happy birthday to johnhr11, maboo and cynicalscribe!
while i was at work today i was reading greyplanet‘s recap of the hijinx that went down at the virgin music festival courtesy of an all-access vip artist pass that jazzometer himself came down from the heavens on a cloud to deliver, and lo there were goldfish crackers and lukewarm water aplenty. i started to wonder why magical tickets like that don’t really materialize for me, but then i got a text message from _venus_ where i can get a free all-you-can-eat club-level seat to a non-prime (as in “non-yankees” and “non-red sox”) game. sweet! this is even better because instead of walking around in the heat i get to sit in the club level (though not in a box, but at least it’s sitting!), and i get to gorge myself on ballpark fare. though they’ve got escalators and elevators that can take you to any level of the park you want to go to, it’s a good thing they still have those giant ramps in ballparks — i predict i will be rolling down the ramp once i get my eat on. now to figure out a game to go to… hmm…
note to all do-gooders and stalkers: my cellphone number is xxx-xxx-xxxx if you ever want to call me about goodies you ever want to unload. just sayin’. please to be not stalking too much, though.
(and speaking of goodies to unload, who wants a copy of “lost in translation” or “the terminal”? i’ve got a spare of the fullscreen versions, yours for free if you want!)
so, what have i been up to this past week or so? well, i went back to work last tuesday after running around in cooperstown (i still need to get my photos off the camera and on to the internet, though). work wasn’t anything special.
on wednesday i went to the canon/apple presentation of canon’s new cameras and apple’s aperture program. i already use aperture, but i always learn something new at these presentations. rithy, one of my fraternity brothers, he happened to be there as well since he figured he’d learn some things for his wedding photography business. the aperture presentation itself was kind of boring, but the canon rep was the same guy from the last presentation i went to and he was his usual amusing self. i got to try out the new canon 1D mark III that canon has, and this thing is AWESOME. it’d be perfect for shooting roller derby — normally cameras can give you 3-4 continuous frames per second when shooting, but this one gives you 10 (yes, TEN) frames per second. it’s almost impossible NOT to get the shot with a rate like that. rithy tried to take just one photo at a time and couldn’t… the camera ended up snapping 2 or 3 photos in a row instead. and in RAW, you can take up to 30 photos in a row as a burst, or in JPEG you can take 110 photos in a burst (YES ONE HUNDRED AND TEN YOU READ THAT RIGHT BECAUSE YOU CAN HOLD DOWN THE SHUTTER BUTTON FOR 11 WHOLE SECONDS). it sounds like a rattlesnake or a machine gun when you do a burst. it’s also got some super fancy light sensitivity stuff so it’d work great in skateland’s low light, and it only has a 1.3x crop, compared to my camera’s 1.6x (it’s nice to have some crop, since then my 70-200mm lens turns into a 112-320mm lens, but i have been wishing for something with a fuller frame. this is a perfect compromise between my sensor and the full 35mm sensor in the 5D). the only catch is that this camera is “only” $4500. *grumble* as one of my coworkers put it when i told her about it: “that’s a car!” well, a cheap car, but it’s still a car. if i got it, i’d have to make a bumper sticker that says “my other car is a canon 1D mark III”. i told cynicalscribe all about it and she said i needed a towel once i was done geeking out about it, bahaha.
on thursday i went to open skate after work. cynicalscribe and i carpooled it up and that was pretty fun. she even gave me a derby birthday present! open skate itself wasn’t as crowded as it has been recently, but that didn’t stop the kids that were there from doing dumbass things. hannahchan was about to clobber one kid in particular, but i suggested we send out a goon squad instead. i was also my usual bad-joking self:
cynicalscribe: “so where would stuff getting caught in your ass go?”
me: “um… maybe it’s like a wormhole? it goes into another dimension! … i should see if i could find anything about the theory of relativity by albert hindstein.”
cynicalscribe: “GROAN.”
me: *to yosemite slam* “…so she says that if we were a menu item at IHOP, we’d be the ‘rooty tooty dark ‘n broody’.”
cynicalscribe: “that’s right! i knew you’d like that.”
me: “yeah, i did… that sounds like something i’d come up with.”
cynicalscribe: “yeah, you’re rubbing off — stop it!”
me: “…I AM?? *looks down in mock shock* oh jeez, i’m sorry…”
cynicalscribe: “…..oh EWWW.” *skates away*
i had off on friday for my birthday, and it was pretty lazy — i imported a bunch of cds and then went with mom and anne to the macaroni grill for dinner… it was a pretty low-key birthday.
saturday i woke up a little late for derby practice (in order to get to practice north of baltimore, i need to wake up around 7:30 am, and that’s not very likely going to happen most of the time). i made it there just before 10 and practiced until about 11:45 or so. i hurt my ankle a little bit though when yosemite slam and i both fell and he landed on my awkwardly-positioned leg. it feels like a slight sprain. afterwards i picked up bruno_boy so he could get out of his non-air-conditioned house. later on we went into baltimore to celebrate my birthday at max’s taphouse. i had 3 of the leifman’s kriek (tastes like cherries!), one of the smuttynose pumpkin ale (tastes like pumpkin pie!) and i think i had one more thing as well, but i can’t remember. those belgian beers are damn expensive, though. $8 each for the leifman’s kriek! it was so worth it, if only to say that i drank $40 worth of beer in one night (including tip :P). i told my coworker kendrick that today and he said “wow, you really did have a 40!”, bahaha. later on, otto erotic and cynicalscribe showed up and the four of us got to see such amusements as a guy wearing a shirt that said “i can’t help it if i’m so awesome” come dancing into the bar, and a girl with her brothers sneaking some of otto’s cigarettes while he was away at the bar. after i took bruno_boy back to his place, i saw a house absolutely on fire… i’d be surprised if there was anything left. folks had pulled off to the side of the road, and i pulled off for a few minutes to see what was going on before thinking that was pretty callous of me and went along my way.
sunday i woke up later than i planned but not at all late if you consider i got to bed around 4 am. i drove home to find my cds (they weren’t there), but i was able to bring back my leftover chicken parmesan from the macaroni grill. changed my skate wheels back to my indoor wheels and gave them a rotation since they were getting a bit worn. i had marked the wheels a month or so ago each with a number to keep track of them — i had underlined the 6 so i wouldn’t confuse it with a 9. i realized that was kind of dumb… if i end up trying to put a 9 wheel on my 8-wheel roller skates then i’ve got even worse problems than i imagined. open skate was again a little less crowded than usual. this time there was some old man who called himself “mr. mystery” and gave the guys doing roller derby practice some advice, and he told me how he had helped the ccrg girls when their league was just getting started. it was a little bit creepy how he’d swoop next to us and start giving hints, though, since we had no idea who he was or anything. i saw demondogdondite‘s reply to my previous post, and just after i saw that i found the rest of my cds (in almost-plain sight, just as i suspected). once i get these all put into my computer then i’ll fix up a mix cd as requested.
and today i went to work and spent most of my day researching an account and working on an email to explain to a customer why they aren’t eligible for discounts or credits on price plans designed for public safety agencies. fun stuff.
i feel like i’ve got a ton of things i need to get done, but there’s absolutely no time to do them. for example: my car is 2000 miles overdue for a tire rotation and oil change, but i don’t know when i’m going to be able to take it to the garage to get things taken care of. i may have to do that saturday morning and miss out on any sort of derby practice, but with rollercon starting on thursday i doubt many folks will be around at all anyway. i’ve also got a bunch of emails and messages i need to get caught up on too. and i need to figure out where i’m going to stay for the eastern regionals in two weeks. i better get cracking on that.
