Greater Satellites

Well, as you may have noticed the whole 301st post extravaganza thing never left the planning phases and is on the backburner for a bit. Not to worry, the new year may be bringing me some new equipment and thus bringing me a great deal of flexibility in making projects. Either way, I wanted to recap the month of December up to current and really touch on Christmas, as it was very unique this year:

December brought me a new job, and one which I am infinitely happy with. Although for the past two days I’ve been sick and consequently not there, I do actually miss being busy and the company of my coworkers. This is a first, and ::crosses fingers:: hopefully not a last.

December brought me the one month anniversary of what is shaping up to be a great relationship. I’m happy and I feel like I’ve met an equal, someone I can really relate to. It’s really something fantastic.

December, through a series of peculiarly-well timed events, brought me a little closer to my dad. Brought me into his world a bit. Although I wish a certain someone would also take part in it a little more often, perhaps they will eventually come around.

December brought me freedom from most of my debt, an indescribably good feeling. It’s a direct result of the job, but being coupled with my new priority set really set this domino effect into motion.

December brought me Christmas, which in turn brought me socks and underwear (from Mom), a really nice shirt and drum sticks (from Denise), a drummers throne (from Jackie), an invite to Oink (from Curdo), and various monetary gifts (from Dad, Kim, Grandma G, Grandpa, Grandma F, Aunt Mary Ellen, Jackie’s Parents, Donna, Kenny, Kristen). I think it’s evident what I’ll be doing for the next couple of months (until all of my sticks break, I get banned for having a bad ratio, and I turn into a bum from spending all of my money).

And for the first time in a long while, December brought me constant happiness due to all of the reasons listed above…

I’ve found, increasingly, that my blog entries are mostly recaps of a series of days or even a week. This would explain why I don’t have a thousand entries and am still just shy of 300. This post is no exception. My story begins last Tuesday…

I was getting in the Thanksgiving spirit, merrily thinking about how much I was going to eat and musing over the possibilities of having a full stomach for the first time in 2006, a year that passed by almost as fast as those bullet trains in Tokyo. It was the early afternoon and I was browsing through the classifieds section in my local newspaper and on the internet. I came across the last line of a listing that grabbed my attention instantly, it read something like: “We’re a pretty relaxed group of people, no TPS reports to fill out here…” and decided to give it a shot. If they’re down to earth enough to semi-quote Office Space, then they must know the plight of the typical office drone. “These”, I thought, “are my people.” I compiled my online resume, but didn’t apply for the job. Call it cold feet. I knew that I had the skills they were looking for, but I just needed that extra little push to get me going. I saved my application email as a draft and feel asleep watching television.

Wednesday enters stage right (or should it be stage east? oh well…). I woke up just before noon and began my usual routine of reading the days news and my emails. The previous night just before going to bed, I sent my lady the first revision of my online resume for her perusal and opinion. Scanning through the normal junk newsletters that I subscribe to (for God only knows what reason) I found her response, and within that I found the little push I needed to get my ass in gear and apply for this job. I wrote a brief email which vaguely mirrored the block of text above this one, attached my shiny new resume, hit send, and hoped for the best. The post script on the email said “Gotta love Office Space…” As the day progressed I had a few errands to run, mostly Thanksgiving-shopping-related, and as such was not in the house for most of the early afternoon. When I returned to the computer it was around 3pm and I had received a response to the job. I discovered I was one of the last people considered before they removed the listing earlier that day, for a total of 314 interested people responded to it in less than 16 hours. I was asked to send along any portfolio work that I had done recently and so I sent them screenshots of the dark driving page, Excel Fuel’s original AG layout, a couple Mac-related sites I’ve worked on, a couple of my logos, and various other things. Within 45 minutes I received a phone call telling me to come down for an interview/skillz (yes, skillz, as in skillz that killz) test on Monday. Suffice it to say, this made my day and all of the waiting in line I still had to do worthwhile. After Jackie we began making plans to see each other because she was visiting family out of town for Thanksgiving. After some brainstorming and deliberation, we decided to hang out here with her friends Bridget and Vinny. They’re an interesting couple and I have a good time talking with them, so it was already shaping up to be a good night. Let us skip the waiting part right to when everyone arrived. After some initial chattery, we decided to watch Liar Liar and have a makeout party enjoy each others company. They all left (unfortunately) after the movie was done, making it an early night in the eyes of a few. But it was great seeing them, especially her.

I’ll try to keep the Thanksgiving explanation terse, because just talking about it makes me feel like there are mass quantities of tryptophan coursing through my veins. I woke up around noon and helped however I could in the kitchen, did some very last minute shopping, and tried to stay out of the way for the remainder of the cooking. Dinner was incredible, and it was shared with Denise, mom, grandmom, and my aunt. I’m thankful for friends, family, a great dinner, the new lady in my life, and our family coming together to help in the good times as well as the bad. I drank half a case of Yuengling after dinner and had some people over. It was a lot of fun and I was a lot drunk. I was also thankful that I didn’t have a hangover the following day.

