It's all a dream - random ramblings

10/31 - This is larry - the special Halloween pumpkin. Larry managed to scare away all but 4 hearty trick or treaters that were brave enough to knock on my door. After last years success of 9 trick or treaters I had big hopes for this year. I place the blame solely on Larry. Next year I will go back to carving an entirely non threatening pumpkin in hopes of more trick or treaters.

10/25 - I had a dream last night that I was a Jedi. At least I think I was a Jedi, I didn't have a light saber but I could use the force. I was riding around in a space ship, then I ended up on a planet that looked like Tattoine. The dream started getting a bit weird at this point because all the people on the planet had sand people upper bodies and legs that look like the half built C3PO from Phantom Menace. That's all I remember from the dream, but I'd like to think at some point I got a light saber.

8/28 - I have Super Hero Stamps. I bought them at the post office. I had every intention of actually using the stamps but know I'm not sure if I want to. They are pretty cool looking with Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman striking dynamic poses. I'm just not sure the payment I send to California Edison really deserves to get a Super hero stamp. Hmmm... maybe I could send them the one with Aquaman talking to fish.

8/26 - Today I realized a frightening truth. Yesterday while I was watching Monk on TV Ted Levine came on the screen and I totally excepted him as Captain Stottlemeyer. It was shocking! Up until now whenever he came on the screen "put the lotion in the basket" would automatically pop into my head. No matter what role I've seen him in he's always been Buffalo Bill to me and i keep waiting for precious to show up and fall down the well. This is awful...I have to go watch Silence of the Lambs again to put things back to normal.

8/19 - I hurt myself today....

I have survived the 2006 Tour de Pain, officially know as the Cool Breeze Century.

The day started bright and early at 6am. Get up, shower, bike stuff together and a few quick bright of breakfast, then load everything into the car. I got to the start of the ride at was out on the open road with my bike at 7am. Almost immediately I found a group of people that was going my speed to ride with - woohoo.

The first part of the ride was uneventful save for me falling at the first rest stop. I was slowing down and heading into the parking lot when all of a sudden someone cuts across my path. I touched his back tire with my front and down I went. I lost a little skin and have a bruise on my shin but was fine for the rest of the day.

The ride really starts getting interesting (or painful) after the second rest stop. The rest of the ride is a blur of my panting and going up different hills at the blazing speed of 5.5 - 8.5mph. There were hills where I don't ever remember there being hills before.

After 3 and a half hours I finally reached Goleta for lunch. Scarf down a ham and cheese sandwich, some chips, a banana and a chocolate chip cookie then head out on the rode again.

More hills.. I think they routed us up every hill or small incline between Santa Barbara and Ventura. There was grumblings among the riders - there is no way this is only 3500ft of climbing.

Almost seven hours later I reached the finish. It ended up being 104 miles and 4700ft of climbing. Way more hills than I wanted but I did them all!

7/22 - Every year Comic-Con seems to get more and more insanely busy. I did manage to see a few people and pick on some cool toys. I even managed to find a Dumbledore action figure for a very reasonable price. Since bringing him home I have found out that he is a bit of a snob. If I put him with the other Harry Potter figures he falls over after 5 minutes. If I put him by the computer by himself he has no problems staying standing.

7/7 - In the month since I have been keeping track of my bike riding I have ridden just over 650 miles and an average speed of 15.5 mph. I have also been hit in the mouth by a suicidal butterfly (it took forever to get the yellow stuff off my face), had a string of fire crackers thrown at me, and have gotten 6 flats and a sliced tire.

6/7 - I've gone and done something incredibly stupid. So stupid that I'm waiting for people to come put me in a straight jacket and throw me in a padded room. Yes, I've done it - I've signed myself up to do another century bike ride. 103 miles of pure pain, 3400 feet of leg crushing climbs.

I do still have the vague memories of wishing for death during the last century. I remember resenting those lying, oddly colored sock wearing cyclists who told me centuries were fun. I thought they must be wearing their helmets to tight. Maybe they've become brain damaged from years of PowerBar consumption. But now I'm no better than them. Aug 19th, my personal d-day. Will I make it?

6/2 - I'm pretty sure there's some sort of dead animal stuck under my car. Whenever I'm in my car lately it smells like bar-b-que. It makes me hungry.

5/28 - Jean Luc and I just returned from a short visit to England. I wasn't planning on going but Jean Luc talked me into it. I think he's getting addicting to traveling. While there we took the train to Warwick Castle. They all sorts of re-enactor walking around giving demonstrations on sword fighting, jousting and they even fired a trebuchet. All in all a good but wet trip.

