Testing, testing…one, two, three…are we on? Can you hear me? Good, let’s being.

You may not remember me. I’m Andrew, the guy who used to post here quite often. Maybe you thought the Earth swallowed my this past week. Maybe I went into hibernation, you say? No, the fact of the matter is I’ve been busy (a little lazy too, but mostly busy), and unfortunately that cuts into posting time. I’m trying to get this site back into my schedule of things to work on.

Still, while there might have been little life lived out in cyberspace, there has been much living in my real space. Now this is going to be a very Andrew-centric recap of events, though I’m far from the most interesting character in the tale. For some of you who know the faces behind the names, you may be a little stunned by what your about to read. Keep in mind that I’m only the messenger, and your not supposed to go around killing those. Alright then, let’s get this show underway:

Friday (a.k.a. “The Hallmark Holiday”)
I can distinctly remember waking up in somewhat of a funk on this day. I’ve never been much of a fan of this particular sales excuse of a day, but I was planing to make the best of it. First was getting through work — something that has been much easier to do since I started working from the comfort of my own room back in late December.

One thing in particular was hampering me from being able to work in complete comfort that day. That was the fact that utter disaster area my room / office resembled. Since purchasing my futon, I hadn’t had a chance to rearrange things and just looking at the garbled state of it all gave me headaches and backaches just trying to figure out where everything should go and how much effort it was going to take to get it done.

Things were made much more interesting later that evening when my sister told me an interesting piece of gossip she had heard through channels about my friend Don (his sister and mine are friends, so things have a way of getting back and forth like this — no new ground being broken or anything). What was that news? Well, you’ll find out later on, but it was a bit of an eye opener for me.

Afternoon turned evening and I had wrapped up work and was trying to figure out what the hell I was going to do with the rest of my night. Everyone else was tied up in plans, and I was getting a bit frustrated. If it weren’t for all this damn junk all over the place…well, maybe if I put this here…and that there….

Two hours later and my room is now a TOTAl disaster area. Half of the furniture is out in the center of the room and half of the rest of my possessions were resting on the futon. But real progress had been made. Time for a reward. Said reward was a nice drive throughout Monmouth and Ocean counties, trying hard to get myself lost so I could learn even more back roads to places (it’s some kind of sick hobby of mine), making a stop along the way at Coffee Blue in Belmar.

Coffee Blue is what the Java Hut, my favorite coffee shop, has turned into. In this case, change is certainly not for the better. The walls which were once dark muted reds and full of artwork were now screaming in blue and yellow with nary a stitch upon them. The menu and brisk service (brisk as in just this side of rude) screamed “I want to be just like Starbucks”, which is not what I want for a hang out coffee shop. *sigh*

I returned home, powered by the lack of a clear patch of bed to sleep upon and a large cup of French vanilla, black as night, I resumed the re-construction of my room. I think it was somewhere around 5 am by the time I finally called it quits. But I do remember it being a rather rewarding slumber.

Saturday (a.k.a. “The night the bomb was dropped”)
No alarm. No loud neighbors. No explosions. Nothing at all to rouse me from the dead. Yet there I was, up at the ungodly hour of 10:30. I could not fall back to sleep, so I decided to make the most of it and resume my efforts to put my room back into some semblance of order.

The cleaning took most of the day, but my evening was going to be totally open, so in between dusting shelves and hauling bags of garbage I placed a few phone calls to make plans for the night. As evening set in and all my work came to an end, I hopped in my car and started to make my rounds to pick up my drinking partners for the evening. Thirty minutes later Sue, Patrick, Pete and I arrived at the Dublin House, ready to enjoy the night, with Don to show up later on.

Truth be told, I’m not all that happy with the recent changes to the layout of the Dub. Just a mere few months ago the Dublin House had the ultimate in drinking comfort: a couch room. Second floor view, comfortable seating, coffee tables to stack many an empty upon, and a guaranteed good time. Now the 2nd floor is the dining room and the former dining room is a open area with lots of high backed chairs and low tables, but not a single couch to be seen. I weep openly at this fact.

