no, it's not inga the 5'10" Swede (i just decided she's 5'10"), it's the guy that posts here as john. he moved from his old place in Clear Lake about 45 minutes south of Houston to just down the street from me. we can bet beers after work much more easily now. welcome to the neighborhood, john. your liver just took a turn for the worse.

addendum: not only can we bet beers, we can also get beers. spellcheck be damned.

I moved to a new apartment down the street from the old one this weekend and I’m still waiting on internet service. I get the shakes every now and then from the lack of connectivity. I’m the first person to live in this apartment and there’s no cable jack, and the cable people are not sure they can even provide cable service to the unit, so I might have to go the DSL route, which I don’t want to do because that means I have to get a phone line. So for now, I’m writing to you from my old apartment where my roommate still lives.

My reasons for moving are three-fold: 1) Crazy lady upstairs. Enough said. 2) Living directly on a busy street makes for constant traffic noise in the apartment. 3) I need to live alone if I’m going to study for and pass the Bar next year, so I had to move out now. The apartment is actually a garage apartment that was completely gutted and redone from the inside out. It’s basically a studio – just a big room. It’s cozy and simple. And it’s quiet because it’s behind a house and the driveway has a gate with a big steel covering on it to keep out even the slightest road noise from people driving down the street.

School starts Monday and I’m getting really excited.

I hope you didn’t believe that. This last year is going to be a drag. Everyone tells me, “But dude, isn’t the last year a joke?” Yes, it’s a joke if you make it a joke and take joke classes. But if you’re me, and you want to make sure you pass the Bar, you don’t take joke classes. You take Bar classes. Classes like Marital Property, Pretrial Procedure, Criminal Procedure, and Secured Transactions. Some of these are this semester, some will come next semester, but they all have one thing in common: they’re going to be a pain in the ass. They might be interesting, but definitely not for four months, and definitely not during my last year.

Now that I’ve gotten that out of my system, it really is good to be back. I’m happy to see my friends again and have many a happy hour on Friday afternoon. But there’s one thing I can’t get used to, even after 26 years. This damn Houston humidity. Can we ever get a break? It’s raining even when it’s not raining.

No, I didn't go. But the one known as Carrico who from time to time posts comments was in attendance and sent me a most effusive email chronicling his experience:

Dude,

I saw Muse last week at a small venue in Denver. My reaction: "Holy fucking shit".

They rocked, and hard. There was a heavy dose of synthesizer to cover elements of songs they couldn't produce on stage with just 3 people, and there was a healthy dose of cheesey glam rock showmanship, but it all actually added to the overall impression. Case in point; the lead singer had a big fan set up in front of his mic that blew his hair back while he leaned forward playing guitar in dramatic fashion. But bearing in mind that their new album has a bunch of songs that sound like cowboy space rock, it seemed only natural.

Overall, they totally destroyed the place and ripped through every song. The lead singer would sling his guitar around on his back to play the piano parts, then sling it back around to play a riff, then back to the piano, etc. it was awesome. also, i don't think the albums do him justice as a guitar player.

My only gripe was that most of the crowd seemed like a bunch of emo-rockers that were too worried about whether or not they wore the perfect thrift store t-shirt that was two sizes too small to fully rock out to the extent appropriate. The crowd barely moved during Plug In Baby, which is practically a crime. However, John and I made our way to the front though and were going nuts the whole time, as everyone should have been. Rant over.

The set included (as i remember it):
Take a Bow
Hysteria
New Born
Exo-politics
Assasin
City of Delusion
Map of the problematique
Bliss
Plug In Baby
Stockholm Syndrome
Time is running out
Supermassive Black Hole

The finale was appropriately Knights of Cydonia, which succeeded in sending the crowd into a frenzy.

Verdict: Go see them.

I still don’t have internet at my new apartment. Time Warner is being obnoxious and I’m almost at my wits end calling them every week. Whatever. I’m managing. I actually kind of like not having internet so far. I’m more productive at home and it forces me to get out of the house and find a place to chill to get wireless. It also saves money, but of course that money gets earmarked for beer, so it’s a wash.

Unfortunately, it also means I’m behind in the news and I have no idea what’s going on in the world right now. I think Israel and Hezbollah finally have a cease fire and the UN has shoehorned itself into the middle, and I think England is making progress on finding the wankers who tried to bomb all those planes, and I’m pretty sure Dubya is still president, but I can’t guarantee any of this.

