I’ve missed a couple of days of blog posting in my 2012 Initiative. I work. I’m tired. Sometimes I sit on the couch for a few hours when I get home. I can’t be in front of this computer all the time.

Here is a list of some tweets that, for some reason, didn’t get sent:

Why does my neighborhood look and feel abandoned?
010212

Sweetie it’s fucking McDonald’s. Stop doing special orders for your five children. #holdinguptheline
122211

Loawd give me 2x patience today!
122211

I’ve dribbled on myself. #vietnamesefood
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Looks like I should start hanging out at this bus stop more often. #mayor http://moby.to/d5d1kq
121811

Next up in the shuffle: Grace Jones, Erasure, Housemartins, Lightning Seeds, MJ, Beloved, Kylie, Matt Alber, Interpol, ABC, Fischerspooner.
120711

Picked up my new iMac!
121611

Street preachers are funny. #andscary
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Every song on this playlist at Noodles & Co is a prime example of what is wrong with pop music today.
110911

I’m off at 4:00 today and I walked over to Chevy’s for some of their $3.25 margaritas. LadyFabolous231 is going to join me when she gets off at 5:00.

Having such a crazy (read: abnormal) work schedule this is a little semblance of normalcy. In that manner, I mean getting off at a normal time and doing things that normal people might be doing.

She just texted me: “20 more minutes. Drink slow.” She don’t know me.

LF231 is off for the next seven days, I think. She’ll prob go see her people in NJ. (She a Jersey Girl.)

What else?

Oh, Pippin came into the store today and finally got the iPad he has been wanting. I hope he enjoys it. If I had an iPhone 4 I would FaceTime him and find out but, alas, I do not. It’s on the list though.

What else? Can I keep typing for the next fourteen minutes?

I’ve come to Chevy’s for lunch sometimes when I have an hour lunch break. The food’s not bad and it’s nice to get out of the mall and away from all the people that visit the mall. But this is the first time for an actual “after work drink” situ. It’s not bad for the price and a corporate chain restaurant. They have music playing like KQQK played: tejano mixed with Hispanic techno. Love it.

I’m writing this post in Pages on my iPad, and will upload it onto my iDisk, since my WordPress app isn’t working correctly. There, enough technology references for ya?

I see that I haven’t written any in the last six weeks. Which is unusual compared to how frequently I posted when I started this thingie here. I guess time and different life circumstances make for a lot of change and will alter one’s writing/documenting habits.

Nanowrimo is coming up in a couple of weeks (they’re already ramping up their tweets on Twitter). If you”ll remember from last year, November is NAtional NOvel WRIting MOnth and I took part in that and it was fun.

So in order to get back into writing maybe doing this on my iPad (which I love, btw) will make it a little more fun to write. Stay tuned to see if I tackle nanowrimo this year.

In a fortnight, Season Four of Mad Men starts up. If I burn through an episode of Season Three a day, I can be all primed for the debut.

Mad Men’s official website is here, which contains sneak peaks and cast interviews, recaps and full episodes from last season as well as a cocktail guide. The official iPhone app can be downloaded here.

AMC brilliantly whipped up interest and hype last summer before its Season Three premiere by allowing users to “Mad Men Yourself” which just about everyone on the planet did. The avatars were able to be used on Facebook and Twitter and everybody was a cartoon character for a while. If you were one of the few that didn’t, you can still do it here.

Bring it on, Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce!

From brendee, whom I met doing the fabulous 2007 New York City Blarg Crawl.

I know I haven’t written anything in a while, what with working 55-hours a week and all (gotta make up for all that $ I didn’t make last year). And while exciting things have been happening at The Orchard, I didn’t want to bore you with that or turn this into a fanboy-obsessed blog. So I was thinking that tonight when I got home after both work shifts that I would possibly write about

Last Saturday. I caught a whiff on Twitter that Rana Sobhany, the world’s first iPad DJ, was going to be “spinning” a set at Bluebrain, a special night at The Fridge, which is a new (to me at least) little art gallery on Capitol Hill. I was working last that night but I tweeted her and she said she wasn’t going on until 11 or so and that worked with my timetable of getting back on The Hill. The show included a downloadable iPhone app where the audience could twist the knobs and affect the sound output of the DJ, but unfortunately I missed that portion of the art show. But on the good side, I got in without paying the $5 cover. Rana was on when I got there and I listened and grooved to the rest of her set. It was pretty poppy but still fun. I talked with her afterwards and she seems like a nice person, really warm and conversational. There was some other fun art showing there too, and a live painting in process that anyone could add to. Fun.

Or I could have written about

Last Sunday. Eric H, sky mattress extraordinaire, art curator and sometimes blogger, was celebrating his 40th birthday. And what better way to do that than to get 30 friends together, start them drinking mimosas at 11:00 am and then throw them into a disco bus and take them out to the Virginia wine country for the afternoon? Some bottles of champagne made it onto the bus and there was a wide selection of yummy nibblies being passed around. We stopped at two wineries, sampled some wine, bought some wine and sat out in the hot sun. The 2nd winery had lawn bowling setup under some shady trees and that provided some recreation as well as relief from the sun. Needless to say, knowing this crowd, we all had a good wine buzz going by the time we rolled back into DC. Then topping the evening off with La Lomita? Perfect.

Or I could have written about

Today. I’ve been thinking about Mom all day, as this would have been her 73rd birthday. I miss you Mom, not only today but everyday.

