Okay, so I go to Chipotle very often. Probably 3-5 times a week, depending on how I feel. And I picked up this flyer they had the other day, where if you bought one of their burritos, you could get free admittance to a local art show. The flyer started with something like “Elegant Burritos, Fine Art”, which is unremarkable, but ended with the line “Go get your art on!”, exclamation and all. I was thinking “wow”. Just thinking that a company would be witty / cliche-ee / cheesy / that hip really took me back. I really like it though … they really don’t take themselves seriously at all which makes me happy. And then the other day I went to McDonald’s. Normally I would never go there, as I am a die hard Carl’s Jr. / Wendy’s fan, but I was at the mall, had just gotten a haircut after enjoying the shitty weather, but before waiting an hour and a half for service- which is a whole story in itself – and I got a hamburger and some nugs. Now, I’m a huge fan of nugs. I luuvv me some nugs. But these nuggets were rediculously fake. As was the hamburger. What the fuck do they make these things out of? Surely not out of actual chicken and grain and beef. I ate one nug, and was done. I took one bite of the burger, and was done. That shit was *gross*. McDonald’s officially gets a thumbs down. The white stripes piss me off. God. Welcome back to the 80s. With an extra dose of “are they siblings? Married? WTF is *WRONG* with that guy!?” thrown in for good measure. I normally don’t watch TV at all, but today I decided to watch some MTV of all things, and they were on. Man. Quality = sinking. So I’m doing well, minus a couple things. I’ll go through those first, then tell you how fine of a life I am leading. The first thing that is on the top of my mind is Steve (steve-o / grooveman) Chapin. He and I are great friends, and I totally screwed him and a bunch of his friends last weekend. We had a lockin that night, and he and a bunch of guys were coming down from Denver, and had told me this a while before. I told him that he was on the list. I guess I did not tell him that I did not *save* them seats, as they weren’t prepaid or anything, and it was a packed lockin. Short story is that he called before leaving Denver, and I had the pleasure of telling him that his spaces were already filled. God I feel terrible. I really go out of my way to not shaft my friends. Poke fun, piss off, abuse and generally agitate my friends? Absolutely. Shaft, screw, or short change? Never. And I did. I feel pretty bad about it. I mean, sure, I can totally rationalize the situation down to dollars and cents and business, but you know, that’s really callous – and I’m a person, not a calculator. So, instead of fluffing the blame off onto miscommunication and just relying on the numbers in defense, I’m going to feel bad. And boy, I sure do. Sorry Steve :-/ Ian Garfunkalow and his crew … wait, posted about that in the last post. Wow, long time between updates. Oops. I’ve read a lot of books recently. Recently meaning like 6 months. I’ve read Cryptonomicon, Snow Crash, Atlas Shrugged (2nd time), Runaway Jury, Unbearable Lightness of Being (2nd time), Fahrenheit 451, Brave New World, Microsoft: Reflections, 4th Perimeter, Politika and a couple others I’m sure I’m forgetting. Actually, that’s not that many books. Hmm. Regardless, I would like to re-read the Tim O’Brian book “The Things They Carried”, simply because Nick has read it, and it was the first book to introduce me to the word “Cooz”. I really like Blink 182. Not the music so much as the guys in the band. I watched this sorta-documentary thing about them and they’re a bunch of cool guys. The drummer sorta freaks me out, but the other two guys are not only great musicians, but also really smart. I didn’t expect that at all. But you know, I’m wrong a lot. Also, Linkin Park’s “Numb” gets played *way* too much. It’s a decent song – “All I Want to do is be more like me and less like you” and all – and the video is actually pretty good, but 2x an hour is too much. Oh wait, this is MTV. Have you ever been sitting there online, when you glance at your buddy list – as you compulsively do once a minute or so – and see somebody you really like be online? Oh, yes, they’re online, but of course they don’t talk to you because they’re busy / important / not there / whatever. However, they are there. Comfortingly there, like a little sign that “Hey, I’m not dead. I’m just too busy / important / whatever, but I am still alive and kicking. Here is my witty away message or what have you”. I don’t know why, but I very much like being able to see that particular people 1. Haven’t blocked me *cough*EMILY*cough* and that 2. They’re still around, somehow. Tore is a good example of this, as is Sammi, and a couple other folks. Me, though, I’m nearly always online, so I doubt anybody gets such a thrill from seeing me on their buddy list. So back to where I was, I am okay. The business is doing super – we’re nearly paying the bills! From there, it’s only a matter of years before we can draw paychecks! Yay, Capitalism! We’re throwing a huge lockin next weekend, so I’m sorta prepping this week by sleeping a lot – probably going to do the whole don’t sleep for three days thing. (Mona Lisa’s Smile looks like a good movie). HPI is doing well, but is more stressful than the store and I don’t know why – I haven’t given it a lot of thought, as stress is a way of life, but I think I will. The weather has been bad of late, and although I really like my winter wardrobe, the cold really sucks. Oh, and I’m going to my parent’s place with Keen for Thanksgiving. And I made a casserole tonight, but I sorta burnt the cheese layer on top. So it’s yummy, but doesn’t look too appetizing. Sounds about like everything else right now – doesn’t *look* too good, but underneath it all it’s pretty good nonetheless.