Classes this semester are shaping up to as exciting as ever. I look forward to each and every day. Not so much.

I did get a part-time job working for the 1st Court of Appeals, but if you ask me about anything work-related, I’m required to artfully dodge the question and comment on the weather, or the news, or what have you. Since I don’t know squat about the news, and the weather sucks anyway, I’ll probably just give you a blank stare. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

I was chatting it up with my neighbor the other day and I mentioned that Time Warner was giving me grief about cable modem service. So he offered me the password for his wireless network. Talk about awesome. I offered to put in some cash every month but he wouldn’t hear of it. What this all means is that this post is coming to you live, from my couch, at 8:15 CST.

The other cool thing about my neighbor: he’s a CPA. How is it that I always end up living around accountant-types?

In a first-time event for this blog, the author was prevented from seeing a show because it sold out. I had big plans to see Bloc Party, a great band from the UK, but my big plans to buy a ticket at the door the night of the show didn’t pan out too well. I’ve seen bands at this same venue on weekday nights and bought tickets at the door with no problem. I mean, come on, it’s a Wednesday night. Who sees concerts on a Wednesday? Lots of people, apparently. So many that they couldn’t fit me and my two friends. How lame.

So what did we do instead? Why, drink, of course.

On today’s agenda: clean old apartment, go to dentist for routine cleaning, sulk about Bloc Party. They better come back.

I was buying groceries yesterday and the check-out guy feels the inclination to tell me a story. I oblige. He says:

"I know I can be a little flaming sometimes, but this Hispanic couple is checking out earlier today and the husband called me a derogatory name in Spanish to his wife. Little did he know I’m fluent, so I kept on checking his items and then gave him the total in Spanish, and he turned completely red. On the way out his wife smacked him across the head and chewed him out."

i hate parking tickets. that is all. you may continue about your business.

Thou shalt see Talladega Nights.

I currently own four and a half bikes (you will recall the Schwinn my old roomie and I bought last year). I think four and a half bikes is entirely too much. And I think my credit card bill from the summer in Dallas is starting to scare me. It’s time to clear some of these bikes out. If you want any of these or know anyone who might be interested, post your email address in the comments and let me know which bike you want info for. The goods are as follows:

Schwinn Sting-Ray, coppertone, 2003-ish
Bridgestone RB-2, 61 cm, blue, 1994
Gary Fisher Paragon 29er, large, yellow, 2006

I am also happy to offer for sale my legal services which come with no guarantee of quality or legality. I am good at proofreading though.

It sucks when you thought one of your electives was only a two-hour class and then you find out it’s three hours. And then you feel really stupid because if it were only two hours, you’d be short one hour and you wouldn’t graduate on time. So even though the schedule you made for yourself weeks ago is what you need, owning up to it and going to class still sucks.

What is cool, however, is the teacher that says, “Here’s my home phone number in case you need it, but keep in mind I’m a single guy and my idea of dinner means going out, so don’t call before 8. And if I don’t call back by 10, that means I got lucky.”

N.B.: i forgot to add that this professor is circa 60 years old... thought you'd like to know.

I finished Fathers and Sons by Ivan Turgenev a couple days ago. It had been sitting on my shelf for months and I completely forgot about it. It’s a smallish book of about 230 pages so I figured it would be a good read before school started.

It follows two newly minted college graduates in Russia as they travel to spend time with their respective parents in the country after finishing school. One is a nihilist, or a person that believes in nothing, and the other is his protégé.

The story is simple. The graduates wander the countryside, meet girls, go to dances, discuss the nonsensical philosophies of nihilism, and bitch about their parents. The sadness of death and happiness of marriage impress upon them new emotions.

But it’s not the story that makes the book worth reading. It’s the writing. It’s very descriptive and – for lack of a better word – lush. You really feel like you’re out there in the Russian countryside. If you’ve got a few hours on a Saturday and Sunday, pick this book up. It set me back all of ninety-eight cents from Half Price Books. I’m sure you can find one at your local bookstore.

Or, you can read the whole thing here.

Pluto is no longer a planet. Sucks to be Pluto.

props to nerdygirl.

I leave town for Houston on Saturday and this has been and continues to be a crazy week, but the commentary will have to wait. Rest assured I’ve been drinking every night this week... I need to eventually get my thoughts together. Perhaps after I detox. And then retox.