And then this happened:

I’m biking down Maryland Avenue, on my way from the full-time to the part-time. Apparently I am not paying too much attention to the road as I hit a major bump and am sent flailing head-first over the bike, at 20 mph. I crash down on the pavement in a twisted heap with the bike twisting up my legs so that when I realized I’ve stopped on the street I’m not sure which way I’m facing and I cannot move. I remember at that moment being in extreme pain, yelling out “Fuck! Fuuuuuck!” and having visions of dropping florescent lighting tubes from four-story buildings, tomatoes and what it would feel like when you think you’re standing in your life and all of a sudden the walls, ceiling and floor get stripped away and you’re then standing on nothing in darkness wondering where the fuck everything went.

Luckily the kind folk who live on Maryland Ave came to my rescue. An older gentleman from across the street, who had seen the whole crash happen, came over and helped me untangle myself from the bike and get me to stand up and get out of the street and onto the sidewalk. A woman came out of her house asking if I was okay and went back in to get me a bottle of water and a wet towel. After realizing I was basically okay with only flesh wounds (no broken bones, no head injuries) and telling them I was only going one more block down the street they reluctantly left but took many thanks with them.

I hobbled on down to The School and immediately looked for a first aid kit, finding supplies and getting into the shower to rinse the blood (and hopefully the gravel too) off and clean my wounds. My left elbow and left knee took the worst of the fall, which is weird because I think I remember the wheel turning left as I fell, meaning I would have fallen on my right side. I guess it all happened so quickly those details might not be clear.

So I’m pretty beat up but at least no broken bones in this old body and thankfully there were no cars directly behind me that might have run me over. As the man from across the street said “It may hurt now but you’ll really feel it in the morning”. That’s what I’m afraid of.

It’s supposed to be 70 degrees outside today and, according to Facebook and Twitter feeds, people are pretty excited about it.

I could care less; I’m not going outside.

I guess if I had a job and had to be couped up inside all day then maybe I’d be excited about some warmer weather. But it brings no sunshine into my world even though I could go and sit outside all day if I wanted to. The thing is, I don’t want to.

Instead, I’m scouring job posting sites and finding wonderful gems like this one:

Title: Graphic layout
Description: Seeking a person for with graphic layout experience to assist a non profit organization. If you have worked on a magazine that would be a plus. This is a contract position and I need someone who can start immediately. Very pleasant work environment and nice people to work for.

Yes, that’s the entire ad placement. Obviously this is either a shitty job or the person posting it has no idea what they’re talking about. Maybe it’s a little bit of both. And this is about as good as I can find. And since unemployment benefits ran out over a month ago, something has to be done to get some money flowing in, even if it’s some shitty job that someone without nearly twenty years of experience can do.

Have you ever met someone, someone who said  ”I know you, you’re ____ ______” and you started dating seeing each other more often and the best date you’ve ever had in your life was his idea to come over to your house & order pizza & play MYST and you thought the was the absolute most romantic thing ever and then all of a sudden you’re not talking and you send packages to him that are returned with the USPS-issued stamp of UNCLAIMED all over it and you try to pretend everything is okay and then you travel to his new city to see his art show and even though you know it’s over you come home feeling like an idiot and crying the entire flight and then you call him on his birthday the next year and unload everything you’ve been feeling and five years later you’re vacationing in the new town he lives in and you agree to meet him and you dress like a total idiot because you’re so nervous and meet him at a pub and pretend like everything’s okay, which it is, but you still find yourself looking at his Twitter feed ten years after that last trip and understanding how obvious it was that someone like him could never end up with someone like you because you’re the one doing a late night google search and that you are, without a doubt, the last thing on his mind, and you also realize that people like him will never, ever, end up with people like you because (according to the exhaustive search) he’s ended up with someone that has drive, interests and a steady career and who is someone that is stable and has no destructive habits and is open and honest and accepts his partner’s faults and admits his own while at the same time allows his partners interests to flourish and all the while you, in the existence you’ve created for yourself is on a slow steady track of decline and it seems that regardless how hard you try you’re never going to be as fruitful as you were two, five or ten years ago and you wonder what your future will be like as this person you occasionally think of buys a house, obtains more pets and sharpens more skills, and all your future is going to consisting of is a 30% paycut in a tedious job that you’ll hate from day one and be forced to stay in for the next twenty years because who is going to hire a middle-aged man skilled in a dying profession and what is there to look forward in that?

I have.

Last Saturday during the beginning of the SNOwhatever I kept getting emails from Matt Alber and Tom Goss concerning their show that evening. It turns out the original venue had cancelled the appearance but Matt and Tom didn’t want to call the event and found an alternative venue, St. Margaret’s Episcopal Church. Since Matt’s music can get a little acoustic and atmospheric, I thought this would be a great place to see it.

When I got there it turns out the show was in their fellowship hall instead of their main sanctuary and I was a little disappointed about that, but I still got a seat in the 2nd row in the center. I was giddy!

I recognized Tom and spoke with him before the show and he thanked me for coming out. I wasn’t that familiar with Tom’s music but after seeing his performance (guitar) I’m a fan now.

Then, came the moment when Matt (!) came out to do his part of the show and it was great to be that close while Matt was performing. He was also pretty jovial with the intimate audience which is always entertaining. After the show, I had to go up and talk to Matt and simply thanked him for his songs, the perspective he wrote them from and how all us little queer boys felt that way growing up. While introducing myself I mentioned futurejunkie on Twitter and he’s like “Oh yeah, futurejunkie!” which of course made me melt right there on the spot.

Here are two clips of Matt during the show, “End of The World” and “Field Trip Buddy” (my favorite). They sang a duet of Elton John’s “Rocket Man” but at that point my iPhone battery was dying and I couldn’t record it. Dang, but it was beautiful.

Thanks for a great show, guys!