Tales of the Vintage Caveman

Happy Mother’s Day to all the moms out there in Internetland, especially CaveMom.

CaveMom is one classy lady, and without her I couldn’t be me. Literally.

(I would include a picture of my mom, but in my entire 20 years of life she has never let me take one.)

Anyone who knows me knows that I’m a very passionate person. I’m passionate about movies and television. I’m passionate about good times and great food. I’m passionate about a lot of things, but nothing more than wanting not to be alone for the rest of my life. Wanting not to be alone for the rest of my life makes what happened recently a roughly tri-annual occurrence.

I was behind the register at work and a woman, who I’ve never seen before, walks through the front door and looks around. Oddly enough the first thing that crosses my mind is “I wonder if she realizes that I’m in love with her”. Everything I witnessed, while I was watching her like some sort of creep, suggested that she was the perfect gal for me. She was smart, (nerdy) stylish, and pretty (oh boy was she pretty).

When she approached the counter to pay for her items (which included plain white bread, and sour gummy worms) I got a little shaky and made some stupid jokes, but she was so sweet and gave me an honest giggled.

Ladies and Gentlemen, she actually GIGGLED at a joke I made! I was smitten.

But for some strange reason when the chance came to seize this moment…I let it go. I let it go and she slipped away into the night like so many other things in my life.

I don’t worry about any of that crazy flu stuff…I already caught Pac-Man Fever.

It’s almost here!

“Free Comic Book Day” is a magical event that happens every year on the first Saturday in May, and combines two of my favorites thing of all time: free stuff and comic books. It all started as shallow marketing ploy to attract people to different titles and publishers, but has evolved to a fantastic nerd holiday that gives me free comic books.

Each comic book shop does something different for the day but I always fondly remember a flurry of sights, sounds, and general nerdyness.

I can’t wait!

(for more info check out: http://www.freecomicbookday.com/)

Late Saturday night I was helping out behind the register at work during a particularly busy patch and out of the corner of my eye I noticed my manager discussing something with a particularly strange customer. I couldn’t make out most of the conversation due to my being uncomfortably focused on the task at hand, but I did pick up that there was something strange out in the parking lot.

For some reason my mind went directly to dead clown.

When things finally calmed down my boss decided to quest out to the parking lot to satisfy all of our morbid curiosities, and seconds later she walks back in with a strange look on her face. “How ’bout you go out there and tell me what you think..”

Quietly preparing myself for discovering a dead clown I walk out the front doors and I see this:

Closer View

For some reason someone had placed a little suitcase and four glass vases in our parking lot at 8 o’clock at night.

Even Closer View

It’s not a dead clown, but it’s almost as beautiful.

In all my reorganization to prepare for the upcoming move north (roughly 120 days) I’ve rediscovered a lot of stuff I had lost in the chaos of life and I packed away things that had been needlessly taking up space. Now that the first wave of this great shift has finished I now, oddly, believe I have gotten my workspace exactly the way I wanted it (after 2 and a half years of living here).

My computer, my printer, some books, and Guitar Hero.

A very detailed sketch of Batman and The Joker from The Dark Knight I got for Christmas, and a print from Field & Stream (1944) that I got in an estate sale for $3.

All reference books (except for my High School yearbook, and Christmas Stories by Charlie Dickens), and the coolest radio I have ever owned.

I just got a letter today…

Apparently, I’ve been accepted.

I have returned from the land known as Bangor, where I was interviewed in hopes of filling a spot in a college’s video production major. I’m a little shaken, but confidant none the less.

I wake up wicked early, I throw on some of the “nice clothes” (to include my ‘fancy’ tie), and I start the laborious journey north. With 10 minutes until the set meeting time I somehow find my way through the campus and to the visitor’s parking space in front of the main building. Running in semi-frantically while adjusting my shirt cuff I run into the lady I’m supposed to be meeting with.

The interview went pretty great. I just opened my mouth and let my personality/qualifications do all the talking. Whenever I start to over-think things nothing comes out but stupid, but this was a rare exception. After the interview I had to take a 12 minute academic test, and then we took a walk around the campus for a lengthy tour.

My impressions:

• A more technical/bad-ass program than I’ve seen in most other places.
• Millions of dollars worth of equipment I can use anytime I want.
• On campus television studio and fully functioning mobile production unit.
• Small student body.
• All Apple computers…all the time.
• “High Definition” labs. (So cool)
• Great looking cafeteria.
• Lots of pretty ladies.

If I did everything right I should hear back from them in 2 to 3 days. Crossing my fingers…

I haven’t been doing much on the Internet lately. I’ve been pretty busy.

-First, at my work we’re swapping all of our Hewlett-Packard equipment for brand new Kodak stuff and it’s been a pain. Of course, everyday I went to work I wanted to pile everything in the middle of the lab and light it on fire while dancing around it naked, but the hassle of redoing EVERYTHING does not seem worth it to me. Not to mention that I’ve got all my regular customers trained on the old HP digital kiosks to need me as little as possible so they’d leave me alone.

-Finally, I’ve been prepping for the biggest interview of my life. Over the last month or so I’ve been working on transferring from the crappy college that tried to screw me over back in November to a pretty good one that has a program that I’m sure will help me get into a career I want. Unfortunately, in order to dig myself out of purgatory I have to travel through hell, and hell is a mountain of paperwork. Included with that paperwork I had to dig up my horrible High School past, beg some awesome people the write nice things about me, and wax poetic about why I want to do what I want to do…

All of that for tomorrow. Tomorrow I make the two hour journey to the mythical land of Bangor (see: every other Stephen King novel) to be questioned by the “Head of Admissions”. Not to take this lightly but…I’m scared. This interview can easily make my next 50 years and I’m frightened that I’ll do or say something wrong. Or what if I’m just not good enough?

I’m trying to stay confident. I hope that the fact that I was made for this type of thing will show through, and I’ll be a easy choice.

I bought a new alarm clock a week ago and it’s (dare I say it?) the best alarm clock I have ever owned.

To wake you up the music starts out very soft. It’s so quiet, it actually bores it’s way through your subconscious and incorporates itself in your dreams (which has ruined some very intimate moments). Then it gets slightly louder. To the point where you are not sleeping anymore but are just staring into the back of of your eye lids. Finally, it get so screamingly loud that you’re pretty sure if you don’t shut it off the clock will sprout legs and start kicking you in the face.

Oh, and it has a dock for my iPod.