Yours free with purchase of any value meal.
10/2/95 - I'm not a big football fan, but Mr. Hyde comes out under certain circumstances. Now is one of those circumstances. Like my father and his father before him I am a Redskins fan. I will sing:
Hail to the Redskins
Hail Victory
Braves on the war path
Fight for old D.C.
Oh, boy is this great.
10/3/95 - My favorite radio station defecated on my weekday mornings. Where I used to hear music I liked I can now hear Howard Stern put somewhat famo us people in uncomfortable situations. I'm currently listening to 50% static as my ears strain to hear the next best radio station in town which may now be the best simply because they play music in the mornings. My roommate Andy says I'm just offended by Howard Stern and he's glad Richmond will be subjected to this slap in the face. In the words of Letters to Cleo, who are currently sharing the soundwaves with a more than healthy dose of static, "I wish we had a laugh, but your just not funny". More music, less crap... quickly, please.
10/4/95 - This morning my task is easy; I'm thinking about what 4 out of 5 other people are: The O.J. Verdict. Did lawyers on both sides not pick the jury? Was the case not tried within the law? Why do we think we can judge better than the 12 people picked fairly and legally to do so. Everything we heard was filtered through the news media; is this a fair way to gather information? Don't tell me your mind wasn't made up when you watched a white Bronco chased down the freeway and the trial just strengthened your position; That's not fair. "Who else could have done it?" This question is irrelevant. It all boils down to this: The verdict has been delivered; any arguements now are against our judicial system, not O.J. Simpson.
10/5/95 - Okay, I heard news this morning. First of all, the good stuff: The Braves Won!!! Then the disturbing stuff: Jimmy Page and Robert Plant played Stairway To Heaven in concert the other night (kinda gives you the willies, doesn't it). Finnally some stuff that's not even news: My favorite color is blue. Actually I didn't hear all of that (like I said in the first sentence). The good news, I looked up on the internet (ESPN's Sports Zone). I actually did hear the bad news on XL 102 (which I have to listen to because VGO is playing Howard Stern and 104.7 won't come into my office radio). And the stuff that's not even news, well, I made that up (which I can pretty much do on demand watch: I would drink Mountain Dew with every meal if I could). I suppose the biggest problem with made up news is that no one really cares; This would explain why I don't see it on the internet or hear it on the radio.
10/6/95 - It's friday and I have cream cheese all over myself. I went to make breakfast when a friend of mine was on the kitchen phone talking to his girlfriend with whom he is having a difficult time (made even more so, in my mind, by the mere fact they are trying to settle their differences at 7:20am in my kitchen). As I walk in, having made NO NOISE, I am told to be quiet. So, instead of using a plate, I decide to slice and prepare my bagel on a stealth napkin (guaranteed not to rattle loudly against the other napkins); cream cheese gets all over it. As I drive to work and eat, I keep my eyes mostly on what little road I can see through my completely foggy wind shield (yes, very safe). The cream cheese on the napkin is mysteriously tranferred to my being (in quantities larger than I originally put on the bagel). Hey, have a good weekend.
10/9/95 - Saturday I climbed a mountain. I think everyone should do this very soon. The mountain I climbed was House Mountain just west of Lexington, VA. According to my friend Steve we hiked a 9 mile round trip; It took about 2 hours to go up and 1.5 hours to come down. The view from the top is unearthly, the clouds cast huge shadows that look small from the mountain top; birds fly under you. The scale of everything is shrunk and exploded at the same time; everthing looks so small, but the picture is enormous. I asked everyone with whom I went if a view like one from a mountain top would ever get old; what if you climbed it everyday? Andrew said "No". He grew up near the beach and believes natural beauty (such as the ocean and mountains) is a constancy that will never lessen. I believe him.
10/10/95 - For the first time in my life I, Mr Caffeine, own a coffee maker. I got it by buying a pound of coffee. At first I felt guilty; This company is giving me a coffee maker and all I did was buy $10 worth of their coffee. I got over the guilty quickly. The machine came via US Mail to my parent's yesterday. Last night I picked it up, bought a bean grinder and made my first pot of coffee at 10pm. I slept well. This morning I got up and the first thing I did was make my second pot of coffee. By the time my shower was done I had fresh coffee. 50% of a pot fits in my Bruegger's Bagels Travel Mug (which is now 50% full and resting fitfully beside me). I love coffee, now if I could only find the right woman to share it with me.
10/11/95 - The Braves won last night and I am completely responsible. My roommates and I have a scientifically tested method that is 75% effective at making the Braves win. When the Braves are down at about 10pm, if I go to bed they will win. This method has been used in their first two victories against the Rockies and was successful last night against the Reds. Baseball is so easy to understand.
10/12/95 - The Braves won once again last night due, I'm sure, to my 10:15 bed time. But that's not my theme for today... Today I'm going to get highly mathematical (I think). Okay, let's say that one person enters the bathroom and one person exits per minute. And it takes 2 seconds for a person to enter or exit the restroom. What are the chances that two people will collide? This is where I become embarrassed. There is a 4 sec window in which one person's entrance/exit overlaps another's. There is room for 15 such windows in a minute. Thus with the above contraints the chances of a collision are 1 in 15. Right? Since I've over-estimated pretty much all parameters, the chances are probably much less than my (Ummm) calculation. It seems like I'm involved in more bathroom crashes than I should be.