Instead of lounging around we decided to loiter in the back, next to where some gentleman was playing Irish folk tunes (and quite well, I may ad!). We ordered up a few rounds, listened as Irish folk gave way to Grateful Dead and Blues, and just hand an old fashioned good time. About an hour into the festivities, Don made his entrance from his roller hockey game. After the usual greetings and grabbing of brew, Don gathered everyone around, settled in and made his big announcement:

“I’m getting married and having a baby.”

I’ll give those of you who know Don a few seconds to re-read that last line and let it sink in….

Now I had heard the baby half of this news the night before through channels (his sister and mine are friends), so I wasn’t as taken aback as everyone else and had the chance to watch everyone’s reaction to the news. Pat, being a newcomer to the circle, wasn’t sure at first if Don was kidding or shooting straight. Pete had that stunned, dear in headlights look about his. The most emotional response was from Sue, who is a former girlfriend of Don’s. She had to a very in your face method of giving her two cents and her congratulations (the ratio of opinion to congratulations evened out as the night went on), which led to me some of her beer on my sleeve as she forgot she was holding a bottle over me as she leaned in.

Once the maelstrom died down, we all had a great time. Pete got a small reprieve from his musical hell when the guitarist played Jimmy Buffet’s “Margaritaville”. I was just taking in the whole spectacle and smiling all the while.

We decided to leave the Dub right after they kicked us out (a.k.a. “last call”). Now tradition dictates that we go to the Broadway Diner, which is across the street and a few doors down, but the lovable hole in the wall was full to the brim. Plan B: The Americana Diner in Shrewsbury. That’s right kids: always remember to have a spare diner, especially in New Jersey. It could save your night! ^_^

We walked into the diner and stepped back in time. We got the exact same table AND waiter that we had the last Dublin House night that ended at this dining establishment. What are the chances of that? The meal was served with a hearty helping of witty verbal cuts being slung about from all corners of the table, with the occasional shots from the waiter and the busboys (who conversed in Spanish with Pat).

We ended the night, Don and Pete driving off in one direction and Sue, Pat and I in another. My the time things were all said and done, head hit pillow sometime in the 5 am range once more. Of course, this time Prince Charming slept until 3:30 in the afternoon, where upon he awoke to a blanket of white outside.

Sunday and Monday (a.k.a. “The big chill”)
Did I say blanket of white? Make that three quilts and a comforter’s worth. For once the weatherman was right and all the chatter about a big snow storm turned out to be more than true. The snow came down fast and furious, covering over the parking lot in front of my house faster than they could plow it all away. Officially this storm was termed a blizzard (with gusts above 35mph for at least 3 hours among other conditions, as some newscaster on television explained it to me). I wrote Sunday off and worked on my sleeping mostly, waking up every once in a while to watch the flakes fall.

It wasn’t until Monday afternoon that I actually braved the flakes to begin the pre-digging out of my car, since the snow was still falling rather heavily and the plows would surely re-bury my car before the day was out.

Well, that’s it. All caught up. End transmission.

Well, during my week long hiatus it seems as though my loyal readers have been quite busy with their comments while I’ve been busy with work deadlines and turing my room upside down. I got rid of my old bed and upgraded to a futon which has opened up my room by an order of magnitude. This is good, because I’m taking some of that new space and giving it to the used drum set I bought from good friend Mike.

Of course, new furniture sometimes means rearranging old furniture to go with it all, and that appears to be the case here. I’ll probably spend the rest of the the week tweaking and twisting, pushing and pulling to get things just right (or just close enough in some cases), but it’ll be all worth it in the end considering all the time I’ve been spending in this room since I started working from home in late December.

Oh, I bet your wondering what kind of fucked up title to a post this is, but I swear it’s true! This morning I got an e-mail from Rosa herself, peddling an S&M web site. Damn the spammers and their lack of respect.