waider

peglegpete is in town. drinking occurred. ow my head, etc.

At some point my lj was limited to approximately the people I knew on talk.bizarre. Back in the day, I'd use teedotbee as many things: a sounding board, a place to post random writings, a safety valve, and so on. It's funny that I now consider a friends-only journal less "safe" than a completely open (and not retroactively censored) forum, although perhaps it's merely a change in attitude on my part.

I arrived in Seattle on Thursday evening, and promptly wound up in a pub. Since arriving:

• Telemarketing call. Telesurvey, actually, but no difference. To my corporate apartment, as I walked in the door. FUCKING LEECHES.
• Sung to by random guy on street. Well, random guy wanted to sing a song from me to Broenwynn. The fact that I joined in may have invalidated the deal. Broenwynn was amused. Random guy got five bucks and an invite to Broenwynn's coffee shop to sing to her patrons.
• Other random guy: You're a celebrity, aren't you? Who are you? Me: No, I'm just a tourist. ORG: You've gotta be a celebrity, you're grinning when you say "no"
• ORG also tried to BUY a cigarette off Broen.
• Scott #1: You guys have been sitting out here all night. What's with the accents? (Broen's accent is predominantly Australian)
• Scott #2 was the guitarist in the pub band, so for a few minutes I was wearing a guitar at least part of which was about as old as me. Alas, the band had stopped playing so I didn't get to jam. Maybe that was a good thing, though.
• Rude coffee, complete with plastic lid flipped unenthusiastically onto the counter.
• Carded. Offered my passport as ID. "This isn't you.". Jeez.
• Met up with anavolena and her SO.
• Watched some bad TV - both quality of programming and quality of reception. When Aboda say their apartments are like home away from home, I didn't think they'd actually include the dubious and limited cable reception in the offer.

Today I am going to swan around as a tourist for a bit, before catching up with Broen for more beers. rimrunner, I've not forgotten about calling, I'm just Insufficiently Organized :)

It's not every day that I read on Warren Ellis' site that someone of my acquaintance is a parent.

Every so often when I do something in code that amounts to a belt-and-braces check (such as explicitly setting errno to zero) I will add a comment: /* safety clown says */. Noone's ever asked me about this, funnily enough.

August 1995: we are in the wilds of Las Vegas, New Mexico, and strych9 is standing up at the disorganised open mic setup that someone threw together reading from Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas, the bit where they're driving up and down the strip in the road whale and Thompson decides that the tires need more pressure.

R.I.P., Thompson.

This weekend seemed really long. Not "I wish it would end", more like "the days are just packed". Lying in bed last night. the previous Friday seemed much further away than usual. I guess in part it was down to my guests; having people around to do stuff with, and doing more than just sitting in front of the idiot box or the laptop (which is in some ways a different sort of box that's just as idiotic) meant that I packed a whole lot more activity into the day than I normally would. Maybe I should take some sort of lesson from this.

Taxi on Saturday night: as we left the quays, we passed by the building where Handel's Messiah was first performed, according to local folklore. I mentioned this fact to the tourists in the back of the taxi, then went back to a somewhat stilted conversation with the driver (didn't have much to talk about, and a few of the conversational gambits went nowhere). Back at the house, I asked Dan if they'd heard me passing on this little tourist nugget; he replied to the effect that they'd heard me say something, but I'd slipped into a completely different dialect once I started talking to the taxi driver and they hadn't caught what I was saying. Much amusement on my part at this.

stoat hasn't changed a bit in the time since I last saw her, at least as best I can tell anyway. Dan reminded me of both mrbalihai and Joey Pants. Zack (Zach?) and Dave also reminded me of people but I've not yet figured out who.

"w00t!" "Now I know you're on the internet." "NO W00TING!" (stoat, either Zack or Dave, and me)

"Can I get a new fork? This one's broken" "that's a lucky fork" (Dave and our waitress at Johnny Fox's, who also reminded me of someone)