I drove past our old residence to see how the neighborhood was. Now the house we rented in Clearwater was a sweet 3 bedroom/2 bath deal with vaulted ceilings, 2 car garage, and a good size kitchen area. The neighborhood however, was a little less classy but most definitely unique and strange.
Some of the neighborhood characters:
Mr. Mackey was this old guy who live with his adult son who has a drinking problem. Kris saw his son taken to the hospital by an ambulance one day due to drinking too much. Mackey live directly across the street from us and most likely was a retired member of society, because he seemed to spend alot of his days sitting on a chair in his front yard staring at our house.
Mr. Lopez was a cool guy. He was our neighbor to the right from Cuba or Puerto Rico, I can't really remember, let's just say he and his wife are Hispanic. The house that he owned was exactly like ours, but its hard to say if they really liked inside the house, because they spent all of their time in their garage. They used their garage like a regular family room, watching TV and listening to music there while entertaining guests. I can safely say we saw them everyday, except when it got cold because they would close the garage door down.
Baby's Momma, not her real name, was this attractive 18 or 19year old white girl that lived across the street in her mom's house with her black boyfriend and their new child. She was part of the daily entertainment for Kris and I while we were unemployed. We would sit in our living room and watch the neighborhood when we weren't playing Unreal Tournament and not looking for jobs. It was kinda disturbing to watch this girl out in her frontyard in a bikini washing her baby's crib out with a hose. I finally got work, but thanks to Bobby the Baby's Momma drama got dropped into Kris' lap.
Bobby, damn crackhead Bobby. He is the sole reason why we don't miss that neighborhood. He was the local high school dropout who thought he was cool, and wanted to hang out at our house all the time. He talked alot of shit about everything. He tried to hook Kris up with baby's momma, but Kris didn't fall for that crap. I remember when he got stopped dead in his shit talking tracks by my man Dave Ferguson. We were having a house party for Eric Shinn and his new bride at the time Kyoko, because they were leaving for Japan soon. So here comes Bobby trying to impress in the midst of this sophisticated crowd of ex-Hydrogen Media employees. A bunch of us are outside and we are talking holograms with Dave because he knows alot about them from working with his uncle. Bobby goes off at the mouth swearing he knows how to make holograms, but quickly gets booed off stage as Dave begins with grilling him for info on hologram production. Bobby starts stuttering and finally fades away. That is one story out of many. On nights we wanted to be left alone, we would have to go into "bobby mode". We would all chill on the couch in the kitchen with the lights off and ignore the knocking on the door. That's enough of Clearwater for me.
I say the word cubicle and quickly your mind will flash back to your own workspace unless you are one of the lucky and have your own office (with a closing door because without one its still a cube). Many like me know the cubicle world as the acceptable environment of the modern office looking to save money by any means possible, and our office is no exception to that rule. And then there is our intern, she must not be familiar with this setting because when she is here, I learn more about her life than I requested. Her name is Amanda and she is from, how she describes it, backwoods Illinois. Her boyfriend Ben owns a restaurant, her father is coming down for Christmas.... and so on.
Her daily practices include alot of telephone time, which isn't a bad thing because even I use my telephone during the business day. She is a very nice individual with one of those "bubbly" personalities, but this quickly becomes an annoying trait after hearing her on the phone for an hour. Unfortunately, I'm not a spy and she is not selling company secrets because I only sit a cube and a half away from her, which is close enough to tape record her conversations. It isn't really the fact that she talks on the phone, I just get tired of her telling the same stuff 3 or 4 times a day. But as in intern she only works part time and is only here 3 times a week, Thank God. I'm sure she doesn't have a weblog, well at least not one as cool as mine, so I think I'll do her a huge favor and air her business for everybody on the web to read. I mean, she doesn't mind sharing it with everybody in the office.
SUV manufacturers must have lots of strange dreams and drinks to make today's ugly SUVs. My cousin Dev just traded in her Mitsubishi Lancer OZ rally Edition for a Nissan Xterra.
I say good for her, because Dev is becoming a caterer and she is going to need more space and pep than a Lancer has and I don't think Xterras are half bad. Shawana believes this Nissan to be the 2nd most ugliest SUV currently made. She doesn't hate all Nissans because she loves the Infiniti G35 coupe, which I got her a 1/43 scale model of the car for Christmas.
Anyway, we do agree that the award fro ugliest SUV creation driven in the US has to go to the Pointiac Aztec. You're not going to find a picture of this hideous vehicle on my site because it ain't there, because storing ugly pictures ain't my business. These vehicles are odd shaped and just plain ridiculous. What I simply find disturbing is the fact that I see Aztecs on my daily commute to and from work. I just hope that Aztecs come really cheap because that is the only way I can imagine so many people buying them. It can't be the look. The only color for an Aztek I can appreciate is Not Mine!