Friday was more blurred than an image with a Gaussian distribution applied to it. I distinctly remember putting up and taking down a few decorations, that much was for sure. Nothing really major happened until Jackie showed up to hang out and be lazy with me around 8pm that night. We watched Comic Relief ‘06 for quite a while (we found it amusing) and then spent the rest of the night just hanging out and talking. It was very peaceful and a lot of fun considering that we really did nothing at all.

Saturday I woke up late (I think I see a pattern emerging here) and did some laundry, cleaned my room, and performed a few other minor chores. I caught up on some reading and did some research on video and editing equipment that I’ve had my eye on for a while now. It was all very informative and time well spent. I love learning, especially that specific kind of self-motivated cerebral drive. I went over Jackie’s house later that night and helped her with some computer related tasks (I’m good like that) and then we went out to Top Dog in NJ for some drinking and dance. We hung out, took some pictures, drank it up, the girls (Syl and Jackie) did some dancing, and then we left. It was as cold as a motherfucker that night; one of those “see your own breath”, breezeless nights, so I made it a point to stay close to a certain someone to keep her warm. We eventually ended up at my domicile where we played with the cat and worked on comfort and logistics. I’m a bad influence, I keep people out and awake until all hours of the night. I went to sleep somewhere in the 5:45am arena.

Sunday is always a hazy day for me. I’m almost totally convinced that my mind doesn’t turn on for Sundays. I can say that I downloaded a slew of new music on Sunday for my listening pleasure. Albums include: The Human Abstract’s Nocturne, Incubus’ new Light Grenades, Foo Fighter’s new live album Skin And Bones, the somewhat older Postal Service’s Give Up, and Pink Floyd’s The Final Cut. I have a lot of listening to do.

Monday morning, 11am, I’m standing outside of 124 Chestnut waiting for Jared to come open the door so I can have my interview and test. I’m a mixture of over-confident and excited, but ready to strut my stuff. Jared made a scheduling mistake and actually wasn’t expecting me until 11am on Tuesday, but luckily had some time to sit down and interview me despite the mix up. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t covet the jobs of people already working there. It seems like such a laid back atmosphere with a bunch of cool people doing what they love to do. Fortunately I think I left a good impression. Without going into too much detail, my test basically consisted of converting a Photoshop web site mock-up into a functioning, active page. It took me about two hours, but I took my time and was thorough. The end result was almost identical to the original, so I was pleased. After the other designers took a look at it, they commented on how clean my code was (to the nerdy, it’s quite a compliment) and I left shortly thereafter. Now I play the waiting game, although I should know for sure no later than next week.

Today I woke up and did some design work, some coding, some reading, and a small amount of learning. I chatted it up with Denise about this and that and ate a Wawa pork roll sandwich which are delicious, by the way. I got to talk to my girl shortly after she got out of work, although I missed one of her calls earlier in the day (oops). The rest of the day was peaceful and serene. Good times all around.

I woke up yesterday, did a couple phone interviews, sent out some applications, and then decided to trek up to the Northeast part of the city to look for a particular DVD for a particular someone. Alas, I couldn’t find it, but I wasn’t downtrodden. I proceeded to stop by Excel Fuel Service (bad website, I know) to see Jackie and dad. I was delivering a copy of Superman Returns to Jackie because I, hmm, acquired it a month before its slated DVD release date and thought she would appreciate the gesture (she did, I’m fairly sure). I talked to dad briefly about school and financial aid, told him about the research I’ve been doing, and asked him for some under the table work if he had any. Turns out he does and I’ll be cleaning the fleet of trucks every other weekend or so until I can afford my new phone. Shouldn’t take long at the current Ed Gormley rates. I’m hoping to get a new Smartphone like a Blackberry Pearl or maybe a T-Mobile Dash. I would definitely hold out for a couple more months if a certain phone were to hit the market…

Either way, I arrived home around 7pm and immediately got sucked into watching Halloween 4. I really think the Halloween movies are unrivaled as far as the “lunatic, undying serial killer” genre goes. Shortly after 8pm and, conincidentally, after Halloween 4 I traipsed (that’s right, traipsed) up to Kathy’s house for her little party get-together. I knew mostly everyone there, some better than others. There was food and drink (both alcoholic and non-alcoholic) available to all so I pretty much set my sights on and devastated a whole bottle of Gin and Juice. As the party wound down we decided to hit the bowling alley. I did a shot of Bombay (?) Gin with Rich and ::drum roll:: Jon. It was deelish. Soon after, bowling we a-went!

I was fooling around for the first game, trying to perfect my spin. It went poorly. I think I topped out with a score of about 43, which is not too good. However, I knuckled down and really pulled myself together for the second game, which I ended up winning with a score of 154. That put the time at 11:30pm and everyone had work and things to do the following day, so everyone departed. Denise and I ended up watching all of Crash (a gift from Kathy along with I ♥ Huckabees). Denise was pretty trashed, to say the least. She fell asleep midway through the movie and ended up waking up while the credits were rolling and said “I missed the heart of the movie.” I thought it was hilarious, but maybe you had to be there. Overall, I think Denise had a lot of fun on her Halloween-y birthday.

