Last night I saw Shrek III with match.com girl. We wanted to see pirates, but we arrived too late from dinner. She had never had La Nova pit-fired wings before, and one of those metaphysical experiences is just not something that one can rush. Shrek III was funny, though I liked the first one the best.

During:



After:




Today on my way to drop her off to the bus station for her Memorial weekend trip to Rochester (way too early at 5:30 AM), I noticed that an entire section of main street was blocked off, the part not blocked off by Buffalo's decades long beer binge urban planning party. There were fire engines and police cruisers and traffice cones (oh my!) and I was wondering what kind of traffic accident, chemical spill, or terrorist attack was happening as no event would be staged so early in a town that prides itself so much on getting trashed till 4:00AM the night before. But the way people were walking was too orderly to be some tragic disaster. I found out from one of the spectators that someone was blowing up a building downtown, so I decided to become a innocent bystander spectator myself. I wish I had a better digital camera on my phone that could snap better photos of the building in mid-fall, but this whole event took me totally my surpise. And yes, it was awesome, as I had never seen a building fall in person. The explosions were the loudest part; the building collapsing into itself actually was far quieter than I had imagined.

Had a great weekend. I took match.com girl to the Queen City roller derby and she thought it was really cool and I got major brownie points (by the way, nice performance, dragonlady7). Things went really well on the date, especially after she came back to my place and we had several beers. I don't know where this is going, but it sure is nice to be able to snuggle next to someone in the morning.

(uncutsaniflush, last night the text of my journal was not showing up and I didn't know why. I had thought that putting the word "Date" in the title might have been some specially reserved estrip word that was messing up the parsing of something or other, so I changed the title to some silly name like wangdangdoodle that I knew would never be a specially reserved word to test things, but forgot to change the title back. It turns out the problem was actually was the e plus colon plus dragonlady7 in the text that caused the entry not be appearing, which is why you don't see dragonlady7 in standard estrip username notation).

Talked with match.com girl again tonight via phone. She does have a cute voice and her laugh reminds me of the laugh that a really awesome ex-girlfriend from my Ithaca days had. One of those "that's so stupid but I'm going to laugh anyways" kind of laughs. She was open to the idea of seeing roller derby this saturday, so most likely we'll be going there saturday after dinner somewhere (I know that the knockouts aren't skating, but I wonder if (e:zobar) and (e:dragonlady7) will be there?) I have absolutely no idea where this thing with the girl is going. I must remember--no eggs in one basket, at least not until after I've made the flan (which reminds me, I really should literally make flan sometime soon). She does like whiskey and mythbusters, so she can't be all bad.

On a different note, it's kinda funny, living on Richmond. It's really like an urban jungle. Which is not to say that it isn't a nice place to live, but it resemebles the kind of jungle you see in the movies where everything is quiet at night and then all of a suddenly the random, loud howling of a monkey disturbs the tranquility. Except on Richmond, it usually isn't howler monkeys but emergency vehicles, esp. police cars; it'll be 4:00AM and all of a sudden I'll hear "whoop-beep-squalk-whoop-beep-whoop". Of course, tonight there are real live monkey's, howling and disturbing the peace and playing with their own feces, except these monkeys have blue fur with yellow streaks. In another month or two, one way or the other, my jungle will be back to the way I like it.

While I can find many things funny, I rarely laugh very hard, and the few times I do it's usually at stuff other people don't find funny. I was researching stuff about usb flash drives when I came across this



I laughed at this for damn near two minutes. I think it was the imagery of the coffee table that did it.

It's finally on the market. My most favorite piece of art. It's actually going for a lot less than I thought it would.



If it wasn't for the fact that I've been searching for a cheap poster version for years, it probably wouldn't be my most favorite piece of art, though it might be a close second to Raphael's School of Athens.

Possible scenarios:

1. I somehow spend all the money I was going to spend buying a laptop on this piece of art. I laugh in the face of necessary professional expenses, (cue maniacal laughter) mu-ha-ha-ha-ha.

1a) #1, plus I find somewhere that scans ultra-high res versions of it and distribute it on the Internet via Bittorrent. Rare art that's in the public domain that might never receive attention due to poster companies not seeing a market for it should be made available to the public. Make up some bullshit story about "it's an investment and probably safer than mutual funds" to tell to friends and family who think that I've finally gone completely bonkers.

1b) #1a, but I don't have the facilities in my sweltering/freezing apartment to preserve it well, so I buy it and loan it to Albright knox where they can safely store it. I can always visit it to see the real thing.

1c) 1a for my own personal copy, but completely donate to Albright Knox, and find some way to write the $3000 off on my taxes, so I end up spending nothing as a net result and get an ultra-high quality scan for myself and anyone else who wants it.

2. Realize that at this point in my life, I'm really not professionally and financially accomplished enough yet to be buying expensive and rare works of art instead of buying things I need to buy to do my job well. End up being responsible and buying the laptop I need for work.