5/11 - It's that time of year where thousands of "adults" descend upon the Los Angeles Convention center for 3 days of non-stop video game action. That's right it's E3 time! Several cool things at the show, they had an enormous Optimus Prime statue, a cool X-Men 3 display, skate boarders and oh yeah...a couple video games.

5/2 - Do you ever have once of those moments where you are staring at the computer and all of a sudden lose the concept of date and time. In that brief moment you don't know what month or day it is. February 13th pops into your head for some reason and you think that could be right but you're not sure. You look at the dates of your email inbox and the messages are all dated May 3rd. That can't be right. You come too enough to look at your system clock and it says May 2nd so it must be May 2nd. Maybe I'm having an out of body experience where my head is going back in time but my email is in the future.

5/1 - Woohoo! I've finally started receiving the coupons for all the free Diet Coke I won! The only bad part is the coupons expire 8/31/06 and the folks at Coke say that 2-Liter bottles have a shelf life of 90 days. So I have 232 days to drink 140 liters of Diet Coke. That's a 2 liter bottle every 3.31 days, good thing I'm up to the challenge!

4/10 - It all seemed so easy, buy a plane ticket and head to San Francisco for the weekend. Nice and easy right? Wrong! It took me 3 hours to drive 50 miles to the LAX airport on Friday. I got to the airport at 4:25pm for a 4:30pm flight. I ran past security fulling expecting to have to start pleading with a gate agent to reschedule me on a later flight without charging me. To my astonishment, and good fortune, my flight was delayed by half an hour and I arrived at the gate just as they called my group for boarding.

3/29 - I knew it could only be a matter of time, after all it is the most horrible time of the year for me....it's Peep season! They are after me again this year and now apparently they enlisted the help of bunnies. The seemingly harmless bunny showed up first bearing a chocolate egg wrapped in foil. I happily took a bite out of the top of the egg, then I saw it - a Peep butt! I assume the rest off the Peep was cunningly hidden inside the egg as well but I wasn't going to free the Peep from its chocolate prison. I did what any sane person would have done, I chucked the Peep impregnated egg out the window like a grenade into the unsuspecting world.

I had thought the horror was over then I saw the gargantuan Peep sitting on my desk just staring at me with those unblinking and unforgiving eyes. I'm afraid to go back into my office. I left a trail of Reese's pieces that lead to the freeway in the hopes that the giant Peep can lured away but so far my efforts have been in vain.

3/23 - I went to Kmart today, which might have been my first mistake, and bought a diet Cherry Vanilla Coke. The total was $1.32 so I gave the guy $2.00 then remembered that I had 2 cents in pocket and gave that to him. He had already entered $2.00 in the register and could not figure out how much to give me back. He spent a good minute fumbling around the change drawer, then finally handed me back 58 cents. At this point my friend who was with me starts to slowly step back.

I tell the cashier he owes me 70 cents and he asks to see my receipt again. Then he starts mumbling that that aren't supposed to accept additional money after the amount has been put in the register. My friend starts backing away faster. So, I tried to calmly explain to the guy that him being a cashier and all, I should be able to have to reasonable expectation that he can add 68 and 2 in his head. Blank stare. I gave up and told him to open his drawer back up and give me 2 quarter and 2 dimes now. By this time the other cashiers were looking at the idiot cashier and laughing and the lady behind me had decided to pay with a check.

3/14 - So I've been feverishly working away coming up with more ideas for action figure theater when it hits me...I could get back on track doing these if I had more action figures and more props for them. Props are what I especially need, you have no idea how long it takes to try to make a little In 'n Out hat an then fit it onto Obi-wan Kenobi's head. Of course to buy props and more action figures I need more money. Jean luc spent all mine traveling last year. So I've decided to make a limited run of It's all a dream t-shirts. That's right, you will soon be able to walk around wearing a little picture of me waving. Yes I know it's very exciting. So if you are interested in ordering an It's all a dream t-shirt head on over and pick one up!

My Olympic Diet Coke winning count is now up to 65 2-liters bottles.

3/8 - Those evil cookie pushing girl scouts got to me again this year. Damn them and their delicious Thin Mint! DAMN THEM!

So needless to say, I had Thin Mints for breakfast this morning. Why? Because I'm an adult and I can have Thin Mints for breakfast if I want to - no one can stop me! Thin Mints and Diet Coke....yummy. Sugar and caffiene what could be better. If only those little girl scouts could find a way to super caffienate Thin Mints they would make a killing. People would be lining up around the block just to get their fix.