I really do love working in small offices. I know there is a better chance to rake in more dough working for a huge corporation, but there I would just be employee #1268 waiting for my annual raise or something. A small company possesses a unique environment, which leads to interesting stories. Hence my segway into this one.
When I worked for The Navigator Group in Ocala, I worked with a bunch of my friends. We worked long hours and really hard hoping things would last. Of course they didn't, but we had many hours of playing Rainbow Six and Midtown Madness against each other. Now I work for Global Marketing Reaseach which I decree will be referred as GMRI in the future because I'm lazy at typing out long names. Its fast approaching Christmas at GMRI and the office has decided to pool their resources to get our president, Greg Pearson, a present. Greg is a very cool boss, down to earth and easy to deal with, but as described by one of my GMRI co-workers he is a little vain. The office present consists of getting a photographer to come in and take some potrait shots of Greg and then come back with a good size framed potrait for him to hang wherever. I thought this to be a strange gift. When I think of presents to the head of the company, I think things like gift certificates, day at a spa, a new tie. I guess these would be considered normal, uninspired things to give somebody. But unconventional thinking is what will make working here interesting. I'm thinking potraits for everybody on my shopping list.
Also planned for this week is an interesting "team spirit" type of activity. Everyone has been requested to bring in a picture of themselves 5 years old or younger. Immediately I think of the portrait of me at 4, as the story goes my afro was so big my Mom had to pat it down to get all of it into the picture, a true classic. Funny how I have to shave my head bald now because I'm losing my hair, and while I was young I had so much hair it was hard to keep my neck up. Alright back to the story. I believe the pictures are for a game where we guess who is who from their pictures. Unfortunately I believe this game won't be a stumper when it comes to me. I'm currently the only black man working here, so a little baby boy with a Huge Afro is going to be pretty easy to pick out. Damn!
That would be the headline for the St. Petersburg Times when Shelby schedules his appointment with fate and dies of curiousity. At almost 4 months old, it would better to describe him as a terrible toddler. Everyday he takes time to show Shawana and I the new stuff he learns while hanging around the house all day. Lately he likes to highlight his leaping ability, mainly used to focus all eyes on him. This isn't a unique activity that only Shelby can do, he is just getting better at it. For instance, everytime I want to brush my teeth in the bathroom, there goes Shelby jumping in the sink. Going to wash the dishes, Shelby again jumps and greets you on the counter. So you want to sit on the couch in the living room, watch out because Shelby is already on the back of the couch ready to pounce on you. I'm a bit afraid to walk around the apartment at night time, damn that cat sometimes. He's cute but deadly. If anybody knows where to get a tranquilizer gun my number is 352......
I can only do so much work before bothered by one of our big horseflies. I'm not squeemish about the flies or anything, I just don't believe my daily work load should consist of sword fights and wrestling matches with monster flies. To clarify, my office isn't a den of filth and nastiness. I started working for Global Marketing Research, Inc., in Dunedin 3 weeks ago, and on my first day here the stench of something dead in the wall was everywhere. The smell has left, but the flies must have found the source and setup base camp around it, and in the morning is when they seem to be the most active. Yesterday I killed two with one of my empty file holders.
I'm really glad I have a job where I am not required to be on the phone with customers during the day, because they would hear some buzzing of the fly and a whole lot of cursing the flies from me.
Driving with a bad exhaust can bring happy person down to madness very quickly, but things get better. Sunday ended on feel good moments:
The Bucs beat the Saints, Onekki's computer got fixed (I like to think I helped a little w/ that), and Shawana and I went to the movies and saw Honey starring Jessica Alba.
Honey was a good movie with some music and dancing. Alright I lie, there was a lot of club jumping music w/ many bootie shaking extras to back up Jessica Alba's bootie shaking self. I won't say anymore about that film except that everyone should see it. It was good!
Somewhere between Ocala and Tampa on I-75 I heard it. Traffic had come to a stop to gawk at a van and trailer flipped on its side in the median, which wasn't that cool to look at. It's been cool lately, so I had my windows closed and the heat on in the Rav4 plus I'm listening to the radio at highway levels; that means loud. So when the movement stopped, I ended up on the bridge over Hwy 52 and rolled my driver's side window down to check the temp outside, and then I heard it. My Rav4 sounded like a modified muscle car, loud and proud.
