I wrote this yesterday.

It’s been a couple of weeks since Mom’s passing, and I’m still pretty down. I guess that’s to be expected and all, but I’m still forgetting that I cannot call her for both the good and bad news of stuff in my life. No one could commiserate like she could. I decided that I needed a change of environment and a place where people won’t tread egg shells with me. I am currently on vacation.

I drove down to my friend’s house in Phoenix yesterday. I haven’t made this drive for a long time. In fact the last time I drove down here is when I owned my Saturn. This trip went a lot smoother, I decided to learn from my last mistake and I avoided that 5½ hour detour that took me to San Louis Obispo. So, instead of 17 – 18 hours, it only took 12. The only real complaint I had about the drive was that my Cruise Control is broken and after about 10 hours, my right knee started to ache pretty bad. There was some really cool stuff on the drive though. I found myself envying some of the cars that I passed. For this kind of drive, where it’s just straight roads with no curvy mountain roads, I really wish that I had a good ol’ American Muscle Car. I saw just the one I wanted to take this trip with too. The brand new Dodge Challenger SR/T 8. I can’t believe how big a car nut I am. I take an 800 mile trip and I don’t talk about the sights, I talk about the cars I see. I can go on about them too. For instance, just after I crossed from California to Arizona, on an over pass I saw a bright red big rig with a red trailer. On the trailer it said “Ferrari / Maserati Motorsport.” I actually took that exit because I really wanted to follow it. But I had a moment of clarity and told myself that I didn’t know where it was going, nor whether it was going somewhere or coming back home where they certainly wouldn’t let me see what was in the truck, so therefore I got back on the freeway and continued on my way to Arizona. Outside that there wasn’t any excitement at all. I listened to a book on CD (the 4th Harry Potter book) and a few CD’s that I made specifically for this trip. I stopped for gas a couple of times, grabbed some lunch after the second fuel stop. It was good though. I was able to think about nothing. That’s kind of rare for me. When I’m awake, I rarely zone out. I think that’s why I play so many computer games… to help with that. But this trip, I was able to just put the car in 5th, arm on the window sill, and just not think about anything. I arrived in Arizona about 7 local time (6 Pacific) and was in a genuinely good mood.

I was greeted by my friend Jason. He has just bought his first house and he lives here with the Girlfriend and his daughter. He plays it down, but I could tell that he is really proud of his new house. And I’m telling you what, these house prices make it very tempting to live here. It’s a 3000 sq. ft. 3 bed 2 ½ bath with a small back yard and his mortgage is fifty bucks less than the rent for my 900 sq. ft. one bed one bath apartment. Joel (one of the owners of the company I work for) has hinted at starting an office here in phoenix, and I’ve got to say, I’m mildly interested. No. Now that I think of it, it’s January and it was about 80 degrees today. I couldn’t bear it. Maybe if I had enough cash for a winter house I’d consider it, but not full term living. Anyway, back to my arrival to my friend’s house. He showed me around, then we just shot the breeze a bit (Shannon, his girlfriend, was there too) when Shannon’s father swung by with their daughter Adrina. I saw Adrina last October when Jason and Shannon were in town, and in those few short months, their baby turned into a person. By that I mean in October, she would play and run around and stuff, maybe use single word sentences to communicate, but when she saw me yesterday she said “Hi! Come along, I want to show you my house.” It was a little hard to understand, but it was all there. That rapid amount of development staggers me every time I see it. She’s a bundle of energy! The first thing she did was take me to her little play room which was the closet underneath the stairs. She told me about all her toys, and her dress up stuff. Then after she had spent those few minutes showing me, she took me by the hand and led me to their kitchen where she had her own little play kitchen. She gave me a few pieces of face fruit which a promptly began to juggle which made her go mental. She loved it and within 15 seconds she was attempting it too. It reminded me of Ethan a lot. I’m not sure if you remember Rilla, but he would hold two objects, and then spread his legs wide, then just spazzing out with the objects still in his hands. Well, Adrina did the exact same thing and I couldn’t help but laugh. After playing with Adrina, and chatting with Shannon’s dad for a while, I finally remembered to give Rebecca a call and I thought she was going to be super pissed at me, but she forgave because of my super cute excuse. Jason and I then played some video games for close to an hour before going to bed.

