I’m glad I have the day off today. I couldn’t sleep a wink last night. I’m gonna take a shit tons of naps in between loads of laundry.

Antiques

The other week I went on a nice, country drive all by myself. I found myself in the light industrial district of a small town, you know the kind of place, full of sheet metal fabricators and cabinet builders. Amongst these buildings, very much out of place, was an oldish warehouse type building that had been turned into an antique shop. The siren song of this place was so strong, I didn’t even think twice. I just parked my car and headed right in to where I was greeted by the shop cat, the shop dog, and two wonderful ladies at the counter. And shelves and shelves and cases and cases of antiques. I could have easily spent hours in this place. There was everything there from baseball mitts from the ‘30s to temperance era literature from the 1880s to home coffee grinders from probably the early 1900s to antique glass of all shapes and sizes from medicine bottles to jars to vases to fancy ass candy dishes. Tobacco tins, jewelery, old school books, on and on and on. God, I’m getting a shopping high just thinking about this place. It’s massive. I bought a few glass objects for Dala and when I asked how many different people sold stuff there on consignment, the woman checking me out thought for a second and said “Oh, probably more than 40 at this point.” I can’t wait to go back. I’m dragging Dala and whoever else is awesome enough to appreciate a place like this but dumb enough to not think I’m willing to spend literally hours in an antique shop. Then we’ll go out for ice cream.

I was watching Antiques Roadshow the other day (God, I’m turning old). Some dude brought in a Hot Wheels Prototype that the appraiser estimated would bring in $100,000-150,000 at auction. I think the most expensive thing I ever bought was like $35. People do stupid shit with their money.

Drawing

I know I’ve talked about it a lot these past few Pubskis, so after this comment I’ll stop. I’m fucking awful at it. It’s a guarantee that there are 10 year olds that could easily draw circles around me without even trying. It’s partly my fault, because I’m ignoring everything I’ve learned about visual art from the handful of classes I took back in highschool to my time spent looking at stuff other people make from museums and galleries to craft shows to comics. That said, it is the most stress relieving thing I’ve done in years (minus the moments where I get frustrated at myself for fucking up). There’s not major analytical thought, no real planning even when I get an idea. All I’m doing is filling in spaces with shapes and colors while watching TV or listening to music and see what develops. When I’m done with a piece, I snap a picture of it and send it to one of my best friends, we both appreciate that it’s awful but at the same time fun for what it is, then I go back to living life. I think this’ll be my new hobby for a while.

Computers

For reasons, the game Flashback came into my memory recently. So doing what I do, I went onto Wikipedia late one night and used the article for that game as my starting point, to where ‘90s PC nostalgia washed over me as I read article after article about computers from around the world from the classic Commodore Amiga to the NEC PC-98. What’s interesting is that I’ve never seen these computers in person, let alone used them, yet just reading about them makes them feel as familiar as using DOS to bring up shareware games like Duke Nukem and Comander Keen to being excited as fuck when my dad brought home a Windows 95 PC because it was the first computer we ever had that had both a sound card AND a 56k modem. It even came with a CD-FUCKING-ROM, and not some 4x bullshit, but full 32x. Being able to play Mechwarrior 2 on that thing justified the no doubt crazy price my dad paid for that thing. Man, practically everything about computers are so much better these days, still, old computers were the shit. Have a simulated EGA shot for that early ‘90s nostalgia.

Coffee

The people I live with are good people in general. When it comes to coffee, they’re Maxwell House drinking monsters. I’m not going to lie, I’ll drink it readily because coffee is coffee and I fucking love coffee anywhere I can get it, from one of the hipster places in town that turn their nose up when all I say is “small, black, please” to the stuff you find at no-name gas stations that remind you of the coffee you used to drink at the greasy spoon that had the pie with a hint of cigarette smoke as part of the flavor profile. That said, if I can get away with it, I prefer to not drink Maxwell House every morning, it’s just that because I often work second shift and am the last person to wake up, I don’t make the coffee so I don’t really get a say in what’s being brewed. I’ve tried so hard to get everyone to drink otherwise. For a while, I thought I succeeded, as the cabinet where we keep the coffee and coffee supplies had “better” stuff in bags. Nothing super fancy, just whatever you could pick up at the grocery store. It was this way for about a month. Last week, I woke up, groggily poured myself a mug, and found myself sipping the familiar coffee that is Maxwell House. It’s not that bad, it’s just that’s what I’ve been having for years and I’m so tired of it. Can we compromise people? Can we switch to something else for a while? Folgers? Chock Full O’ Nuts? Anything but Maxwell House?

. . . Please?