Fun with Tumors!
So not long ago I went into Charity Hospital (cause I have no health insurance) to check out the odd lump on my throat. After a number of visits and a needle biopsy, it was found to be a benign tumor of my right parotid salivatory gland (I don't know man, I have a cyst on one of my other salivatory glands as well. What the fuck?). So it was decided that the tumor must be surgically removed. Now this was discovered about a month or two before this last semester was going to end. I was scheduled to come in for CAT scans and checkups as well as for preparations for surgery. Now because it is a tumor, the only times I could come in for this craziness was during the cancer clinic days which were only Mondays and Thursdays at 8:00am.

So every Thursday for three weeks I missed school, which was two or three hours away from Charity hospital, slowly getting behind in my work and having to argue with a non-understanding professor about my absences. This is where it gets fun.

So for three weeks I miss school. On the third week, I'm thinking to myself, "yes, bring it on Doc. I'm off next week for spring break you can schedule me for appointments every damn day for all I care." In which case the Doctor comes forth with, "so we are going to schedule for two weeks from today to come back in." Now what the fuck is that shit? out of a five week period, one of which I'm actually out of school, they schedule me for every week that I will have to miss classes. So whatever, just a fluke, I'm not bitter.

So School finally ends and I have a two and a half week period before I start my summer classes. I had specifically scheduled the surgery to be the first week (Wednesday) out of school, so that I had ample time to recover before I started class. However, they call me the evening before to tell me that the surgeon had to cancel, but would free up his entire schedule the following Wednesday to perform my surgery and nothing, NOTHING BY THE GODS, barring some unforseen emergency on that EXACT DAY AND TIME would keep him from this. So my surgery was rescheduled for the week before the week that I start summer classes, but that is cool because the surgery is on a Wednesday and the summer classes didn't actually start until the following Thursday, still leaving me a good amount of time to recover before classes.

So the morning of surgery, AS I WAKE UP AT FRICKIN FOUR IN THE GODAMN MORNING AFTER A NIGHT OF NO SLEEP OF ANY MENTION, I head to the hospital with my parents and girlfriend to go under the loving gleam of the scalpel. All was going well, I suppose, I strip down, don a gown and hair net thing, and wait in this ward bed for my moment. The surgery, which I was the first one scheduled for 5:15am, was delayed a bit due to a gunshot victim from the night before. However, a little later in the morning a lady finally comes with a gurney, and after my farewells and what not, am carted up to anesthesiology (hmmm...I wonder if that word has been butchered?) for my final paperwork and for the bombardment of drugs. Now, luckily, I was told to wait on the drugs until a Doctor could look at my CAT scans again to see if they wanted to remove the cyst as well as the tumor because I may need to sign another permission paper, which I must be uninfluenced for. I say luckily because, as I lay on my gurney in naught but a gown and hairnet, protected from the world by a sheet and some foil blanket, a Doctor comes in with the greeting, "I have some really bad news." After I fight the urge to shit all over myself over a statement like that, I ask what said news was. Turns out the Surgeon's father had had to be rushed to the ER for an angiogram and that the surgery would have to once again be rescheduled, this time it is for the 9th. This date is the first full week of summer school, insurring that I miss at the very least two days of class.

All of this is just further proof that the Wallace name has just been fucked in the luck department since William!

PHUK:TH4:P071C3
I took off work last Saturday in order to attend the Big Easy Brewery's Brew Off. The fee was $10, and the idea is that the local homebrewers go to a commercial brewery and take part in brewing a commercial beer. We were given breakfast, lunch, and all the Big Easy beer we could drink as well as 5 gallons of the wort. I had an ok time, but I was extremely fucking tired. You see, I had woken up the day before at 8:00 am and had never gone to sleep that night due to a late F/X session. Now granted I was able to pass out on a bench in the brewery for about two hours, but in the long run it didn't help. Anyhow, I left the Marrero based brewery an hour or two before sundown with heavy lids and a camoflaged bucket of wort. I headed to Metairie in order to take pictures of my father's bike and of a drawing I had done, however my father was not there when I arrived. I entered into his house and took a number of pictures of my drawing then went back to my car. On the ride back home however, a cop caught me passing a car (behind a number of other cars that had just passed me) going 86 mph on the 55 mph Causeway bridge. I pulled over at the nearest cross section only to be told that the cop had somehow gotten a "call" stating that I was driving as if I were under the influence. So he demands a field sobriety test, which I passed without error, yet he still didn't feel "convinced" that I should be on the road. So he ordered me to call two people to come out to us, one to pick me up and one to drive my car home. He then gives me a ticket for the speeding (reckless endangerment ladies and gentleman; 24 mile long bridge + 55 mph x it's own private police force = BULLSHIT!), and to add on to it my license had expired on my birthday last month. Now for round two, I had called my girlfriend and asked her if she could get someone and pick me up. We live maybe 20-30 minutes away from where I was, and I assumed that she would just go next door to where my mother lives and get her. However, as logical assumptions always seem to go, she did not do that. Instead she calls one of our friedns that lives 30-40 minutes from our house in the opposite direction from where I was waiting. After about an hour or so of sitting in my car, as my annoyance at my situation marinated into the beginings of anger, the cop approaches my window again. Right as the motherfucker is asking where the fuck my ride is, my girlfriend and friend pull up, which prompted the cop to give the cute little fucking comment that "it would be easier to just arrest me". Cock sucking pig.