10/13/95 - It's friday and I'm still me. Luckily, I never expected anything else. I suppose if I had I wouldn't be horribly disappointed; there are worse situations to be in than me on a friday. True, I don't know how the events of this particular friday will unfold, but I certainly hope they will turn out as fridays have in my past. I suppose the most likely bad thing to happen would be nothing, by nothing I mean I'll just go to bed bored. I guess the worst parts about being me are the large stretches of mind numbing boredom punctuated by hope but no real, true excitement. I realize that I spell poorly, and that I've never really ever had a good haircut, but these things really have little impact on my fun potential. What I need to do is go out and hunt for fun. The great thing about this tact is that I can be a hunter and never kill anything. Or I could change the metaphor and ... I think it's talk like this that may be part of my fun deficit problem. Well, I'm going to go read my email; why don't you send me some?
10/16/95 - My roommates and I threw a party saturday night. I suppose by pretty much anyone's definition we're adults now, and that would make saturday night's party the first adult party I've thrown. It was pretty much like a college party except that my roommate Brian and my friend Brian were probably the only two people who are actually in college. It even smelled like a college party, well, at least the aftermath did; after living in a fraternity house I thought the stale beer smell came from years of beer soaking into the floor. As it turns out one night of abuse is all it takes. "The Life of the Party" (yes, those are her own words) was Kim; I wrote that because I figured that she would probably (hopefully) be reading this (I'm still not mad and the disc rocks in a teeny bopper type way which is pretty cool (sometimes)). Okay, time for a conclusion. I had fun. I like my friends. I got some new friends; I like them too. Fecalith and Unspoofable are funny words (and they're not in my dictionary; did I spell them correctly). James Brown rocks.
Oh, one last personal note to Will, Kim or Jon: Who left a green Champion T-Shirt? I found it on the floor in my room; Sassy!
10/17/95 - Yesterday was bosses day or something like that. And, having a boss, my team at work decided to crash into action. We got to together and went through the customary rounds of "I don't know; where do you want to take him?". Finally, I said Taco Bell. Taco Bell doesn't have waiters, so, being stupid, I said I'd wear a bow tie and play waiter if we could go to Taco Bell; My team agreed. We piled into cars and headed for the border. The lot was completely full, not a space to be had. Thwarted we headed for Mexico for mexican food with waiters. I took the bow tie off. I like wearing bow ties; There's an art to tying a good bow tie; you have to get it just messy enough so people can still tell what it is, but not so nice that it looks clip on. People always look at you differently when you wear a bow tie, the same way, come to think of it, people look at freak shows.
10/18/95 - Today is my sister's birthday; Happy Birthday Sarah-Cabell. Sometimes I think my sister was born without a sense of humor, but I've seen her brought to tears by a guy dressed as a duck, so I think her sense of humor can just be turned off or something. But some people, I'm sure, just completely lack the ability to find humor in anything. This is a serious handicap; there must be something we can do for these people. Perhaps it's a mental defect caused by a chemical imbalance on the pariatial surface of the trans menenigical obdula oblongata in the third occipital lobe. Or perhaps they suffer from the warped delusion that serious is intelligent. Whatever it is, I wish I could stay away from them; I have the opposite problem and the two problems really don't mix.
10/19/95 - For starters, sometimes my mind is blank; I hate that. Right now I'm not even certain what words will finish the sentence I'm writing. This must make for dull reading (unless it doesn't). My shower was hot this morning; I was going to say "toasty", but I decided that implied, in addition to hot, dry and scratchy. I have never, in my 25+ years of shower experience, been able to say a shower was dry and scratchy. I could perhaps see a sponge bath being dry and scratchy, but not a shower. My coffee is a bit weak this morning; It's made with the last gasp of a bag of beans. The gasp wasn't quite enough for 3/4 of a pot; I made 3/4 of a pot anyway and, thusly, the coffee is weak. I'm going to go read some email. Send me some. Tell me a story. Make me happier than I am right now. Thanks.
10/20/95 - Ok, here I am at work and it's the same time it always is when I show up at work. The great thing is my boss thinks I'm here early today. Most people show up around 8:30; for some strange reason, I like getting here at 7:30. Law School is registering for winter term classes now and my team needed someone to moniter the phone lines upon which registration is being conducted. I was asked to get here early and make sure nothing bad happens. So, unless my boss reads this, he thinks I'm here early. Actually, I think he does know that I get here early. He'd better. I leave early too. If he doesn't, he must think I'm the biggest slacker. Maybe I'd better enlighten him to my non-slackerish ways.
10/23/95 - Today's entry is easy; Yesterday I ran on a relay team in the Richmond Times Dispatch Marathon. Here is the Team and our times:
Me 39:15
Kevin Clancy 1:01:20
Alison Hettrick 1:01:55
Will Caudle 56:52
3:39:22
Each of us ran 6.5 miles (somewhere there were .2 miles absorbed because the marathon course is 26.2 miles long). We ran like the wind (or a breeze or something like that) but most importantly we had fun and got free stale Twinkies at the end.
