Well, Thursday night (6/6/02) it happened. Time Warner (those communist bastards) caught up with me and turned off my cable and internet about 7:30pm. Blah. What horrible timing. I was waiting on a word back from ezboard on Embracing Mystery’s Gold status payment and now I haven’t been able to get online to finalize that process. Since we only had like a week left and since it’s now been like five days since I was online (today, as I type this being Tuesday, June 11, 2002) this could be bad. *sighs* It’s also bad because I use my journal as my outlet and it’s hard to find the discipline to write entries when I don’t have access to my journal to publish them. Seems rather…futile.
Friday June 7, 2002
See? I’m really bad if I don’t write this promptly. I’m sitting here trying to remember if there was anything of note to write for Friday and I’m just drawing a blank. I’m so bad with time, I have such a difficulty recording things on specific days if I don’t do it at the time. I really can’t remember what I did on Friday so for now I’ll move on to Saturday which I do remember and if I think on anything to mention for Friday, I’ll come back to it.
Saturday June 8, 2002
Ah, now Saturday I remember. My friend Chris came into town for his week of training. He came in early - his first training class wasn’t until Monday - so we could get together. His hotel was WAY out there - I mean over an hour of hardcore driving just to get in the vicinity. Then finding it was another thing. My Love, Rand, and I got lost in the first attempt.Finally found the place and huzzah! Got to meet Chris in person. He had the dubious honor of being the first person from online to meet me in real life. (and of course, there is some irony in that as I met him in real life, my internet was off. Blah) From his hotel we got a little more lost but meandered our way to Ybor City. I’ve only ever been there like once but since it’s such a popular night spot, with a lot of assorted things to do and a great place to take an out-of-towner, it was perfect. We started our day at GameWorks in Centro Ybor. Sat down outside on their patio at about 5:30pm. The guys ordered some beers (damn, the things were 25oz!) and we all got some food and just talked and talked. We joked, we laughed, we conversed. And, we stayed out there as the sun went down. Several hours we just had a great time talking, drinking, and snacking - never once actually going inside to play the games. (just peeking in for occasional restroom breaks! lol) By the time we left there in search of more of Ybor, it was something like 9:30pm. Sounds boring when I write it like this, but none of us noticed the time spent there because we really just had a lot of fun. (Oh yeah, and Chris got a plastic monkey out of a monkey-in-the-barrel game. There were scavenger hunts going on and he snagged one from the woman hiding them. Of course, at the time they were hidden, it was daylight, and when hours later the team came to find them it was dark and we had been there the whole time. hee heee)
Walking down Ybor streets, I spotted a store I wanted to go see (The Spitting Gargoyle) and my Love and Chris wandered into the Irish Pub next door to it. Caught up with them after drooling at the awesome statuary. Nursing a couple glasses of Guinness, we half talked, half watched the hockey game on the tv next to us. (mmm…hockey). Chris told us his ideas about songs earmarking events in a person’s life and we exchanged some memories accordingly.
After there, we wandered out again, just walking, people watching, and discussing the differences of Ybor versus Philly. After walking to the end of the “strip” and back, the guys found another Irish pub and we went upstairs to it. This was about the point something started creeping me out. Ugh. That building had something in it - like a ghost or a spirit - and it was bugging us all in varying degrees. It was also about this time we realized we were still looking at a couple hours of driving between getting Chris to his hotel and getting us back to our apartment before Rand could get home (he had come to our place and did all the driving since his Jeep holds more then two people like the Mustang and is well, legal unlike ours). So they finished their drinks and we left. (I all but ran down the steps to get out of there - so overwhelming the feeling was that I needed to be out of that building. We started in back towards the garage. Passing the clubs and people who had now come out in larger number - it was about 12:30am at this point - and then walking through something I think only I noticed. For the distance of about a block, we just walked through the bleeding edges of some sort of magick. Whatever it was, it was spilling out into the streets and we walked through it like one passes through fog. I just felt it immediately as my blistered feet (poor shoe choice for the level of walking we ended up doing) suddenly felt feather light and my step glided over the pavement. I have no idea what it was exactly, only know that by the next street, it was gone. I made a brief attempt to talk to the guys about it, but at this point Chris and my Love were 11 and 10 beers in for the night respectfully and neither was paying much attention.