But I'm not bitter. I'm just looking ast a manditory court date, a fine that I don't even want to try and imagine its cost, and the possibility that my license will be suspended. So what a merry fucking weekend that was.

On a better note, Elric's (my ferret) surgery was not mortal, he seems to be recuperating well, and the results from the tumor that had been removed came back benign. So at least I didn't have to kill anyone. I feel I have bitched enough. That is all.

Quit while your a head.
It is currently 4:48 in the morning. I got home from my F/X meeting at about 3:30. I made my first head cast tonight. It wasn't that bad for my first try, though I have thought of some ways I may do better on my later attempts.

I'm tired.

I woke up yesterday morning at 8:00 in order to take my ferret, Elric, to the vet for surgery. He made it through ok, but the tumor they had to rumove was much larger than the vet was used to seeing. They sent it off to be analyzed. I have to be in Marrero at 6:30 this morning for the annual Big Easy Brewoff, and I have not slept. Yippie fucking skippy. I will sleep well tonight...and have beer fermenting. What more could a simple space monkey like me ask for.

On a brighter side, I'm being attacked by grossly enlarged glands. I have had one on my neck since I was about 13 or 14, and a couple of months ago I discovered another one there. This made me nervous so I visited the doctor. They ran my blood and CAT scanned me and all that fluffy goodness, and the results were fine. Just need them to be drained or removed or whatever. However, now the glands in my arm pits seem to be slightly swolen. What the fuck is that about? All I can say is that it better not be cancer or some fucked up terminal illness. I just started getting back on track in life.

SCOTCH EGGS ROCK!
I learned my lesson I'm assuming. I guess we shall call it karma. A number of months ago my good friend tHOR broke up with his girlfriend. During a mutually uncomfortable experiance involving left-unnamed substances and awkward, nervous silent sitting, I said some things that were unnecessary and hurtful to the lass. I did not realize what effect I had had on her until a number of days later when I got a call From tHOR recounting how his ex had driven to his house that night to crawl into bed and lay there crying and claiming her deep hatred for all of his friends. After hearing this I had asked him to apologise for me and resigned myself to my own personal feelings of shame and self-loathing for yet another fucked up action I could chaulk up on my board of how much of an ass-hole I am and figured I would never really see her again. That however is not how life works. So, minus a breif encounter at her work place, I found myself in her favorite bar and having all that that lovely shame bubble up like bile in my throat. Now let me explain something here. We all have that side of us that we try to pretend doesn't exist, I assume this of course unless I'm the only alien monkey fucking hybrid that feels this way. Now I'm not sure on what level this black bog of scum part of our beings surfaces for each individual, but when my protective barrier breaks down and the flashes of denied memory start speeding across my mind's eye before I realize what vicious pandora's box has been opened, the feeling of shame and self dissapointment well up in my so strong it almost causes me pain. I don't like to fuck up anything, in fact I don't think that anything could piss me off more than feeling like I fucked up. I don't care what it is, a job, a drawing, walking down a hall without buming into something, the sligtest mistake and I'm usually enraged. I also am big on the "Golden Rule," thing. I've been fucked over, judged, and ridiculed all my life because people didn't like the way I looked, or how I spent my fucking free time, or just for fucking being quiet. I have always respected and tried to adhere to the idealized notion that if everyone treated eachother with the respect and kindness that they themselves would want, then the world would be a much better place. So I have always tried to adhere to those standards. The night I made my comments to tHOR's ex, I was not following those standards at all. The reason I drag all this bullshit about shame and morals and dark sides is basically this. However each of us are affected by this doppelganger like side of us, we usually don't like it. We don't want to have to admit that we have that side, that person who not only is not like us but that we actually loathe and causes us further disgust that such a vile excuse of a person resides within ourselves. Our natural instincts are to turn a blind eye and create a weak psychological block on those instances in our life where we let that "Mr. Hyde" out to take his due of our consiousness. We would do anything to not be brought back to that corner beating ourselves and crying out in anguish at the memories that come when we let our guard down. It's easier to try and forget or dull the edges with fabricated justifications, but when you find yourself with the fleshed out reality of that shame and anguish staring you in the face and asking you what song you want to hear off of the jukebox your choices, decisions, and reactions suddenly retract to but a handful. As I stood there I realized that I may be able to change the reality that I had created. I had to apologize to her and myself for allowing that side of me out. In order to do this however you must battle your shame and instincts first. I'm sure that this seems small and of little challenge to most of the world, but I am the only person who I have always feared to face and whose judgements and belittleing statements caused me to flinch. Thankfully I finally did it, the girl expressed that it really meant alot to her and like some christian rebirth story I actually felt as if a heavy burden had been lifted from off of me. This is where the karma comes in, later that night one of the girl gentlman courters, decided to arrogantly and drunkenly make judgemental comments to me and just be a rude motherfucker through and fucking through. Regardless of how much I tried to be calm and not let the asshole get to me, I left that night wishing strongly for something that I could wrap my fucking hands around and use to fucking break everything in my sight. This raw anger lasted all through my sleep, and well into the next day until late evening found me feeling exhausted from the strain of frustration.