P.S. The Braves are up 2 games to none.
10/24/95 - Stop Beeping. Finger. Button. Dark. Pasty. Cold. Sit Up. Stumble. Stumble. Flip Robe Flop. Stumble. Down Stairs. Kitchen light on. Freezer for coffee beans. Grinder plugged in, Grrrr Wheeeeee, Into filter. Now some water. Power is on. Back up stairs. Get towel, ditch flops and robe. Toliet is still leaking. Shower's hot, good. Shampoo, soap, what am I going to write about? Don't touch moldy curtain. Dry off; damn, this floor is cold. There has got to be some way to keep this mirror unfogged. Whoa, Hunch shouldered cold, and I thought the bathroom was chilly. Back to my room. Radio button on. I feel bad for VGO. Howard Stern is such a jerk. Brush teeth. Brush hair. Q-Tip. Don't wanna stink. Boxers, T-shirt, soxs on other bed. Did I iron last night? No, so what. White shirt on, pants too, belt and tie in other room. It's still darkish; I hope this matches. Glasses; where did I put my glasses? (On the stereo, you idiot, that's where they always are.) Shoes and watch by the bed. Quietly get down stairs, I don't think I could wake those guys up if I had to though. Pour coffee, AAAhhhhh. Keys, wallet and I'm outta here. (Elapsed Time: 20 minutes)
10/25/95 - Chalk up another mark on Lee's concert board. Last night I had the extremely smoky pleasure of seeing Joan Osborne and Rusted Root at a place called The Barn (and the name is no attempt to make it sound quaint, there was literally horse manure on the concrete floor). My one complaint was, for a place with windows that can't close, there was NO VENTILATION; The smoke and odor from the dancers didn't move far from the spot it was created and there was a lot of smoke and odor created. Joan Osborne has one of the most powerful live voices I have heard recently. Some of the songs were plain, but perhaps if I knew them better I would feel differently. She brought Cracker's John Hickman out of the audience to play guitar on a song; He was ok. 7 out of 10 for Joan and crew. Rusted Root really rolled out the rhythmic rock. They could have played percussion for the entire 2 hour set (not including the encore) and I would have been happy. The songs seemed to be skeletons on which the band fleshed out mad rhythms. I dug it. At some points during the show all 6 members would be playing percussion. I recognized about half the songs (and I own the the first major label CD). Despite the foul air (and even the word "foul" doesn't do the putridity justice) Rusted Root gets an 8 out of 10.
10/26/95 - Here is my idea that will revolutionize highway travel. This part will require your participation. Ready? Okay, you're driving down the road and you hit a bump; What does you're car do? Right; it goes 'thump'. Now imagine that a string of bumps were intentionally placed on the highway at even intervals so when you drove along it thumped out a beat. This is becoming a pretty cool idea, isn't it? One beat may get boring after a while, so what we'll do is divide the lane in half an put complimentary beats on each half. Golly, Lee, won't that make it a rhythm? YES! Instant highway art. For real complexity each lane could be a different but complimentary rhythm such that if 2 cars are side by side cruising at the same speed the result would be super cool. You could do this stuff on race tracks (Speed Metal). This is getting stupid; talk to you tomorrow.
10/27/95 - Last night I made Kurt Cobain spin in his grave; I ironed a flannel shirt. I suppose he's been spinning for a while, the shirt is made by Gant. I can't see that grunge boys and girls would approve of a brand name vestment. Well, that topic is dead; at least I can't go anywhere with it. Oh, do you want to know what I noticed this morning? The parking brake light in my car (lit when brake is on and the car is running) looks alot like a Steal-Your- Face. Perhaps my car is an medium for Jerry Garcia. Well, that topic is dead. I'll be better on monday (I hope).
10/30/95 - Let's talk about big fish in small ponds. I went to run a race early saturday morning and, strangely enough, I finished second. I didn't run a smart race; I became wrapped up in my immediate lead and ran a 5:30 first mile (with 5.2 more to go, this is not a smart thing to do). But anyway, by the time everything was done, I'd lost to only 1 person. My time was respectable, but certainly not deserving of a second place trophy. Is it just me, or do others feel funny "winning" things circumstancially? I felt like I'd rather have (assuming I could have done this with the same time) finished 10th, because that kind of finish is more in harmony with my skill level. Maybe I'm just weird.
10/31/95 - Today is the day, as a kid, that my friends and I would put on funny clothes and collect candy from everyone within a ten mile radius of my house; but you already knew that and what kind of writer would I be if I painted a Norman Rockwell picture of Halloween? (Bad? Right!) Anyway, this was also the night that we'd throw rotten tomatoes at each other and toilet paper houses (well, big evergreens in the front yards way away from the porch lights). Mrs Dixon would rip up her veggie garden in late October and leave the tomatoes in it to, I suppose, rot and make the soil more fertile. Whoops Andy, did I throw that tomatoe right by your head? And, if I remember correctly, Chris Dixon got caught toilet papering a house and had to clean it up. Sucks being a kid.