ChimpsAhoy

Steve and I were cleaning up the apartment yesterday. It’s so empty, so clean, so Pine Sol fresh. I couldn’t believe all the old knick-knacks I held onto. I also can’t believe how much chicken and stir fry vegetables we had buried in the freezer from a year ago.

I also found this. Did you want me to keep it, Steve? Should I throw it away?

More here at Found Magazine.

Last night, we hosted our first and last apartment BBQ. People came by the droves with bags of meat, chips, exotic vegetables, and booze. I manned kitchen duties, and oversaw an incredible grilling job by Jeremy and Nick. At one moment, the grease from the burgers built up on the grill and formed a fire that almost caught a nearby tree on fire. Swearing ensued. I ripped off my ‘Kiss the Cook’ apron and matching kilt and threw myself on the fire. Stop, drop and roll…disaster averted. At that point, I realized that this was the best BBQ I had ever attended.

Maybe that was overdramatic, but the fire was a bit out of hand.
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Next week will be action packed. We are entering a fruit-shaped boat into the Great Cardboard Boat Regatta for Chimps Ahoy. While we originally had no intentions to do so, we actually won a boat in a raffle while cleaning up Tempe Town Lake (”Adopt The Lake“). It was a strange day that began with cigarette butts and dead birds and ended with a huge white boat in the back of my truck. Screwy. We have to turn an 8′ chunk of white cardboard into a floating banana in six days. Hopefully, we will do just that and then post the excitement come Saturday. If you’re in the Tempe, Arizona area, look for us sinking to the bottom of the lake this Saturday, April 12th, at 11:00am. And by “us sinking to the bottom”, I mean Brad, because he’s the only sea-worthy, non-landlubber of us.

Inexpensive Stud Finder Kit

-One sturdy knuckle
-Power Drill
-Drywall Screws
-Provolone Cheese
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How was your Thanksgiving break?

Not that I care. Who really asks these things and cares about the answer? Especially here on a website where I don’t know you/you don’t know me. It’s a formality, so please, keep your Thanksgiving turkey/turducken stories to yourself while I tell you about mine:

I had an uneventful Thanksgiving. All I know is I didn’t end up with a piece of turkey liver in my mouth a la last year or the year previous. More often than not I will be plowing through my Thanksgiving meal forcing quantity not quality and inevitably a piece of turkey liver will show up in mouthland. It takes all the manpower not to vomit all over, but in the process, the entire contents of Thanksgiving dinner roll out of your mouth, down your turkey bib and onto your khakis. Disaster avoided.

I had a rare moment this weekend where I was not hastily doing homework for the impending end-of-the-semester deadline. My mind is only thinking about letterform and photography. The latter being more interesting, while letterform has only managed to burn the letter A into my retinas. No need to explain – it doesn’t make sense to me either.

Intersparsed between homework and not having fun, I did wage Black Friday (aka the busiest shopping day of the year). I made the trip down to Fry’s Electronics considering picking up an 80gig hard drive, not so much because I needed it, but merely because it was a smokin’ deal. The parking lot was so full if Burt Reynolds turned sideways, he would have knocked down half a Mormon family, two shopping carts, and scratched the clear coat off five cars with his mustache. Burt Reynolds wasn’t there, but you can imagine. It took me about 15 minutes, but I found a parking spot. It was a close call, but the car fit. I headed in and saw the longest checkout line I had ever seen. I went to the hard drive section, saw there were none left, was asked various questions by non-techie senior citizens about hard drive technology, and then left the store. Merely because I am 20, people assume I know everything about computers. And of course I do, I just don’t work there. So I left the store, found my car, neatly scratched from some bozo who doesn’t know how to park, and drove off.