A couple hours of driving later saw my Love and I crashing for sleep and thus closing out our day. We were both just beat and sleep was something we went to happily! lol
Sunday June 9, 2002
A comedy of errors. A 1pm phone call of intent to be at Chris’ hotel by 3pm turned into a planning fiasco of epic proportions involving the picking up of Rand’s Jeep (he had to stay home to complete homework for college) to get Chris to get back to the apartment to wait for Kali to have my Love stay at the apartment as I went on my own - and shaky directions - to fetch Chris myself for the duration of the waiting and then finally getting him back to my apartment by like 5:30pm. Sheesh, it was crazy. By that point, we were hungry and went out to this great Chinese restaurant like 45 minutes away and sat down for a meal.
After that, wanting to show Chris more of the area we packed back in the car and headed to another good tourist-type area: Downtown St. Petersburg. We took him past Tropicana Field, through the BayWalk complex and then over to the Pier. Again, it’s been years since I’ve been out to the Pier myself so it was kinda neat for me as well. We went up to the top, ordered some drinks and talked while admiring the view. Couldn’t stay too long though because Kali and my Love both had work in the morning and Chris had class and we still had a lot of driving to do. We headed out like 10:30-11pm to go back to the apartment to reunite Kali with her car.Chris came in and I made him try out DDR. (mmm…dance dance revolution). He actually liked it. Played that for a bit and then he and my Love chatted for awhile out on the balcony. Before we knew it, it was 1:30am and my Love needed to get to bed and I was still facing a couple hours of drive time to get him back to his room, get Rand his Jeep back and then get me home. My Love packed Chris up with some beers to go (several bottles of Guinness to brighten up his hotel room lol).
By the time I got home it was about 4am and I was just exhausted. I went to sleep fully intending to make Monday my official sleep-all-day day until a pounding roused me…Which brings us to….
Monday June 10, 2002
Sound asleep, dreaming I hear a noise at the edges of my reality. Some random knocking sounds. They rouse me slightly - enough to think it’s the damned neighbor next door building inside his apartment again, or maybe the mailman - all of whom I’m determined to ignore. Nothing is as important as the sleep I’m in and I try my best to shut it out but it persists. Finally I wake enough to realize that it is indeed knocking on my door and I stagger out of bed and trudge to the door to glare out the peephole at whatever awoke me. And there stands Jef. Blinking, confused and still half asleep, I open the door to see that yes, it is him.
I invite him in and ask how long he’s been out there knocking. He happily says only about five minutes but that it’s ok, he knew I’d be asleep and he was expecting to wait. I look at the clock and it’s about 11:15am. Ugh. I crash on the couch and he says he hasn’t seen me online in days and figured it had been turned off and wanted to come and take me out to lunch to cheer me up so I wasn’t sitting around mopping by myself. Aww…that’s actually really sweet. Of course, I’m still practically asleep so it’s about noon before I muster up enough wakefulness to get up and get showered and get dressed. Once done, he and I head out over to Perkins to get some food.
We have a nice lunch, joking around and catching up on the weekend. (He works weekends so I never get to see him over them) We eat and he even orders desert. (mmmm…Heath Silk Pie….damn good). It was nice. We head back to the apartment and he shows me the game he bought - Sim Golf - and I’m thinking ewww golf but it’s just a sim game to make a golf course and is a LOT like Roller Coaster Tycoon. We install it and that’s it. I’m playing it with him over my shoulder for the next like two hours. He’s winding down - he got off a twelve hour work shift at 10am that morning and was ready for sleep - and wanted to go home but I talked him into lending me the game overnight. I played it for hours before my Love stole it and played it for hours too. LOL it’s a fun-ass game.
Today! Tuesday June 11, 2002
Now, I’m finishing up my recap here and waiting for Jef to show up. He’s coming over to hang out tonight and I still want to squeeze in some more Sim Golf before I have to give it back. I was trying to figure out a way to get Chris over here tonight to hang out and meet Jef but the logistics just aren’t working. (my Love has my car at his work…I can’t get to it and he can’t get it to me. Even if he could it’s a two-seater and Jef’s on his way over and he and me and Chris make three. And, even if I did have it, it’s illegal to drive {expired tags} and my ominous Check Engine light has been on for a couple weeks but we lack the $70 for the diagnostic to find out why it’s on. If I wait for my Love to get home and just drive the car anyway we’re looking at Chris not getting over here until about 8pm which is really just stupidly late when having another two hours of return drive as well.)
Blarg.
Anyway, I’m going to wrap this up, get dressed (still in my sleepy ware) and play some Sim Golf before Jef gets here. TTFN.
~ flowers bloom near Memory and Dream
at 6/12/2002 02:26:28 PM ~
~
