A Win/Win Situation

I had two important events for Memorial Day:

1. Memorial Day Ceremony for the City of Lakewood.

AND

2. Memorial Day BBQ at Amy’s House!

Both of these have pros and cons.

For the Ceremony at Lakewood, I would have to wake up early and work on a Holiday. But I would be getting paid, and honestly, its not that difficult a shoot.
For Amy’s BBQ, the pros were that there were no cons. It would be a completely Win/Win situation. BBQ with friends? And I will already be in the area thanks to work? Epic victory!

For the Memorial Day shoot, we had to set up three cameras and some simple audio. Normally, this is easy as pie, except we were shooting outside at a park. A park that we had already had problems with in the past. Electrical problems, to be exact. And we had them yet again. We tried THREE different power sources before we had to plug into an entirely different building that we almost didn’t have enough cable to reach.

But we were victorious, and we shot the ceremony with no problems.

After we were done, I headed to Borders to await word of the BBQ. Figuring that they would be ready somewhere in the later afternoon bordering on evening, I settled down and started reading The Good, The Bad, and The Uncanny by Simon R. Green.



From what I read, his pacing has gotten even quicker than usual. There were entire story lines that were hurried along, and character development that was almost rushed past. But the imagination is still pretty strong, if a little repetitive. He actually introduced a huge threat, and then glossed over it with an even bigger threat. It wasn’t bad, mind you. It was just surprising just how much stuff was packed in the first half of the book. And he picked up a plot point that I had almost thought dead, but now it looks like he was just looking for the proper time to delve into it.

I got a text from Amy… The BBQ was on like Donkey Kong!

(My vegan friends will probably want to skip ahead).

I got to her house and dug into pork ribs. Delicious pork ribs. It had been too long since I had ribs of this magnitude. And the rest of the fixing’s were great. Hawaiian rolls, corn on the cobb, potatoes, and salad. I was full and happy. All this, and I had only had an apple all day, so I was proper starving.

We finished up the day with a Buffy five episode marathon: Consequences, Dopplegangland,
Enemies, Earshot, and Choices.

Topics of Conversation: The Holy Hand Grenade, peach juice, sad stories of dismemberment, hearting, half thy ass, rib drunk, broken backs, graduation parties, etc.

-Nate

A Good Place for Pontificating

Today got changed a lot. Not sure what it was supposed to be, but it felt different by the end of it.

I mostly wanted to be alone for 80% of it. Who knows why I get all solitude hungry, but the taste gets in my mouth, and I want to disappear for a while. What made today odd, was that I didn’t want to be alone in my room with the lights off, a la emo goth kid. I actually wanted to go somewhere with people around, I just wanted them to be strangers so they wouldn’t actually want to talk to me.

I sent a quick text to a few people to ask where they liked to disappear to, but I added the extra criteria of not home and had access to power. I got a lot of “Starbucks” and “Borders” which was cool, but not what I was hoping for. They weren’t bad suggestions at all, and I knew I was being vague, but I wanted a certain atmosphere.

And that’s when I remembered the Veronese in Fullerton.

The Veronese was a house near UC Fullerton. It had been converted into a coffee spot by some industrious people, who also wanted it to look spiffy. “Spiffy” being eclectic furniture, yard, and settings. Its actually a very nice, quiet place to hang out at and think, read, write, or pontificate. Pontificating is very popular with the college crowd.

I like the place a lot, and figured that would be the best place to just be at. The prices are on the high side of the spectrum, but I look at it as a donation to maintaining such a nice atmosphere. What can I say? My inner hipster is addicted to the place.

Carissa, a friend I met at the Anaheim Comic Con, joined me later in the evening to chat and check out the place. It was a good night, and I got home feeling tranquil. I think tranquility is underrated.

Topics of Conversation @ The Veronese: Tough on the soul, the Strawberry Festival, the casket store across the street, blackmail, many things I think, health insurance scam, finding the right person to tell off, complicated tangents of varying importance, etc.

-Nate