Regardless, Black Friday wasn’t a wash – I purchased art supplies. I walked out of Michael’s with nine frames, two mat cutters and a ruler. I was about to leave when the impulse items – several Christmas trees – caught my eye. I bought a $15 one that looked sturdy. I brought it to the apartment hoping it would pop out of the box fully assembled with blinky lights and an animatronic Santa at the top of the tree. It didn’t. The tree had 50 tree parts and a one-page instruction sheet with a picture of a lady falling over in her chair. I didn’t understand the instructions mostly because I didn’t see where the lady fit into the whole setup process. Instead, I followed the clever color/letter coding and built the best Christmas tree in our apartment. It leans and it has no ornaments, but I shoved an empty pack of Marlboro’s on the top (interim Santa/Angel), so it’s got a bit of class now.

The apartment crew (Steve, TJ and I) took a nice trip down to Safeway today after doing many hours of homework. I picked out the finest pumpkin I have ever seen in a shopping market (I have seen some nice ones on the Internet). I can’t wait to carve it. I hate the whole “abstract scary face” with triangle eyes and square teeth, so I think I’m going to do something out of the ordinary this year. I’m fairly certain (or hoping) that Sonath (my good Cambodian buddy) is going to carve a panda in his pumpkin. I’m thinking maybe a self-portrait (that would be strange) of my head, or a picture of me and Michael Jackson water skiing. I do have two fine gourds, so if you have any suggestions, go ahead and comment on what I could make.
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So I went to Safeway and had to get some cereal. I made the biggest error in cereal purchases – never pick a cereal based on the cartoon character on the outside of the bag. Actually, the biggest error is to pick the cereal based on the toy inside. I don’t know how many weeks I ate Grape Nuts just for that collectible “Flex Me Faster Noid McFloid Belt Buckle.” Well, I made the second worst choice when I looked at that big-toothed, eye-popping crazy squirrel on the front of a cereal sack and thought, “Mmmboy…squirrel…hungry.” I thought that the comical outside said, “Delicious inside.” The taste says, “Squirrel feed inside.”

It’s so bad. It has the same look as Cap’n Crunch with Crunch Berries but with an interesting twist: it sucks. I don’t know if I will ever trust Safeway cereal again. The best part is that you get a lot of it, which is a good value. The bad thing (aside from flavor) is that it’s in a plastic bag, so when you pour it out, the thin plastic shell collapses under the pressure and it pours out about four inches too early and all over the counter, the floor, in your hair, behind the fridge, and then like two kernels roll into the bowl. They mock me. So really, you get a massive amount of cereal to compensate for how much you actually dump on the floor.

And I need to go to sleep because I swear I’m seeing things.

Greg sat at his card table, working diligently. He carefully formed each of the letters of Roman text…an inane and mind numbing task that, despite all ill feelings, must be performed for his Letter Form class. Every stroke takes incalculable concentration; lines must be straight, spacing perfect, pressure varied throughout the stroke length…everything must be exact or the eraser had to be called upon to rectify error.

It was an unnerving feeling that caused Greg to cease his activity. “Is someone looking at me?” he wondered. Only his beloved friend Steve was in the room, busied by the limitless diversion of the Internet. Greg slowly, quietly put down his pencil and ruler and allowed his gaze to intercept Steve.

Steve sat innocently at his keyboard, undoubtedly listening to a new Foo Fighters song or that U2 cover by Johnny Cash. Greg, satisfied that his paranoia was completely without cause, resumed the application of graphite to paper.

It was not long before that nagging gut feeling came back. This time Greg quickly snapped his neck up from his work, instinctively, to the only other person in the room…Steve. As he did so, he shouted the vile accusation: “STOP LOOKING AT ME WHILE I WORK!!!”

Steve, with feigned surprise, said, “Hey man, I’m just checkin’ out these phat tunes from Pat Benetar…calm down.”

For a moment Greg’s hands shook with rage and he felt an instinctive pull toward the x-acto knife on the edge of the table. Realizing the absurdity of his sinful impulse, he bitterly continued his seemingly endless task. Was the constant monotony of forming hundreds of Roman characters on a sheet of paper making him go insane? His mind flew to a memory of a story he’d heard about the art professor who worked too long at developing the holy grail of fonts, Times New Comic Sans Bold, and then completely lost his mind. “I’m just imagining things,” Greg thought. If only he could believe the comforting lies he told himself. He resumed the scrawling…

…Steve, upon hearing the telltale sound of pencil against paper, turned from the screen displaying his formidable library of Neil Diamond songs and began again to stare.