The moral of this story is to always follow the golden rule, that way when that natural born asshole comes along in your life, you can at least have a sense of peace with yourself instead of feeling like you got what you deserved.

Wake up, you're asleep at the wheel!
So, originally I had intended for a simple, reasonable night with bABY before I left. Go eat dinner, maybe catch a movie, rent some DVDs, or possibly go out for a little while and play some pool or something with our friends. After I got home from work and...ahem,....conversed with bABY, I decided to take a shower before we left to go eat. As I'm about to enter the shower the phone rings. It's an old friend of ours who was in the neighborhood, so we invited her to come eat dinner with us. We ate at Cucco's as we tried to think of something we could do while the night was still young. We later met up with oRPHAN at tHE sHOP, and somehow or another decided that we wanted to be in the presence of either uNCLE cID (who hasn't even been seen in ages) or my eX, sTACY. Well we plummeted into a mad stream of phone tag until we finally found my eX's whereabouts. Armed with this information and deadly sense of purpose we headed out to her location, picked her up, and carried her to our house.

Enter, one hour later. Those assembled in tHE sHED were: bABY, oRPHAN, sYN, our old friend and her boyfriend, and finally, myself. From that point on we talked, drank, danced, etc., until I realized that it was now daylight. I was still wide awake, and knew that there would be no real point to me going to sleep for an hour or two, so I stayed up and tried to get some of the packing, for my trip to Florida tonight, that should've been done days earlier. So, it ended up that it wasn't just simple night to be with bABY, and now I'll regret it because I'll only be able to see her briefly before I leave, If I get to see her at all. Yes all, I am a whipped bitch. I'm one of those guys that finds it hard to sleep without his girlfriend next to him, as well as the type who starts missing her before he has even left. Whatever.

I did however have a very good time with all that had attended last night, the usual tom-foolery usually associated with visits from my eX. did not commence, but nontheless, I had a great time. I wouldn't shut up to save the fate of the world, but I had a great time. Thinking back on it, it was definately one of those perfections in chemistry and the stars that you remember in later years. The kind of memory that will bring the look of nostalgia to your face and the blissful grin that one of my age has seen on many an older person's face when remembering "the good ol' days" or even worse "the golden years", saavy?

So, once again I would like to thank all of you that attended, It was a night I'll remember, and hopefully it had the same effect in return.

Burn the witches, burn the witches!
Had a pretty good New Year's Eve. bABY and I, along with sYN, oRPHAN, fRED D., and fRED D.'s midget girlfriend hung out at tHE sHED. I threw some burgers and saus-kage on the grill, bABY whipped up some deviled eggs, oRPHAN made some tater salad, and fRED D. made some weird ass chocolate cookies with Rolo's in the middle. We played a couple games, drank alot of alcohol, and made a bonfire out of some packing crates and the crosses from the Samhain party's graveyard (I saved 6 of them though, you never know when you'll need six grave markers). At midnight we fired off some explosives, drank some champagne that came in an all black bottle, and then bABY and I were forced to eat canned herring in Louisiana hot sauce whilst we held quarters in our hands(don't ask, my mother needs medication). I unfortunately had to go to bed a little after that due to me starting back at my virtual tour photographer job and having an appointment at noon the next day in a city that is two hours away.