It makes me sad that it gets dark shortly after 5pm now. Seriously, it does.

As wise person once said a great place to start is at the beginning, so I will follow that sagely advice and do just that:

Friday: Woke up pretty early (10 am, hah) and checked the internets for jobs and things. Shortly thereafter we turned the heat on for the first time and found that there was a big leak in one of the pipes. Awesome! So we called the plumber and waited for him to come out and fix things up so my room doesn’t have a foot of standing water on the floor. That was taken care of around 12:30, and shortly thereafter I left for Jackie’s house. I was running a little late (as usual) but, luckily, she was too. We arrived at her house separately but almost simultaneously and talked for a bit while she gathered her clothes/costumes and got ready to roll. Come 1:15 we hit the ground running, bound for Pottstown. We met up with Jackie’s sister Christa at Wal Mart as they finished up some last minute party shopping. She’s very nice, and I had a feeling from just looking at her that I knew her type. Don’t take that as a negative thing, she’s a very nice person and quite tenacious. We got back to her house and did some decorating (I did the webs outside, thank you Spider Man) and began readying the foods and whatnots. People started rolling in around 8-ish in full costume and everyone looked great (one person in particular looked very yummy). Anywho, Christa and Mike’s friends were funny and very sociable. A little later Brigette and Vinny showed up and the four of us broke off for the remainder of the evening just drinking, talking, and joking around. As the night wound down people started leaving and eventually we all found a place to sleep. Jackie and I talked for a while before we went to bed and I told her some things that I wanted her to know. I won’t go into the details here, but it ended up quite well (no, not like that, perv). Slumber happened around 2 or 3am, I believe.

Saturday: Slept late at Christa’s house (later than everyone else, at least) and eventually left there around 1:45 for Philly. Ran into some traffic on the way home so it took a little over an hour to arrive back. Jackie and I said our goodbyes and I jumped head first into the awkward situation I like to call family get-togethers. The occasion was a suprise 80th birthday party for my grandmom. People started showing up around 2pm and the surprise happened at 3pm. Grandma was very happy and overall she appreciated the fact that, quite literally, almost everyone made it out. We had family over that I’ve never even met before. Cousins that I’m seeing for the first time. Uncles and aunts that I don’t know the names of. I’m not saying all of this for any reason other than setting up how many people were in my house… we have a very big family. At some point I decided to show my cousin Kenny the video I did by the name of Friends. He REALLY liked it and decided (drunkenly) it would be a good idea to tell my family to come watch it too. Now, these are people who, for all intents and purposes, don’t know me. Now they’re all excited to see Andrew’s “funny video”. The abridged version sounds something like this: my entire family watched it and every time I passed through the living room where a majority of the guests were, I overhear things like “There’s the Longshaft!” and “Can I be a Longshaft too?” For some reason, it was a little much for me so I did a couple shots of some really bad Canadian whiskey and continued drinking my beers. That made things better. Most of the family was gone by 10pm and I knew Marek was in town so I gave him a call. Denise, Marek, Kenny, Kristen (Kenny’s wife), and I ended up hanging out and drinking much more. We started a game of Ultimate Yahtzee around 1am and finished (with me winning) close to 2am. 2am then became 1am again because we had to turn the clocks back. Kenny left after the game, Denise went to be shortly after, Marek and I chilled for about another hour and then I booted his ass out. I went to bed shortly after the second 2am.

Sunday: Slept very late due to a relatively large headache. I wonder why? Anyway, some family stopped back over to drink more of our alcohol and eat more of our food (savages, I know) throughout the afternoon. A little after 6pm we departed for the Bates Motel up in Glen Mills. Unfortunately Jackie couldn’t make it, but it was fun group nonetheless: Denise, Ian, Kathy, Rich, and I. The lines weren’t too bad and we ventured through the corn maze, braved our way through the haunted house, and sat on the edge of our seats for the hayride. All of it was good and I’m not too proud to admit that I jumped a few times. Got back just before midnight when I started writing this and am now finishing close to 5AM because I got caught up talking to Denise, taking a shower, and watching a Friday the 13th marathon.

After this weekend, despite a little awkwardness with the fam, I can say that I haven’t been this happy in a long time. Thanks to any and all involved.

Well, let me tell you that Thanksgiving dinner was deeeeeeelicious. Props to mom for creating such a scrumptuous meal.

Let’s see what’s new…

1) dark driving designs, or d³ as I’ve been dubbing it is coming along quite nicely. I intend to create an accompanying Gallery and Wordpress-powered weblog system (that could very well replace this blog, if the features are to my liking). The basic design of the new site can be found here. It’s quite far from complete, but you can check it out to get a great idea of the direction I’m heading with it.

2) You can now freely listen to X-mas music without fear of mockery and ridicule from me.

3) I have overdosed on tryptophan, I’ll be asleep for weeks.

4) “Holiday Spice” wine is pretty… blehck.

5) School is awesome. My lowest mid-term grade is a B-. Go me!

6) I’ll make a better post later tonight… If I’m still alive at that point.

“Roll the window down, this cool night air is curious…”