scrap the plans & photographic catch-up...

***disclaimer - this one is epic. enjoy the random pics throughout.

plans. not just a great album by death cab (thanks ROMA), but what my life generally revolves around. i know most of you may think the same thing with your life and plans, but mine seriously is almost fully structured around knowing exactly what is going on, when it's going to happen, and how it's going to happen. and of course, as life so often does, plans change...and from response to that change emerges the character. i honestly think i've gotten better at this response (or at least being flexible) over the past several years, but i still have a long ways to go. that being said, without at least some semblance of a plan, things continue on that natural path to entropy. i'm sure there's a good compromise out there somewhere.

playing "kings" at game-night at The Tank. christine (on left) came up with one of the more popular rules of the game...i wasn't allowed to speak. i don't know what damon is doing, but thank goodness he cut his hair a few days later.

so two sets of events to introduce: beth's birthday party (which was definitely a lot of fun, and of course a little crazy) & the day (friday) that was lost to the random entropy (for the most part).

well i am waiting to get all the pics together from beth's bday outing, so that topic will have to wait for a little while longer. rest assured it was well attended and there was much celebration. i'll also add here that my sister has proven an excellent protege in the art of arranging and taking massive amounts of photographs during social events. heck, she's probably surpassed me on the past few mutually attended outings. nice job sarah. just a few quick things from last night without getting too far into detail and detracting from the upcoming feature entry:

- damon and i INDEPENDENTLY got our hair cut on the same day. believe it or not, we don't coordinate EVERYTHING. credit does go to double D for realizing the coincidence and making fun of us.

double D solves the golfball game after hours of intense concentration; he was pretty excited...i kicked it over shortly after this pic was taken.

- i am NOT the president of the fish club/aquarium society, although double D and i do have club members who will jump in front of bullets for us when we run into rival groups.

- i do NOT have chlamydia of the eye!!! if you don't know the situation, then don't worry about it. as i said before, i know what i'm talking about "i worked in an ophthalmologist's office for 4 years!!!"

...that's all until i get all the pics/story together. hope you had a great birthday beth!

===

the day lost to entropy

i had grandiose plans for today...get up at a decent hour, get a lot of research work done, maybe even go for a run, and then perhaps even meet up at dominick's with some friends (sorry andrea & brenda, your apology/explanation email has been sent). well rest assured that other than getting up (at a somewhat decent hour) NONE of this stuff happened. damon asked me if i wanted to go to one of our favorite places in royal oak for lunch (since he had a meeting out there in the afternoon), well since my day ended up being relatively open at that point, i figured a decent lunch would be nice and i could come back and get my other stuff done. here's how it panned out (bullets...and yes gwen, they may be kind of long!)

the indians who played 'kings'. it should be noted that gwen got quite a bit of entertainment from bringing up double D and my euchre loss from earlier in the evening.

- we drove out to royal oak; i had nothing to do with this meeting, and was still wiped out from beth's bday outing the previous night, so i said i'd just take a nap in the car during the hour-long meeting damon had to attend. rest assured i'm really good at sleeping absolutely anywhere at anytime...and given my current mattress, probably on any surface known to humankind. so i got comfortable in the civic, turned on an episode of 'the office' on the iPod and zoned out.

the sign (which beth actually taped to the big tank...incurring a $600 fine) for 'team ralphie'. apparently it worked too (unfortunately for team bowfin). the bright spot in the mid-right is actually a reflection from ralphie's eye.

- well you guessed it. 3 episodes and a dying battery later, damon wasn't back, and i decided to just take a nap and switched to music. during this period i was randomly woken up by the parking lot security guy checking all the meters, some high school kids loitering in the lot, and an old couple who obviously could not hear each other at all (the guy just kept yelling incoherently...it may not have been english, or any other language spoken on this planet). i eventually passed out. i'll note here that i had a serious craving for salt today and the salt & vinegar chips i got before we left really hit the spot...for the time being.