3/5 - I just finished watching the 3 hours of video montages and DVD bashing otherwise known as the Oscar's. I'm going to go out Tuesday and buy the new Harry Potter DVD just to piss off Hollywood. The president's rant on theatre versus home viewing reeked of desperation - how soon they seem to forget that it was DVD sales that saved their freaking butts. If they put out anything halfway decent I will brave the cell phones, crying children and blurry projection to see a movie in the theater. I went to see License to Drive in the theater for god's sake! Is it that hard to figure out that no one wants to pay $10 to see sucky movies in a dirty theater with crying children, while eating your $5 junior size bag of popcorn?

My Olympic Diet Coke winning count is now up to 35 2-liters bottles.

2/25 - The Amgen Tour of California cyclists raced through here today. I watched them go through Camarillo then I headed to Thousands Oaks to see the finish of this segment of the race. I was impressed by how many people showed up to support the cyclists. I had a hard time winding my way through the crowds to sneak into the press area for the jersey presentations. I have found that if you act like you're supposed to be somewhere and don't draw extra attention to yourself you can sneak into most places and not be kicked out. Needless to say I got some really good photos of the presentations.

My Olympic Diet Coke winning count is now up to 30 2-liters bottles.

2/20 - Woohoo! My Olympic Diet Coke winning count is up to 20 2-liters bottles now. I have the day off so I've been watching Olympic Hockey all day.

2/14 - I would like to take this opportunity to wish all the US Olympic Athlete good luck. It's important that they win so I can get free Diet Coke. Coke is having a game were you can win 2-liter bottles of Diet Coke if the US wins a medal in the event you have been assigned. Only one of the 8 events I have has taken place so far and I have already one 5 2-liter bottles! If the US keeps winning I could be set for...well a few weeks :-)

2/8 - I think I need to find more people like myself to talk to. I was waiting at a garage the other day getting new tires put on my car and this guy comes over at starts talking to me. He asks what I'm having done to my car so I tell him. He continues making small talk about cars with me. To try to end the conversation I tell him I know enough about cars to know I don't need my my blinker fluid refilled. He replies "Well, that's good to know" to which I naturally reply "and knowing is half the battle." He just stared at me at that point with a blank expression. Oh well, he left me alone after that.

2/5 - Jean Luc, wearing a very spiffy hat, was spotted by Charis in Hay-on-Wye, Herefordshire in the UK. I was wondering where he disappeared to at the end of last year, now I know.

1/29 - Ryan Seacrest has now been added to my time machine list. If I ever get a time machine this is the list of people and events I need to stop to make the world a better place. Things like stopping the inventor of UGGS - you know, those hideous furry boot/moccasin things that people love to wear with shorts and miniskirts in the brisk 60 degree weather we have here in Southern California. I hate UGGS and feel the world would be a better place without them. The same goes for Ryan Seacrest. He has always been annoying but he reached the time machine list when I saw him doing the red carpet interviews for the SAG awards. The man doesn't have an original or funny thought of his own. That and his constant references to how short he was compared to the actors was annoying. Ryan, you're a midget - get over it!

1/28 - A couple weeks ago I was laying in bed listening to the soothing sounds of police sirens and big rigs on the freeway when it hits me. I really need to update my website. - Yes, I also know I need to update action figure theater more often. Be patient, like AA this is a one step at a time deal.

1/25 - I had a dream last night that I was sleeping. In my dream I heard a noise but I was too sleepy, in my dream, to wake up and investigate. How weird is that?

1/23 - This has been such a busy month, if it weren't for the drugs and alcohol I don't know how I'd manage. Okay, maybe that's not entirely true. My drug of choice happens to be Diet Coke. I was out picking up a couple twelve packs this morning from my dealer,in this instance Rite-Aid because I go where ever it is on sale. I'm standing at the checkout waiting in line when the bottom of the twelve pack just busts open. Diet Coke cans went flying everywhere. Hitting the candy bar display, rolling there way down aisle 3, a couple to the next checkout lane. So, I'm just standing there watching the Diet Coke exodus, I look up at the women standing in line in front of me. We both are speechless for a moment then we both burst out in laughter. The Rite-Aid is looking at us like we're on crack. I managed to chase down all the escapee cans and picked up a new twelve pack. The one thing I did learn from this ordeal was falling Coke cans really don't make as much noise as you would think.

1/11 - I sent my passport in for renewal yesterday so I will not be able to flee the country if I need to for 4-6 weeks. Then once I get my new passport back it will have all those blank pages and no stamps! I'll have to remedy that.