Sunday night I will be leaving for Cape Coral, Fl. in order to visit my grandparents, great aunt and my favorite cousin (actually not just favorite, she's the only one I have that I like to talk to). She is 14, lives in Miami with my uncle Brent and her mother and siblings, has a D-cup bra (now the world knows, Cuz, hahahahaha!), and since her mother's side is Cuban, she curses me out in spanish and I don't know what the hell she is saying. I'm planning on bringing my fang equipment and making her some fangs to scare all the normal people in Florida with. I'll bring back some pix to put into lUST.

I'm glad I'm getting to go see them, but I am not looking forward to the 11 hour drive there and then back again at the end of the week.

....and a happy new year?
So christmas is finally over. Let's all take a huge sigh of relief. I can't really say that this was the best christmas of my life, though I can say that Elisa and I were happier with each other this time around. I was invited to two holiday parties, (odd) though I could only make one of them. The party I was able to attend was thrown by an old time friend of mine that I had just recently got reaquanted with (and actually started playing D & D with on a weekly basis.....Come to the dork side.....we have beer!). Unfortunately, I don't do very well around alot of strangers, especially whilst there is beer aplenty. I spent the night yelling out ridiculous things, breaking the dead bolt and door frame of my friends house (yes, that is the second time I've done this to a friend of mines house, I don't know why I do this, so don't ask), and just basicly being a ignorant fucking drunk. Chaulk them up, bub, I'm ready for another round. To add on to that list of crowning achievments, the next day at our game, I blurted out what my friend's girlfriend had gotten her sister for christmas. OY! OY! Paul Weller!

Twas the night before christmas and all through the house, only three creatures were stirring cause Elisa and I were in the Quarter with her mother and her mother's husband. We drank, we ate, we drank some more, we danced, I got shots shoved down my throat by a cute watress's mouth, we drank some more, we left. That was really that, there was some mention of me getting aggrevated about Elisa refusing to drink coffee due to heart palpatations and me not knowing.

Christmas day we woke up and took presents next door to my mother and her boyfriend before heading back to Elisa's mothers house. We had sweet potato pancakes for breakfast, and when Elisa's brother and his girlfriend got there we had turkey and whatnot. I was not happy to be there due to one comment too many behind mine and Elisa's backs. I'm not too thrilled at having to pretend to be chummy chummy with back-stabbing, two-faced socialites, which seems to be the case alot when we visit members of her family. Anyway we finally left and went back home. There we decided to delay our presence next door at my mother's house for a little R&R (nudge nudge, wink wink!)

We finished the night off at my mother's house, where they were havig a gathering of their own that involved my mother's boyfriend's family. His mother, sister, niece, and nephew were there. They're pretty good people, and we had a good time. The niece and the nephew are in our age group so we usually can find something to talk about. Good food, cheap champagne (but hey it's alcoholic, and that's all that counts). After the guests had left, we settled down to watch the first three episodes of the Neverwhere series which was written by Neil Gaiman before he had turned it into a novel (damn good one too). Now life returns to whatever is considered normal. Here I am at work. I'm going to read my Tank Girl graphic novel now.

My Taunting List of Gifts I Got!
Envy Me Maggot!
- Super, death-mega power drill with all sorts of bits, bobs, peepers, and tallywags.
- Tank Girl graphic novel/Nightmares and Fairy Tales comic.
- Pinhead toy
- Two pairs of pants and shirts from a company called South Pole. Cool pants but the shirts make me feel like calling people dawg and G.
- X2 dvd.
- Giftcards to bookstore and Blockbuster.
- Bottle of wine.
- Bread oil cantor with wee little bowls for dipping.
- Black long sleeved shirt with skull and cross-bones on it cause I'm a pirate and a well fitting sweater thing.
I think that is it, but I'm probably wrong. Merry Christmas and all that other bullshit.

I fucking hate Christmas!
I'm sure I will carry this motherfucker all the way through untill February, but still. - I have to admit this is a record. It has taken me this long into December before I've gotten pissed due to Christmas bullshit.
Now here is the deal. If I get to 10 things that have pissed me off due to Christmas bullshit, I'm going to strike back against all these carolling assholes. It starts:

1) Hot Topic:
I've been shopping at this fucking store for about 4 or 5 years. Every year I spend a goodly amount of money in the place and get a little stamp on my card. For every ten dollars you spend you get a stamp. Every year at Christmass I go and buy the majority of my gifts at this store, use all my cards in one transaction and start the whole cycle over again. This year however they decide to change. So, I come up with my purchases and they tell me they can only use one card. I put up a slight resistance, but finally agree. Supposedly that they weren't supposed to be doing that ever and that I just had a cool guy for the last 4 years or so. That's fine. After using only one card (15% off) I still have a bill of $85. I ask them to stamp my card and they tell me that they don't stamp cards on purchases that have had a discount taken off of them. So, just to make sure I'm hearing this right, I inquire. "What your telling me is that even though I'm obviously a frequent shopper here (hence the numerous already filled cards) and the fact that, even after the 15% off this purchase, I've still spent over $80 here, I can't get any stamps for this purchase?" Of couse they say no. Fuck them. Anyway that was my Hot Topic story, good night.