- i wake up maybe a half hour later and am finally getting a little restless. i decide it's time to take a walk, so i leave the car and walk several blocks to a barnes & noble. i looked through the ridiculously overpriced music & dvd section and was just about to open up a fish book when damon called and said he's still in the meeting and that the meter may be running out, and asks me to feed it for another block of time. ...so i get to make the trek back to the car.

clown fish in an anemone at the georgia aquarium

- i get back and feed the meter...there's a 3 hour time limit and we had been there for over 2 already. i put in enough money for 2 more hours (who knows how closely they check? although given my luck with parking tickets i'm not the best person to make those calls). at this point i didnt want to walk all the way back to B&N, but realize that we're actually parked next to the public library. now, i can't remember the last time i was in ANY public library (excluding UofM's), so i figured this would be an interesting trip.

me, double D, beth, gwen at BW3 on st. pat's day...good times.

- i go in, and that uniquely pleasant (at least to me) smell of old books hits me and i make my way over to the newspaper section for something to read quickly. the current new york times was gone, so i opted for the cartoon/fisher-price version of the newspaper...USA Today. well, at least it has a lot of colors, and that was entertaining. i looked at the weather map for a while and brushed up on my national geography and counted the states i've been to...i think i came up with 37 or so. google stock is on the way back up, britney spears has a new album coming out in the fall, microsoft has a new windows OS for january (vista), and they are still coming up with new theories for the barry bonds potential steriod use case. oh, and apparently hank aaron has the all-time home-run title (babe ruth is second).

- i finished the paper and actually found a copy of 'the new yorker' magazine...i passed up time, vogue, and what looked like 'highlights' for this. i got through some relatively vague comics in the mag (reference the seinfeld about the new yorker comics) when damon called me and asked where i was. this was over three hours after he had left for the meeting. well i annoyed people by using my 'inside voice' in the back of the library periodicals section, and told him where i was and that i'd meet him at the car.

hal, me, seema at 'richards all-american cafe' for AJ's birthday

- we met up with some other friends out there and decided it was finally time to eat. keep in mind that my liver was still working hard on the residual effects of the previous night, and my stomach had already started digesting itself and other vital organs. we hit up some pub and i had blackened catfish...definitely a good call.

leafy seadragon & weedy seadragon at the TN aquarium

- after an hour or two (we had to wait for another person) we left the place and it was almost 7pm. yeah, the whole day...virtually and randomly wasted. we decided to stick with one of our other plans for this trip, visiting a big fish store in the area that specializes in relatively rare saltwater fishes. well of course we didn't buy anything, that and i got to talk to one of the employees, at which point i had to bite my tongue in response to him since he was basically a condescending idiot. a comment along the lines of "well you should convert all your small tanks to freshwater for your cichlids, and all the big ones to saltwater". i just said bluntly "we don't keep cichlids" (those of you who know me well should understand that comment, or maybe you just have to be a fish nerd) and moved on. jackass.

sarah & me out for AJ's bday...notice james doing the signature 'scratching his brain' move in the background.

- so at this point i realize the epic nature of this entry and am going to do my best to wrap things up. but then again, its not really to please anyone, and if you're still reading, its your own fault!

- we leave the fish store and drive through what was apparently FIVE storms that had passed through ann arbor. M-14 is getting a facelift...its about time! too bad michigan (state with some of the worst roads in the country, and probably the worst drivers in the country) likes to do all major construction at once, and therefore cut off all major routes to and from the city. i'm sure this will all be done by october though, so that's nice.

ironically, fishes would not survive in tank water (registered trademark)

- damon and i figured after all this a low-key evening was definitely in order, especially with high hopes for accomplishing work tomorrow. we hit up blockbuster and rented 'ball & chain' which is actually an american pseudo-bollywood story type movie, starring one of my favorites, lisa ray and funny-guy kal penn (from Van Wilder and Harold & Kumar). it's a small production and you can tell from the simplicity of camera-work and dialogue, but if you're a lisa ray fan, like people making fun of growing up in indian culture (especially regarding arranged marriages), or just relatively bored and up for something different, i definitely recommend it. did i mention lisa ray was in it? kal penn did a good job too, and although he's featured prominently, he's actually not the male lead.

- anyway, that brings us to now...and i'm going to go to SLEEP. if anything, this entry should have helped get you there. hopefully the pics distracted you from the fact that the text was essentially about NOTHING. "be the change you wish to see in the world" <:><

music: "hold me, thrill me, kiss me, kill me" - U2, Batman Forever soundtrack

random pics: special thanks to double D and sarah for contributing some pics from the various events shown.