....so this weekend I went to Massachusetts to the giant museum known as Mass MOCA.... mmm..... good...... no, i was not greeted with a massive mocha upon entry. were you?

i've worked my ass off over the last two days. i haven't done so in a really long time. all of my muscles are sore from head to toe. i rented a uhaul on saturday morning and packed up all my shit and moved from my super dooper nice apartment in DC to a rundown suburban punk rock flophouse in maryland. it was quite a lonely liberating and tiresome experience.

i had to get the uhaul at noon on saturday. small uhauls are $20 for 24 hours + 69c per mile. they scared me into buying insurance also, but it still only turned out to be like $50. i woulda used my van but it doesn't have insurance and it's all fucked up. anyway, i moved into the punk house.

ironically, most everyone who lived here moved out the same weekend. they're still around, but they aren't paying rent any more. i have yet to talk to the landlord. this house should not exist the way it does. it really doesn't make much sense. it's a total piece of shit, but that's what's awesome about it. it's month to month with no lease. each person pays $300 regardless of how many people are living here (which really doesn't make much sense at all). right now there are only two people paying rent. we're worried about that. this other guy may move in next week though, and i'm really really really hoping that colin will move up at the end of the month. the house has 5 bedrooms, a large living room, dining room, and kitchen, a huge basement big enough for setting up shows (there's a 4 band show this friday), a humungous backyard, a laundry room suitable for a darkroom, a computer/studio space, a 2 car driveway, and enough parking space for a couple of cars. behind the house is a bike trail that goes all over maryland, three baseball fields, a public pool, a soccer field, basketball and tennis courts, a cricket field??, and the university (which i'll hopefully have an internet radio show at in the fall). down the block the other way is a 24 hour grocery, a dunkin donuts, and a bunch of strip mall crap. it's kinda like the houses were on vacarro in that you can do whatever you want in it, but it also has the possiblity of being a palace. it's weird too cos it's also kinda like living in metairie. ha ha ha.

so i've spent the last 24 hours attempting to clear out some of the crap and clean it up at least to a somewhat livable state. i won't be here in two weeks, but i wouldn't want to leave angele living in filth, so i figured i'd clean as much of it as i can. plus, it's not like anyone else is going to do it. so in the last 24 hours i've cleaned and set up the computer room, cleaned the whole basement and built a bar (which is fucking awesome), gone out in search of more darkroom supplies to no avail, cleaned the nastiest kitchen in the world, and moved into the basement. it's come a long way, and i'm in pain.

next steps are to make the basement and bar into a funhouse, rig up stereo surround and mp3 jukeboxes, set up a webcam, possibly a small movie theater, and maybe eventually buy either a trampoline or even better turn the backyard into a miniature golf course.

i also ordered every free catalog i could possibly think of to this address. everything from the 1300 page office depot catalog to a victoria's secret catalog to be sent to benjamin peepers.

come visit me in september and stay for a month... or indefinitely for that matter.

I was feeling particularly drained today, so I almost didn't go. My friend William insisted I accompany him though to a local "Baton Rouge Linux User's Group" meeting though, but only after an extended trip to the Bayou first. So I dropped by his house, we headed to the Bayou, I downed a crown & coke, a Bayou Long Island Iced Tea and we went to a user meeting that rated a geek factor of at least 10.

Meredith will tell you that I don't drink. But I'm glad I did tonight because it was 2 hours of setting up WebAdmin under RedHat 7.1. A very good lecture by a guy I've met before, but I really don't go for that kind of thing like I used to. Anyway, most of the meeting was a blur (sadly from my lack of drinking, I've become a lightweight), but at a drawing at the end of it, I won a copy of "Linus Torvolds: Creator of Linux--and David Diamond: Just for Fun". It appears someone read this before I got my hands on it.

Then we went to the BR DataCenter where I drooled over new equipment they've installed and suprised myself at how much better a network admin I make when I'm not sober enough to second guess myself. Time to fill out a civil service form.

The end.