The last time I heard my car sound like that, my exhaust pipe was also dragging on the road. I gotta a lot of attention by other motorists looking at me and pointing down as they passed by. I cut a nice groove from the Howard Franklin Bridge to Shawana's apartment complex. I remember a few kids just staring at me like I was a clown parade while I creeped by with sparks flying. All that sent Shawana into a laughing bit as I got the Rav4 towed to a shop.
Thank God that this wasn't the same type of episode. I went to K-mart to pick up some DVD racks and took the time to inspect the damage. The mounting bracket inches from where the muffler man had welded my exhaust pipe previously was broken, taken along 2 pieces of the pipe with it. Instantly transforming my Rav4 into a junker. Ok, so its not that bad, but I wish my windows were illegally tinted right now while I'm driving around loud. So there goes my lunch break today, I've gotta find some shop that can bring my life out of temporary embarassment. If you hear me coming, just look the other way please.
I was born in Brooklyn, but most of my mind-shaping years were spent in Ocala, FL. Great place, if you are over 65 and don't meet up to 'the villages' standard.
So I'm up in Ocala to visit my mother and sister and maybe do some work around my mom's house to help out. It fricking cold here. I could check the weather channel for the actual temp, but I don't need to because my body is telling me it's fricking cold. Ocala is only a 2 hour trip north of St. Petersburg, depending on the cops. I used to make this trip every weekend when I started dating Shawana and still the part I hate the most is driving through Tampa. The people in Tampa like to drive bad all the time, I've been to New York and that is bad because you expect it, but I'm talking about the interstate through tampa which just plain sucks. I could go on about that, but I'll stop peacefully. Tampa Sucks!
I get to Ocala saturday night, call up my buddy Ross and make plans to go eat. Bennigan's of course, because you can eat & drink there, plus its the only restaurant chain establishment on the SE side of Ocala. I correct that, the only "quality" restaurant chain establishment on this side of town, because they serve Guinness.
I tend to drive the same way to work all the time. Up the bayside bridge, continue on mcmullen booth through clearwater, and so on. I've seen this guy 2 days in a row now and his bumper sticker cracks me up, it goes:
Want to know what terror is?
Piss off an AMERICAN
I don't know about you, but when it comes to the morning commute I always expect it to be the same. This morning turned out different, not bad, just different. I washed the Rav4 last night, polished the tires, cleaned the wheels and all that nonsense. Needless to say, it's looking good, and I take a brief moment to stare at it. The moment goes because the smell of Shelby's latest litterbox creations in the bag for disposal snaps me back to reality.
I listen to my music abit louder in the a.m. and on cool mornings like today I've got the windows rolled down. But this is where the good thing gets weird. Traffic is moving smooth, sure a firetruck disrupted the flow but as quick as he came through he was gone. I get on the bayside bridge heading north for clearwater following this guy and his VW jetta, he apparently believes that mario andretti had a bastard son and he's it. I watch him fly away and I continue my drive to work; truly exciting. My office is part of a strip mall in dunedin, actually its 3/4 of the strip mall, the other half is Piglet's Bar and Grill(bar-b-que every wednesday & karaoke every thursday, tell them omar sent ya!)
I sit at my cube, start my computer up and notice the clock on my phone. I'm 15 minutes early. This is a rare occasion and quickly I realize I don't like it at all. I like my job because its laid-back and the work is cool, but I don't like the idea of being a company man, giving an extra 15 minutes here and there. So thank god for the internet, time easily wasted. I think tomorrow I'm stopping at McDonald's or something.
All hail the Shinnin. My good friend Eric Shinn is flying his little happy ass back across the pacific (and most of the U.S.) for a visit back to Florida. For the uninformed, Eric and his wife Kyoko got married awhile back and have lived in Japan since. He's known to be a little crazy but a great guy. Kris and I are still very thankful to them for getting us to ja-Pan for 10 days.
Japan was super cool, and I've learned that travelling and exploring a foreign land w/ someone from that foreign land is damn nice. Because what is supposed to be a joyful experience can quickly be marred by a tour guide.
Ahhhh! Look at that cute cat! Everybody meet Shelby, Shelby meet everybody. This cat is a character, I would have more pictures, but catching him still can be complicated. He runs around the apartment as if God gave him some of his own adrenaline. Trust me when I say it, thats not good.
This task can seem very daunting. You can't begin to imagine what it takes to write, I mean to take time out of your busy day of doing 'nothing' and seriously write. I thought I would make a mental note of my thoughts today at work. But somewhere between retouching photos of some 2,000 women(I exaggerate, only slightly) I had some great thoughts leave me. I stared at the monitor awhile and have come to grips that like people you meet in life, look away and your words are gone.
