puppies, surgery, rock music, and suicide

the office dog, a gigantic 7-(49)-year-old rotweiler girl named "Whisky" just had surgery on her torn ACL in her left knee this week. she's back and wearing one of those huge satellite dishes around her neck to keep her from getting at the stitches, which look more like staples and go the entire length of her leg. it looks awful. anyway, i'm so happy she won't have to limp around anymore, and i'm glad it's more of a sports injury than a getting-old injury. she always hangs out & sleeps under my desk at my feet while i work the day away. i give her rides in my van to the post office every now and then, and sometimes i'll even take her on long trips into town. i don't think there'll be much more of that happening because she sometimes slobbers a bit too much in the heat, causing me to have to do extra work to keep my van clean. anyway, just figured i'd share that.

this sunday i'll be seeing some of my favorite rock bands live, at my first ever warped tour. most exciting is Armor For Sleep, whose CD "what to do when you are dead" just absolutely pulverizes the competition. that's basically the reason i'm going, a lot of the other bands are ridiculous...however i will get a chance to see my hometown heroes AFI (who i never saw when they were kids in the same town as me, in california), also a band called From Autumn To Ashes whose only song i like is a fucking masterpiece titled "Short Stories with Tragic Endings"...and it's an old song, so i hope they are able to do it. there's a lot of symphony instruments in the song. the rest of the mentionable bands' names are Against Me!, Anti-Flag, From First To Last, Less Than Jake, Motion City Soundtrack (whose songs "A-OK" and "Everything Is Alright" and "The Future Freaks Me Out" and "My Favorite Accident" are all actually for the most part pretty a-ok songs), NOFX, Rise Against, Saves The Day, Senses Fail, The Academy Is.., The Casualties, and Thursday.

then some kid i vaguely knew named Billy (that many of my friends knew, and one of my girl friends dated for a long time) committed suicide two nights ago, and that's gay, not only because he had a lot going for him and was good looking, but also because the only people who are supposed to commit suicide are people i've never met before, so i can make the joke about how anything that gets traffic on the freeway going faster, i'm all for it. damn fools. anyway, sorry to have to share this little tidbit but it had to be said. at least i don't know how Billy did it, as opposed to that other cool guy i knew named Ron, who got cancer for the second time (after beating it once thru chemotherapy before) and decided to hang himself about a year ago, but kinda screwed it up and hung there for 16 hours, then died in the hospital sometime not long thereafter. yeah, wow. people will always be people, i guess.

frenetic

isn't it great when coffee, water, comfort, great music, and great food all combine on a beautiful day to light a fire up under your ass and keep you happily focused on being productive, responsible, or whatever you want to call it?

i've been busy at work and also lately i've been busy designing a website for someone who's paying me to do so in my free time, and i think it's actually going to turn out pretty well, even though i might be a day late on the deadline.

anyway, i just wanted to share that, and now i'm going back into the mode. peace out

rug doctor

...and no, i am not referring to anyone's muff.

i just figured i would share the fact that this week i rented a rug doctor and cleaned most of the carpet in my house, and only spent about 20 bucks on the machine, and another 25 on the cleaning solutions. i gotta tell you, that thing really does a fantastic job, and i still have a bunch of cleaning solution left over so whenever i decide to rent it again, i'll only have to spend like 18 bucks on renting the machine cuz i have enough cleaner to last at least another round. and the thing about the rug doctor is it's actually fun to use, because you can only do like 4 or 5 minutes of cleaning at a time, so you don't get bored with it. it took out some of the most awful carpet stains you can imagine... wine, ketchup, mixed drinks w/cola, grease, etc. just be sure you treat the carpet's worst stains overnight with rug doctor special cleaners & a brush of some kind before you actually rent a rug doctor to use on them. i actually feel like a classy, responsible human being again! (and hopefully it will help this cough i have go away)

peace out

flying solo

saw "an inconvenient truth" (that movie roger ebert said "you owe it to yourself to see this" about [something he's never said about any movie before]) with friends on friday.

DJed a girl's high school graduation party on saturday...a bit too much mexican music for my taste, but at least we have a new DJ who got stuck with the majority of the job.

went and saw rock bands Panic! At The Disco & OK Go in Austin on Sunday, and all the girls i found myself surrounded by were watching & smiling at me singing at the top of my lungs while dancing all crazy like a sexy rockstar. still, i would have rather not been separated in the crowd from the 2 girls & 2 guys (close friends of mine) who i went with. it would have been much more worth my time to even be there if i had shared it with them. i was by far the most jammin person i could see in the crowd. i can sing those songs just like that guy, and sometimes i held the notes longer than he did. all of my clothes were covered in my own sweat for the remainder of the evening. at least i learned my lesson about the value of being with friends at concerts.

fuck.