While waiting for this program I’m writing to run a few test iterations, I started to sort of re-read a few of the blog entries that I’ve got up here and began to think - you know, unless you’re related to me or know me in some form, this stuff won’t really matter to you. The context is lacking.

That’s pretty much what it says in the Libertarian Blog Manifesto. (Granted, it’s got a little more politically-related propaganda strewn about in there, but, pretty much, that’s the sum of it.) I tend to agree - if you don’t know me, you probably won’t care for what’s going on around here, as is evidenced by the negative “karma” rating that most of my entries get.

Unless you decide to take the time to read up on this stuff and get to know me. Then it’ll all make hella more sense and you might enjoy it.

At the same time, the whole reason I’ve got this thing going on is so I can keep folks updated about me without having to write 30,000 emails every day with the same thing in every one of them. And, frankly, if you don’t like it, tough crap.

Now, that said, if y’all wanna hear about something, I’d be more than happy to write somethin’ up. But no one leaves comments or anything saying one way or the other, so I’ll just plod along and do my thang until such time arises.

And that’s all I have to say about that.

After a long, long, LONG week, Jenn and I have finally finished redoing the living room, at least as best we can without buying all new furniture. The room seems so much bigger since we moved things around, and it has a lot more personality with the paint. Moving the TV and stereo equipment paid off in that it’s a lot cleaner looking (and the cord management behind it is way better) but it was a huge pain in the ass.

Today is having trouble getting started for me. I woke up and totally just drug ass out of bed. Normally I wake up in the shower; today I nearly fell asleep. I’m still pretty tired. I went out to get my monthly Cup Of Coffee from the air pots outside my cube… and they were empty. That’s pretty much a microcosm for my day thus far.

On the other hand, the project I’m working on at work is coming along splendidly (it’s a content replication service for Microsoft SharePoint Portal Server, if you care), especially since I just got in touch with developer support over there to answer some questions that don’t get answered in the all-too-meager SDK documentation.

I have to go to Fred Meyer today to get a couple of new frames for pictures that go in our new living room. The frames we have, well, suck. So new frames will fix the fact that the old, sucky frames don’t go well in the “Children Of The Revolution” French theme we have going.

While I’m there, I may listen to the new self-titled Dirty Vegas album. CDNow (who sucks; don’t ever buy anything from them) said it would have “appeal [to] the musically unadventurous,” which is probably me, but then, I never seem to like the stuff they say is all revolutionary and shit.

Speaking of “revolutionary” music I don’t dig, I watched the MTV Movie Awards last night and saw The White Stripes perform. I’ll be damned if I could understand a single word from the song they played. It had sort of a British punk feel to it, at least I thought so, and I could see that if they cleaned it up just a tad I might be into it given the right mood. The simple, retro-ish style they had sort of appealed to me. I dunno.

On the other hand, I thought that Kelly Osbourne’s musical debut singing “Papa Don’t Preach” was pretty decent. She has an okay voice, but no real stage presence to speak of. I think if she worked at it a bit more, she could go somewhere. That’ll be on the Osbourne Family Album, coming out June 11. Yes, I’ll probably end up getting that.

Quite the weekend.

Saturday was errand day. The usual vacuuming, shopping, and so forth. Lame.

I did, however, buy the Cake album, Comfort Eagle. Something about Cake just rules; the way the lyrics have a certain cadence and a… deliberate meaning. Very cool. Besides, I heard the title track on 94.7 FM on Friday on the way home, and couldn’t get it out of my head.

So that was Saturday.

Sunday, however, was another issue entirely.

Woke up Sunday really too early. I think it was like 6:30a. Took a shower and decided that it was time to rearrange the living room.

After Jenn and I really started looking at it, we realized that simply moving the furniture around was not going to suffice. We wanted the room to have a sort of French feel to it, to go along with the Moulin Rouge! posters we have in there. After checking with the apartment manager, we decided we needed to paint the front room. (The manager was actually pretty stoked to see what it was going to look like when we finished. She likes the art in there already.)

Hit the local Home Depot and found some beautiful Ralph Lauren paint (and, of course, tinted primer) in “Cobalt” (blue) and “Donegal Tweed” (pale yellow). Got all the brushes and crap to paint with, borrowed the rest of the stuff from my mom, and home we went, ready to paint.

Started moving things around, getting them out of the way, and taping things off around, oh, 2:00p. By 9:00p we had finished the yellow wall (two coats) and had covered the blue wall (which is about twice the size of the yellow wall) in the blue primer. After that, it was time to quit for the night. It bothers me that it’s not done yet, but we’ll hopefully finish it up tonight and do any little touch-up work on the corners and stuff. Then we can start putting the room back together. It’s starting to really take shape, though, and I love the dimension that the blue gives the room.

Now we have to find a decent bookcase to store all the DVDs and videos in and some nicer endtables. Then the room will be pretty well done and we can start the next one.

I didn’t really expect to be where I was last night.

