Sir Grump Munch

June 16, 2004

Not Dead Yet

Goddamnit, it's been about 40 days since my last update...that may be a personal record. Naturally, too much has happened in the interim for me to paint a fair portrait of everything notable, but I'll try to list what I can remember:

1) Vanessa and I settled on an apartment and move in at the beginning of July. Nice place, very sweet old landlady (reminds me of my grandma Schnabel... not the kind of gal to let the grass grow under her feet, you can tell she's always been a colorful character). Her name is Helen, she's at least 70 years old, and she swears enough to keep the conversations interesting. She lives above us, in a little building that used to house a candy store on Damen Avenue. Not an architectural wonder, or even terribly interesting, but at least it's not a goddamn cinderblock condo, and the 2-bedroom apartment is spacious, sunny, and on the first floor (a bonus when moving). Moreover, it's about 3 miles (immeasurably) closer to just about everything that the city has to offer, in a strategic location near Damen and Addison which is close to the train, within walking distance of good groceries, some shopping, lots of restaurants, etc. The only real downside is that we'll have to drive to get to Ras Dashen, but we are close enough to walk to Ethio Cafe, Pick Me Up, etc. It all balances out. I won't miss being close to the lake, because I never really took advantage of it, and it's still just a couple miles away. Best of all, no more driving down for Vanessa every weekend and no more train rides for me to Shitsville, USA (Milwaukee).

2) Went to my first scooter rally of the season a couple weekends ago, this one was partially in Chicago (at a transvestite bar that Chad has become infatuated with lately, being something of a cross-dresser himself) and partially at a campground near Rockford, IL. The ride out was beautiful, gorgeous weather, no catastrophic breakdowns. It was a bit mosquito-infested and soggy at the campsite, and remote (from decent restaurants, things to do, good scenery, etc) in a strange way, but it only rained for a bit during the night and goodtimes were had by all. Highlights included Abe freaking a grotesquely-enhanced shemale on Friday night, the destruction and burning of the usual crap (plastic scooter, picnic table), an accident on a lonely country road at night (luckily the girl wasn't hurt badly, but she should've been wearing gloves and should not have been riding after drinking), and a perfect ride back to Chicago in a gang of four, which is really the ideal size for a scooter group. You can see pictures here.

3) Perhaps the most shocking news of all, though, is that as I am typing this, files are being stuffed and ftp'd to Royle Printing (in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin) who has the honor of printing the one, the only, Scooterworks Catalog No. 5. I know, it's only been a goddamn year+ in the making, with an estimated 400 hours of night/weekend overtime (on salary). So many hours of toil, tedium, and frustration, all about to "bear fruit" in the form of 30,000 or so printed catalogs, weighing-in at a healty 92 full-color pages each. That's a fuckload of paper, time and money; needless to say, I hope the sonofabitch turns out well. (sorry, trees!) What this means, at least for the immediate future, is that I'll be spending the next few days on a nervous "field trip" of sorts, renting a car, staying in a hotel, and overseeing the whole thing from proofs to presstime. I pray that we caught most of the errors and that the paper looks nice with ink on it...I know the contents are pretty good and blow anything we've done previously out of the water and straight into hell.

So today I've been running around like a chicken w/ my head cut off, scrambling to make a couple last-minute additions, getting all the files together, cleaning shit up, "collecting for output," etc. Had some real trials; first I ran out of hard drive space about 2/3rds of the way through collecting for output, so I had to trash a bunch of shit to free up a few more gigs. Then my incredibly-slow CD burner took its sweet fucking time (about 45 minutes per 700 mb CD) THREE TIMES to burn an entire CD, only to have an error at the very end which nullified the whole deal. Those discs were smashed with fury and their remains scattered to the trash can. Now I'm here at midnight, trying to Stuff(it) the four gigs worth of files, in smaller increments, so that I can send them to the printer via ftp tonight and they'll have them tomorrow. So far it's going painfully slowly, I may be here all night at this rate. I also have no clean clothes at home, so I'll be bringing dirty laundry with me. Wish me luck...

I've aged 20 years in five. My cats hate me because I'm never home. I'm surprised I still have a girlfriend. I haven't exercised or enjoyed the seasons, save for a couple of rare occasions, in the better part of six months. I can't remember the last time I went grocery shopping, cooked a decent meal at home, or "called it a day" while it was still light out. My family probably wonders if I'm still alive, which leads me to my final "big news:"

4) My mom has the innernet way out there in Java, SD. Jesus H. Christ. Mom, if you read this (I doubt it), I love you and miss you. Will send Mother's Day stuff soon, possibly even before your birthday in August.

Posted by pj at June 16, 2004 11:24 PM