So enough of that, new thought is photography. Since moving back to the Beautiful St. Pete area, I haven't seriously taken any shots that I want to share of my surroundings. I took some people shots in Alabama, ahem to the previously mentioned Wal-Mart experience, but that was just merely an excercise in "Hey, there's omar. Where's your camera?" I'm not even a professional photographer, so as an amateur, I have suffered a photoblock. The Rocking New Year's eve party/art trade is still going on, I think it's still up for grabs on location, but I haven't had the time to put thought in my presentation pieces for the event.
I have dropped the ball for the last 2 years and I'm upset that I've let it happen. This year I've got more brain-thought into it, but the focus is slipping. I'll be spending the New Year's holiday w/ Shawana's family and friends in the great magnolia state "Mississippi".
My past feelings about this state had it and its inhabitants classified around the level of Georgia in my mind. I don't hate Georgia, I don't hate Mississippi (and for having such a long name, we will now refer to the Magnolia state as MS). I really don't know enough about MS to hate it. I've never been there and it was only till recently that I've had any interaction w/ someone who claims MS as their birthplace. Of course I've known MS from movies (MS Burning, Burning in MS, A Time to Kill) and a great tv show that my sister, Sharifa, and I watched religously everyday, In the Heat of the Night. Man, I thought Bubba was the shit on that shows. So there is the base of my MS knowledge. It has been enough so far to keep me out of the state. I always had the thought in the back of my head that the klan and the local sheriffs would be sitting at the border handling the "census" of the black folk population in their state, especially the foreign ones who hail from the North and are doing 5mph over the speed limit. I'll admit to those thoughts now as being totally senseless. But that is because my ignorance has been corrected from meeting some of MS's finest people.
So back to New Year's. Shawana has 2 weeks off for Christmas (damn!), so she'll be spending some time w/ her family in Kosciusko (took me many tries to spell that before asking Shawana how to), about an hour or so outta Jackson, MS. I'll be joining her on New Year's Eve for a couple of days in the country. I'm very excited to check it out, even though I've been told many, I mean many many times that there is nothing to see or do out there. But I'll be there w/ camera in hand to share the experience.
It's damn hard to go back to work. I only had 2 days off this year around thanksgiving, but it feels like a week since I've sat at my cube. I skimped on the sugar in my coffee (the betes) and the coffee still doesn't seem to wake me up at all. I'd rather be sleeping and snoring, but of course that couldn't happen, cause shelby would be all in my face asking for "love" in the form of 20 claw marks to the arm.
The integration of this blogging page to the site is going very slow. Every time I get half-way motivated to make it happen, I touch the keyboard and magically my love to code HTML is vanished. So I've decided to put a new year's starting point for the new site. I still don't want to make the switch to the "digital future", but I was definitely tempted though the other day...
Shawana had scheduled Shelby's ball whacking for Friday, the day after Thanksgiving. This was no big deal to me because getting a cat spaded or nutored I've been through, and cause we were both going to be in-town and not working we could be there to see how Shelby would be post-op. While we were out, we went to Wal-Mart to drop off my recent rolls of film to be developed. This was the start of the disastrous day, as the city of Wal-Mart in North St. Petersburg was at full capacity. After strong arming the front of the 4runner into a parking space before the vultures(shoppers) grabbed the space we noticed big boxes in alot of carts. I correct that, almost everyone had a big box of either the 20" or 27" Symphonic TVs. We found out later that these were a "great deal" but I know shit when I see it. Thank God, we didn't need a tv, because I believe the mindset of those shoppers was, we could use a tv; who makes symphonic; oh damn, thats too cheap to pass up. So back to the photo center we went. That was a journey cause getting past the people w/ the forementioned tvs took some time, and everybody else who had gotten to walmart at 6am to take part of the big sale. I don't really think there was a big sale going on, the prices looked the same, but go figure. Anyhow, the photo center assured me that an hour would be long enough for them to finish my 2 insignificant (spelling? i'm not perfect) rolls. After an hour of battling temptation to become a power shopper we go back to the photo center, the obviously flustered photo-technicians were like 15 more minutes. That's cool, I could understand with a million people there and that's not including the crazy long line at the layaway department w/ their symphonic tvs.
But they messed up my prints anyway, something to do with their film scanner or something, but everyone of the pictures came out like a confetti filter was applied to the surfaces w/ color marks on all of them. I was pissed, but they convinced me it was cool, as long as I brought them back to them, the development and pictures would be free. I feel better, but still disappointed. Damn you Wal-Mart, damn you.