I got an email from a friend of mine that I used to work with. I hadn’t heard from her for a while, so it was good to chat. She mailed me to tell me that her boyfriend had some sort of connection and had gotten them two reasonably decent seats at the Britney Spears “Dream Within A Dream” show, but he had to return to Seattle for some business so she wanted to know if I would go.

A free ticket to a Britney show? Too good to pass up. I accepted.

We met up before the show with some other friends who were going that night, too. They had some great seats just off the floor. I asked my friend where her tickets were, but she didn’t know. They were at the Will Call desk and we needed to pick them up and find out.

We got to the Will Call desk and picked up the tickets. Row 3. Can’t get much better than that. I was stoked.

When we got into the Rose Garden, though, it turns out that, sure, we were in the third row the way the seat numbering went, but by the way the stage was laid out, we were in the front row. I was maybe 10 - 12 feet away from the stage (reads: 10 - 12 feet away from Britney), and the only thing between me and her was the security guard. Holy crap! (You can see where I was sitting in this diagram.)

So I turned to my friend and asked, “So, your boyfriend just ‘knows’ people? Who’s your boyfriend?” Turns out he’s the guitarist for freaking Pearl Jam, Stone Gossard. Apparently they grew up near each other in Seattle and they met at the wedding of a mutual friend. How weird is that?!

Anyway, the show was awesome. Britney played all of her hits (“Baby, One More Time,” “Oops!… I Did It Again,” etc.). The costumes were spectacular. There were pyrotechnics of all natures - columns of fire shooting up, fireworks, sparks… There were lasers all over the place… There was even a part in the show where it rained on stage. Lots of props - Britney came out at one part in a giant music box, popped out of the top, and was the ballerina in the music box. She swung from giant bungee cords, she levitated on platforms. Incredible.

The backup singers rocked, the band rocked, the dancers rocked (one danced for some time right in front of me, lookin’ right at me). My friend even claims she saw Britney wink at me, but I can’t confirm that one. Absolutely unbelieveable. I wish I could have recorded it so I could share it with you all, but, alas, no cameras.

An evening at home watching TV turned into an evening at a really great concert. I feel bad for Jenn, who “got” to stay home and do the TV thing, but she’s not into Britney like I am. I told my friend to give Stone a big high-five for me. That made my day.

Thus ends another three-day holiday weekend that went by all too quickly. A heck of a lot happened, though looking back at it, it doesn’t seem like I really accomplished anything. Hmmm.

My sister, Tori, is back from her mission in Thailand. She brought with her some cool native clothing - beautiful custom suits she got for like $30US. She also had the usual stories of shady marketplace dealings… where you choose what you want from a catalog, the vendor calls someone on a cell phone, and a few minutes later a taxi mysteriously drives up and drops off your “order.” Or, looking at pets, someone will come over and show you that they have a very tiny monkey hidden in their fanny pack and if you want it, they’ll sell it to you and tell you how to smuggle it into the US. Pretty unbelieveable.

I saw Star Wars - Episode II again this weekend since Jenn hadn’t seen it. I thought it was still pretty decent the second time around, but Jenn wasn’t too impressed. She’s not a big sci-fi fan, either, though, so take it with a grain of salt. I was stoked to see the trailer for the new James Bond movie, though, and I look forward to that. Love the Bond.

Sunday was quite the ordeal. Went to church with my parents at 1:00p so I could hear Tori speak (she’s become quite a good speaker, too… I was very impressed). By 3:00p I was at a “barbecue” at Jenn’s cousin’s house, though there wasn’t any [fresh] food, so I didn’t actually get to eat lunch until 4:00p when I went to Burgerville. Much as I love Jenn, the all-too-frequent family gatherings are a little much for me. I’m not a big-crowd-people-person. Anyway, by 5:00p Jenn and I were back at my parents’ house for Tori’s “welcome back” open house. I think three people showed up by 7:00p, so we left. Rented American Beauty since Jenn hadn’t seen it (and, might I add, Mena Suvari’s hot), then went to bed.

Monday was errand day. Did the laundry, yadda, yadda, yadda. Rented Vanilla Sky and… not sure what to say about that one. I suppose I didn’t guess the ending, but it played out so confusing that it was hard to stay focused and watch the movie. You have to see it to understand it. (I can’t figure out why Tom Cruise would take Penelope Cruz over the way hotter and classier Nicole Kidman, but that’s another discussion entirely.)

That’s about it. Woke up this morning way too exhausted and haven’t really been able to concentrate on work all day. I’ve got stuff to do, I just don’t wanna do it.

Oh, I saw the latest InStyle has my girl, Sarah Michelle Gellar, on the cover. She’s pretty great, but she’s ruining her career with movies like Simply Irresistable and Scooby Doo. If she could pick a decent role, I think she could make something out of herself. Then again, she is dating Freddie Prinze, Jr., so I can’t say much for her taste in guys, either.