Okay, so last night was the 2nd [L=http://cos.everlan.com]EverLAN Gaming Center[/L] Lockin. It was packed before it even started. Unfortunately, there was a lot of tension amongst a lot of people, named [SOB] (which is comprised of my good friend steve and a bunch of denver pals 🙁 ), team [RP] and and a whole shitload of regulars who did not prepay. It’s a shame that we can only let 23 people in to the lockin – if we could have 40 PCs, I’m sure we would have filled them all. It’s not viable to pick up 20 more computers though – that’s a lot of bucks. So because of that, a lot of good guys and good friends got the shaft. That sucks. On the other hand, we made enough money to pay for rent. That’s good. Tough trade off. Corey offered to work the lockin last night and I totally obliged – I needed a night off! Ian was in from Alamosa, along with Ben from Denver. Those two, plus myself, Keen and for a little bit Tony, all went out and had some brews. First stop was Old Chicago, where I finally broke 20 beers and got my 10% off deal (w0ot), then it was off to Jack Quinn’s for a Hefe and some hot-chick-watching. That was good, minus the one chick who had the thousand-mile-stare and ended up puking on the sidewalk behind us. We then headed over to a freezing cold 15C and enjoyed some yummylicious martinis. They have the best martinis in town — but I have a really narrow scope of where to get martinis, so please advise if you know of anywhere else. Then we went home and passed out. Blessed sleep. Speaking of sleep, I slept like a baby and woke up refreshed! That’s happened twice in the past week! “WHAT!?” You say? “Randal is not tired 100% of the time!?” I know, I can see the disbelief. The store has totally turned a corner and we are absolutely ramping up — we can almost pay the bills! Because of this, I sleep better. Like, 5-7 hours a night, very little of which is filled with fretful, stress-induced tossing, turning and general unrest. It’s great waking up and not feeling really tired. For breakfast, Ian and Ben wanted to go out … it seems like they conned EDub into it too, and I followed suit shortly thereafter. We went over to King’s Chef, which is the best damn breakfast place / greasy spoon in Colorado Springs, bar none. It was super. And yummy. And filling. And just right. And then Ben, Ian and edub went home, because the weekend is nearly over. It was good seeing those guys again 🙂 So here I am at work, typing away. I have some PC heat issues to fix, along with stupid Steam to deal with. POS. argh. Oh, and this is totally a side note to Sammi, right on the front page 😉 I think you’re super, although wildly unattainable. You live like 27,000 miles away, how do I deal with that!? I can’t! You’re also a lot smarter than the average bear, and hence and have hundreds of highly intelligent, going-places and doing-things men clawing over each other to pour your coffee! I can’t compete with that! So, I’ll continue to dream and look for alternatives. You can still come here and read my drivel if you want, even if it’s under the guise of “missing home”. Ha! We all know it’s just pity – you know, like the King/Queen taking time out of their oh-so-busy schedules of golf, brunch and high-falutent conversation to address the unwashed masses 😉

So the general gist is that my life is a string of days that all run together in a haze of work work work, with the occasional attempt at sleeping more than 5 hours a night. Blah blah blah pitty party for me, blah blah blah. The store is going really well. Two mondays ago, the store made a total turn around in progress. We ran a lockin the weekend prior, and ever since, things have just been booming. We’re full+ during lunch hours, but it slacks off to nearly nothing after 5pm. That sure sucks, because I’m the post-5 guy, but I have to console my self with the fact that we aren’t going out of business due to our strong daytime. Despite that, we have an odd reboot while playing issue that has me stumped. EverLAN was this last weekend. It was really long, but a really good time. It was just huge, the biggest EverLAN yet. You can read all about it at http://www.everlan.net. I am really impressed with my roommate Matt Keen. He’s a stand up guy and has been absolutely invaluable in making the store go. He also puts up with my near-incessant bitching / whining / demands, all without a word. Because of that, we’re going to do whatever we can to keep him around. <3 keen. My truck lost a drive shaft bolt on Monday night around midnight. I drove her home, but am waiting for my $1.44 each bolts to arrive at Toyota so I can pick them up. Other than that, no other issues at all. Yea, incredible that my POS truck still works, huh? I was at Old Chicago the other night and got to enjoy see that not only is the food good and the beer excellent, it’s also a huge drug hotspot! If you’re looking for some drugs, you absolutely need to go to Old C’s, cuz they’ll hook you up. Our wait totally scored some weed while we were waiting for our food, and then sorta pranced around all happy about it. I’d like to put in a section about Girls, but I have even less to say here than about any other section. I haven’t spent any time with any girl at all, which is unfortunate, but you know, when you’re hella busy, that’s breaks. I guess I’ll just keep dreaming about Sammi 😉 It’s almost 2am, I’ll post something more indepth tomorrow as it crosses my mind.