If I could talk about anything I wanted, what would I talk about?

Yesterday, my old roommate and friend Brett turned 21 for the first time in his life. To celebrate, as is the custom for many, he reset the time counter since last vomit (iVomitInterval = 0).

At around 8, Brett, Bobby, Brendan, and I went to Azteca for dinner. The staff there address you as "Amigos" or "Senoras", and are kind of mexican-looking. We wondered if you were allowed to serve customers if you were obviously caucasian, and if so, if you still had to affect an accent and have "Amigos". We were served on wagon-wheel sized platters. That's about all that I remember. Then chicken en mole and tacos al carbone etc and enough of the restaurant.

We then chose to visit a pseudo-mexican bar/restaurant in Fremont to wave at Brett's work friends. They seemed like nice enough people, encouraging Brett to have two deep glasses of champagne, 3 shots of tequila, a lemon drop, and some other stuff. Brett weighs around 120 and doesn't really drink, so I'm sure we all knew at this point how our night would turn out. Two girls at the bar bought Brett another drink, sending it to us at our table. Brett was told to go thank them, and he did, as we sat at the table reviewing possible outcomes of this procedure. He chose the "quick thanks + retreat" option, resulting in good natured, disappointed carping on his return. One of the RealPeople(tm) recognized my workplace by its stock ticker name (few random acquaintances know what it is). So anyway, we sat there experiencing the bar for a while. (A man entered the restaurant, wearing a shirt which said "Leroy", in monochrome stylized lettering. As he approached, the table behind me erupted with cries of "Leroy!") (and he sat with them)

We went to Brendan's house, for lack of Bouncy Laser-tag. (A form of entertainment no longer available in Washington, apparently) (Yes, you bounce in an air-cushion maze and shoot light guns at each other.) There I saw "Seaman", a piece of Dreamcast software which simulates the raising-in-captivity of a strange, human-faced creature. To bring it up correctly, you have to spend around half an hour a day messing with it, tuning its environment, tickling it, and TALKING to it. The game requires a microphone peripheral which attaches to the dreamcast controller. Into this, you pronounce english words (at least, in the english version) to which the fish/man/whatever creatures respond. By the time Brett fell over the arm of the white stuffed leather chair he was sitting in, the seamen had learned to say "hello", and had somehow associated the word "tentacle" and "fish". We were just discovering that "sonic" generated a response of "baby" when brett muttered "i really don't feel well", and puked up about a cup of tacos carbone. The rest of us began frantically looking for some sort of containment device. I was holding half a paper towel, crumpled in my hand. Some steel ductwork lay a few feet away. A wicker basket next to that. Brendan tossed a tabloid-ish (is a tabloid-like object "tabloidoid"?) paper onto the spot of vomit. Then he ran upstairs to find something else. That's when Brett's body clenched and a gallon of alcohol-soaked azteca food poured forth from his agonized visage. "Brendan," I called up the stairs, "it's worse now!"

That was about it for interesting parts of the night. Brett isn't a very entertaining drunk person. During the drive to Brendan's, he remained keeled over in the back seat, alternately declaring, "this sucks." and moaning.

These days I have relationship problems. They are my fault. Ugh. Maybe someday people will think I was perfect (only possible in retrospect) but they'll be wrong. Even the saints weren't really perfect until they died.

The nintendo Game Cube was announced yesterday at Spaceworld 2000. It's purple, 15cmx16cmx11cm, and plays proprietary 8cm DVDs. Comes out next year. Nintendo is taking the exact opposite strategy of what they did with the N64, which they pushed out the door fast, with no game support, and is apparently "challenging" to develop for. So, just the opposite of all that.

I got a Palm Vx and omnisky modem. I am now organizing my time the paper-free way. It works pretty well, and I haven't lost a stylus ("plastic stick") yet. I can think of many useful applications I'd want on the Palm. I will look into the Palm SDK and dev stuff.

I actually need to be doing something to finish before this weekend. I also need to listen to "Rubber Ducky" in German some more. (I think he's saying "Quietschen Entlein")

If I felt sorry for myself, perhaps I would write more. Hmm. Lessee, I decided that it was completely possible to make McSausage Biscuits at home, with non-McDonalds brand items. I got a pack of pillsbury biscuit dough, some ground sausage, cheese, and eggs, and assembled what LOOK like tasty homemade sausage biscuits. Then I realized that there were 8 biscuits and I could only realistically eat a couple of them before getting really sick of that cheese singles taste. So, for the next 5 days I ate mostly sausage biscuits. They aren't bad, reheated. The very last one, today, was ALMOST down to fast-food quality. Maybe the reason TV dinners are bachelor food is because bachelors don't especially like eating the same meal , reheated five times in a row (and not because they don't know how to cook McMuffins/etc).

Okay, after some searching, I managed to work up some self pity. See, I found the website of a reasonably nice guy who is talking about his move to Seattle, and came across the phrase "My dad died a few years ago, leaving me with a nice chunk of cash from his life insurance policy." Instant angst! I found myself simultaneously hating this innocent guy for using the word "nice" in a sentence about his Dad dying, and feeling pretty sorry for myself, because although I did inherit a couple of things from my father, they are not related to his death, in my mind. To my feeling, it's more like "My Dad died 16 months ago, and all that left me was Dadless."