TJ downloaded some old video game system emulators for his computer and right now he’s playing X-Men 2 for the Genesis. I apologize for any lack of quality in this post because I can’t stop looking over to see him blow stuff up. I bet it’s not very fun for TJ because I keep shouting commands at him. “GET THAT HEALTH, TJ!!!” “You need to shoot him in the EYE!!!” “Why don’t you jump over those fireballs, you crazy man?” I bet he wants to kill me while I sleep.

Things seem really busy lately. It feels like I’m hurrying through one thing just so I can get to the next thing and hurry through that. I had to frantically try to clean the house yesterday between going to school and whatnot; as many people know we had our first onecommunity meeting (went really well, lots of fun). I spent all of today checking my watch while in school, looking forward to getting out so that I could do homework and go to Savers to buy my Halloween costume. It’s just one thing after another after another. I guess I’m just trying to hurry up and get to the weekend…tomorrow Greg, TJ, and I are leaving on our third annual trip of reflection to Sedona. We’re actually going to camp out overnight and then hike all day Saturday. So exciting, so relaxing, so much fun. Hopefully that will put an end to all this craziness.

As I mentioned earlier, I went today to buy my Halloween costume (to be worn down to Mill Ave. on the fateful day). As a group, we’re going with a superhero theme (anyone who’s interested in joining us is welcome…just let me know so we can work things out). I’m going as the Incredible Hulk:

I got the pants, I got the wig, now all I have to do is whip up some crazy homemade makeup I found on the internet. Hopefully it won’t stain my skin…I have class the next day and the thought of going in with all my skin tinted bright green is very unappealing.

Well, I’m off until Sunday, probably. When I come back, I will have the serenity of Caine, from Kung Fu.

“When one eye is fixed on the destination, you have only one eye to search for the way.” – Caine

Ah, I suppose it’s the height of uncoolness to congratulate myself on 50 posts, but I am, so there. To celebrate, I’ve created a likeness of myself after reaching another notable 50…

Down to business. Right now I’m listening to Def Leppard. Generally, I think they’re crap, but the song “Two Steps Behind” is good in that cheesy 80’s power ballad sort of way. Fun fact: the drummer of Def Leppard has (had? he could have od-ed or something by now) one arm. Tell your friends…

Today was the weekly shopping trip with TJ, also known as procrastination when I need to be writing a paper. We went down to Target; I had three things that I needed to get for sure. 1) I needed rat food for Kitty, 2) I needed one of those snazzy notebooks with the black and white cover that contains graph paper, and 3) I needed a new pair of sandals because my trusty (not anymore) pair broke. I didn’t get any of those things, but I’ll tell you what I did get. I got a 2 hour reprieve from doing homework, a pair of Gap pants for $3.47, some sweet-smellin’ body wash, and some baking soda toothpaste. If anyone gives me guff for buying Gap pants and bodywash, I’m going to lock myself in the bathroom for two hours, draw a hot bath, listen to angry girl punk music, and eat a half gallon of H䡧en-Dazs. I’m not a pansy!

TJ and I have decided that we’re going to open a store in the mall called “Seasonal Crap.” It will only sell stuff that is out of season that other stores don’t carry. Here’s some things that we’ve tried to buy over the last few weeks that were nowhere to be found because they’re “seasonal” items and aren’t carried year round: sandals, swimtrunks (non-ugly ones), otter pops, goggles, Easter bunny suits, and many more. Well, I guess we didn’t try to buy Easter bunny suits and that “many more” part is a lie. I just thought the list was more impressive before I started writing it. Anyway, we’ve made a lot of unsuccessful stinkin’ trips to Target and the mall. Hey Target! You know what’s out of season? THOSE FREAKIN’ CHRISTMAS DECORATIONS YOU PUT OUT IN AUGUST!!! JUST SELL ME SOME BLINKIN’ SANDALS!!! Ok, I need to go breathe into a paper bag and put my feet up.