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3-10-03 // 9.28 am domingo no parque NP: Gilberto Gil - "Sem Limite" Drinking tea, trying to get into the feel of a Monday morning, doing a bit of work, and brainstorming further details on a great mix tape idea I had in the car earlier. The lab is empty except for myself, so at least it's quiet and a bit low key around here at the moment. The weekend was incredible. Saturday was the pick day of the year so far -- temperatures forecast to hit about 65F that ended up being more like 80F. Perfect blue skies, a bit of wind...it was gorgeous. Erin and I had a bit of a day out, went to the comic shop for her, and to Vintage Vinyl for me. My tax return had come in late Friday, so we had a time doing some indiscriminate spending for the first time in a long, long while. We got some iced tea/coffee, wandered the rest of the Loop, and even joined in an antiwar protest march that we didn't even know was happening that particular day. We joined in, we marched behind the guys with the drums, in front of the people with the banners and flags. Erin clapped and I flashed peace signs at the cars in the street. I'm not sure how much good the protest did in the grand scheme of things, but it felt good to put my time and energy where my increasingly loud mouth is. There's another protest this coming Saturday that we're going to, as well, and this time I'm going to come prepared, with signs and whatnot. Like I said, doing this was something I felt like I needed to do, and it also feels like the logical next step after the conversations that Erin and I have with each other and with other people. In any case, the rest of the weekend was as good as one could ask for. We ate in restaurants, drank pitchers of beer and went bowling, visited with Erin's family, ate dim sum with Andy & Liz, got some driving around time in, etc. Chez Mike & Erin is currently enduring Day 5 of the houseguest from hell. Remember in my last entry when I called the guy staying with us a friend of Erin? Let me make a correction -- he's more a passing acquaintance of hers from high school, who happens to be good friends with Erin's father, and the guy's father is apparently also friends with Erin's dad. But yeah, the guy is in our house, we both hate it, and it blows. He's rude, he's loud, he's kind of a racist, his paranoid wife calls constantly, he seems incapable of even the smallest task, he apparently can only hold conversations about railroads or trains (he works for the railroad), drinks the beer I pay for without saying thanks or reimbursing me, he was nearly half an hour late for his apartment showing (an apartment in the same damn building as the one I live in!), and we came back Saturday evening to find him playing "Vice City" on a brand new PS2. Yeah, he bought a PS2 when apparently he didn't even have the money to stay in a cheap motel while he was looking for an apartment. That right there nearly put me over the edge, but I checked myself. Same with Sunday morning, when he's sitting there playing the game and making ethnic slur after ethnic slur at the characters. That is not something you do around me. No way around it, that is a no go. But yeah...it sucks, and we can't wait till he gets out of our place. Sadly, we don't know when he's leaving. The whole thing would be so much more bearable if the guy was at least a gracious guest. But he's not. In any case, I'll let it go now, 'cause I could rant all day here. In other news, I secured a motel room in Columbia for the Idlewild show a week from Wednesday. I'm not sure what I'm more excited about, to be honest -- the show itself, or the chance to do something like this again with Erin. 'Cause, really, she's the best road trip companion ever, and I've always liked our little overnight or weekend adventures like that. According to Ryan S, Schlitt is in town this week on spring break (yes, he's still in college, like a billion years after he first started), so hopefully at some point the three of us are going to hang out. Waiting to hear back from Ryan at the moment, actually. Spring is on the verge of arriving. As silly as this might sound, it feels like a fog is lifting -- a fog off me, a fog off us, a fog off the world. And honestly, that's all I could ask for that I don't already have
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