J-Sin

Last night I had to stay up late while I worked a software release. It was cathartic to say the least, but nonetheless I had to be on a conference call well past my bedtime. And that always sucks. Nothing really major happened to the stuff I was working on for the past three or four weeks. I'm glad it's over with and thus far it appears to be quite successful at least in a click-rate ratio, but I'm sure it will make my company a whole new revenue stream. That makes me think of the word 'monetize'--I really hate that word, but yet it pays my bills and keeps my family comfortable in the same token. Who knew I could be such a fucking filthy capitalist pig?

We did the baby shower thing today instead of Saturday for my brother. It wigs me out that my brother is going to have a baby. I haven't really talked about that on here because it frankly bothers me. While I respect his life choices--he fessed up and was a man--I can't help but be boggled by him knocking up a girl who he had only been with for a couple of months. The fact that I don't trust that it was truly an 'accident' doesn't help the matter either. It's not that I dislike his girlfriend (whom he is not sure if he will marry but it's abundantly clear what SHE wants from him), it's just that when you know her past (she has a toddler aged child and is 18 and has partial supervised custody of said child), you kind of feel some semblance of resentment. I'm sure it's only natural and I'm just being protective but damn it, his life had been screwed over by women enough already. Call me chauvinistic all you want but his first girlfriend introduced and helped him into a life of drugs and stupidity (his fault for allowing it to happen obviously) and his mother booted him out (interesting how all three of her sons managed to get kicked out at approximately the same age, way to go Mom!) of his house when he was at his most raw.

All that aside it was a very awkward day. It was extremely weird to be back in Winchester for the first time in probably six years or so. The Apple Blossom Mall? The Arby's I worked at? Aylor Middle School! The hellish no-merge lanes parts of I-81. It was all a very visceral and bizarre experience--and that was before we got to his townhouse. His girlfriend is due in a week and I just wish that I felt more supportive and didn't have this sense of resentment and anger towards the whole thing. I wanted the best for my brothers but they both have embraced a lifestyle of, well, Winchester. I know there's plenty of folks that read my blog who live or lived in that area and I'm not ripping on you. But that area just sucks ambition down like a whore likes semen. Gross I know but damn well the truth. At least that was my experience. Most of the people I knew and their parents didn't want to better themselves in an academic or social or financial way--including my own. Instead it was just this endless rut of dead-end blue-collar jobs, which while I respect the hard work involved, seemed to drive the nail deeper into the coffin. I see that glint in both of my brother's eyes. While I was mostly reared in that area, I did spent part of my childhood away from it. Did that result in my life going into a different direction than my brothers? I don't know. We're all different but what bothers me is that I don't believe that either one of them is very happy. My youngest brother has always seemed to a bit of a loner and depressed but while everyone in my family has been pushing him to at least finish his Associate's Degree, I just see that same slack attitude. Perhaps it doesn't help that both of them had to "grow up" at an early age--both were living on their own and paying their own way by 17. I sure as hell wasn't. Perhaps there's some unsettled guilt there, that for some reason my parents managed to stay together long enough for me to go off to college, that my college was paid for, that I got a pretty damn sweet ride. I don't belittle the opportunities that I was afforded but looking back I sure did take them for granted. I guess that's part of growing up.

Regardless it was weird being back in my home turf. Unsettling, odd, but strangely there was a sense of pride, like I wanted to take my wife for a spin and tell her yarns (did I just say that? do I need a cane now? yes!) about yesteryear (this is pretty hilarious I know!) and all that jazz. But I'm glad I didn't.

After we spent a couple awkward hours of chit-chatting time, we packed up things and left. My brother lives in a pretty crap neighborhood but hey it's his, and he pays for it, and works his ass off for what he has, so kudos to that. He apparantly lives next to a rather drunken obese Mexican man who I had to urge to move his double parked car from behind mine so we could leave. Oh well.

We went on home with Keegan strutting his stuff and check out my old 'hood. We made it down to Linden on I-66 but apparantly there was a huge accident that required multiple Medevacs and they closed the highway for almost an hour and a half. Keegan started to scream since the car wasn't moving and he was wigging out. We busted a groove onto the shoulder and went up Rt. 55 to go up to the next exit on 66 and managed to make it home in merely an hour and a half! Boo!! That sucked.

We chilled for a bit, ate crappy takeout food that promises to make my anus sore in the morning, and watched a terrible yet oddly exihiliariting movie in "Final Destination 3". Predictable horror movies are the best! And watching Shannon Doherty's younger twin was stirring!

Also to note, wget is cool. I don't dare backup Smother this way though. And yes the Del.icio.us tag for mp3 occasionally does bubble up with some cool stuff. I mean, Queen, dude!

Oleg Maskaev's knockout in the 12th round of his bout with Hasim Rahman was pretty awesome. I really thought Oleg was gonna get jacked out in the early rounds. But he held on. Russian badasses are my motherfuckers but a fight between him and Wladimir Klitschko might be a little bit of a snore unless it's just a shitload of the big punches that both of them have on tap. Wladimir sometimes makes retarded game plans on outlasting opponents when he should just use his massive frame and smother his opponent with body shots. Hasim looked like crap--where was his stamina?!? I've watched a couple other fights in the last couple of weeks but they were more or less big bores. Thankfully I just fast-forward through the boring parts on Tivo.

I'm excited for football to start despite the fact that all the teams I usually root for are probably gonna taste it. The Redskins probably have the best squad though I hope Portis and Brunell can stay healthy all year. Baseball is winding down and while the wild cards are exciting most of the divisions are pretty settled up. I'm pulling for a Detroit-Cincinnati World Series and I totally think it's possible.

Enough from me I'm going to bed...