Short-Change.
First weekend where I don't have to worry about what assignments is due the next week. This semester sucked so much dick it made MY jaw hurt. What the fuck was going through my mind scheduling my two worst subjects math and foreign languages, specifically Statistics and Spanish 102, not only the same semester but the same goddamned day? Now of the clincher. Enter final exam week. I have an oral interview in Spanish that I have to memorize. I had been studying this thing for four days straight. In the introduction I tell what the date of the day is, which would be the date of the exam. Here I am for four days, "Hoy es el diez de Diciembre, Hoy es el diez de Diciembre" (that's the 10th of December for those of you who are worse at this shit then I am). I knew my Spanish exam was at 12:30, so I was leaving my house at 11:00 to make sure I'm there on time. About halfway to school (which is an hour from my home, by the way) I am overcome by confusion, which quickly turns to panic and then anger as I come to the realization that the date was actually the 9th. That meant that the Spanish exam was actually the following day. That meant that the exam that I was actually supposed to be going to was for my Statistics class. Ok, break it down. It's Tuesday the 9th (not the 10th), the exam of the day was Statistics (not Spanish), and the time of the exam was for 10:15-12:15 (not 12:30-2:30).

TIME: 11:00
It takes 15 minutes at deathwishing, road rage speed to get back home because, of course, my calculator is there and not in the car where it had never left before all semester long.
TIME: 11:15
It takes 35 minutes to get to my university after retrieving my calculator from my house, and an additional 15 to get across campus and to the class room.
TIME: 12:05
It is here that I create an elaborate and ingenius story that was utterly free of holes that involved my car breaking down, girlfriends being called from work, borrowing of other cars, etc., etc., etc.
Success! I am told that I can take the exam on the following morning.....the day that my Spanish exam is......and only if I bring in documentation proving that my car had been towed or worked on or anything that shows that my car wouldn't start.

Ok, the whining of this entry has gotten so bad that, I'm going to sleep (the Vicodin has nothing to do with it). Anyway, I gotta go pick up sYN and oRPHAN. Tonight is sYN and sNAKE'S birthday party. Oh, and I got my first new car today. It's a black '04 Nissan Sentra. That is all.

Original Post: 09.13.03
Ok, so entirely too much shit has happened since June. So we will pretend they never existed. I'm not in the whining mood, nor have I been recently, hence the lack of entries. Let's see, I started school again this month. I'm now a sophmore, whoop-dee fucking doo Right?

This semester I'm taking: Statistics, Span. 102, Intmd. Drawing, Basic 2/D Design, and some bullshit required Library Science shit. I've been swamped down every week due to the H.W. assignments from Itmd. Drawing. Massive amounts of drawing and paper are required for this class, but I get to stare at a naked girl for three hours, twice a week and my drawing and my ideas have both increased greatly already.

I recently picked up home brewing as a hobby. I bottled my first attempt , a metheglin mead, yesterday. It tasted good though a little too sweet, but I really didn't notice any alcohol in it. I will be attending a meeting of the local home brewing organization this thursday. Hopefully I will pick up some useful info. I'm going to bring them two bottles of my mead to try out. My next batch, which is the same recipe (but I did a couple things differently), will be racked to the secondary fermenter on monday, and then bottled on the 29th. After that batch is bottled I will have produced 24 bottles of mead. Damn. I printed up some labels for 4 of the bottles so I can store them away. The rest will be shared or drank on Halloween.

I'm also on the lookout and trying to save up for a 200+ lbs. anvil. I'm planning on trying my hand at some bladesmithing and maybe a little creative blacksmithing one day. I just don't seem to have enough time or funds to do all the shit I need to before I croak. Note to self, find a fucking vampire already and get the motherfucer to turn you. What's a little homicidal addiction in exchange for enough time to do everything, right?

So we are supposed to have this monster Samhain party this year, but as usual, almost nobody seems to have the time or spirit to want to pitch in and help. Piss me off. Anyway, I will probably end up breaking my bank accounts and freaking out due to lack of sleep and shit but I will get this fucking party on. Just hope it doesn't fucking rain.

Anyway, that should be about it. I guess I'll go back to drawing my sacreligious pictures again.