This morning I woke up pretty late, 10 or so PST, and had a fairly lazy morning. While Jason was kind enough to let me crash at his house for the week, he just couldn’t get the time off work so he wasn’t about. I got on Google to check out what kind of sites I could see around Phoenix and found out that there really isn’t much to do here. A few of the things I’ve done before, like “Castles and Coasters” which is a mini-golf place with an absolutely killer Arcade, but I’m on a fairly tight budget this week and decided that If I do go there, it will only be once; better not waste it on the first day. I decided to look to see if I could find a store that sells NHL hats because Jason’s taking me to a Hockey game on Tuesday. The Phoenix Coyotes are playing the Detroit Red Wings and since I’m not a huge fan of Hockey I didn’t really have a team. I decided to throw my support (however slight it might be) behind the Red Wings. What can I say; I love cars (hooray Motor City). The weekend before driving out here I was looking for one of these Hats, but Sacramento is not by any means a Hockey town so I was only able to find one child sized San Jose Sharks hat. So, I drove down to a mall today and did a little shopping. There still wasn’t much in the Hockey Department unless I wanted Coyote’s stuff. But I was finally able to track down a Red Wings hat. I bought a few other things as well; I grabbed Rebecca a birthday present, and a board game (I’ve needed “Go” for a while).

When Jason got home from work we chatted s’more and played s’more video games before grabbing some food. We went to a place called Fajitas, and had some of the best damn fajitas I’ve ever had. We came back, did more of the same, and now I’m here typing on Mom’s old Sony Vaio. Rebecca and I went through it and I found a file full of my stuff and found some staggeringly crappy writing I had done when I was drawing a lot of Anime. I started to type out a “Manga” (Japanese Anime style comic book) that I was going to illustrate myself as well. Well, no matter how terrible it was it got me thinking about another project I was going to do. And I was going to do it with Jason as well! He and I wanted to do a Comic book, well more of a graphic novel, together. He and I came up with several ideas, but nothing really came from them. I think I’m going to be spending a lot of the free time I’m going to have this week writing a lot of those notes out and expanding on them. The rough idea for what we want to do is a story about a ship with a small crew trying to find a planet with resources because the Human race has used all of ours up. Since the Human race is so desperate because they’re on the brink of disaster, they even try to take those resources by force. This is where I think the story is going to be most interesting. We’ve all heard the story where aliens come to earth and try to kill us all (Independence Day, Mars Attacks), but in the end we (the inhabitants of the planet) fight off the evil invaders and live happily ever after. We all know that story, but the story that I can’t remember ever hearing is the story of the invaders. What brought about the desire to invade a completely foreign planet? What are the repercussions for their defeat? What do they plan to do if they succeed? Is there a contingency plan? Was there a better and more diplomatic way of dealing with that situation? Maybe it’s my fascination with propaganda that makes me think these questions whenever I hear a story about wars and whatnot, but I find it absolutely fascinating. Well, back to the logistics of this project, Jason and I were working on it about a year ago. He’s got some notes, and I have some sketches. Our first idea was that he was going to be doing the writing and I would be doing the drawing, but I think it’s more going to be me writing, and drawing, or more correctly, doing the sketches then at a later date commission someone to draw them properly. Jason I’m sure will still have a rather major role in the development of this project, but I don’t think it’s going to be as direct as originally thought. But hey, who knows. All I know is that I’m going to have a lot of down time this week and I have to do something with my time and (I can’t believe I’m saying this) I’m getting a little bored of just playing video games all day. I must be actually growing up.

Anyway, it’s already 12:30 on the 19th, so I’m going to wrap this up here. I’m sorry that this post wasn’t very coherent. I just started writing without any real thought to what I was saying. I’m fairly certain I’ll be writing another post this week. See you later.

-Rob

I’m surprised that no one got my “Snatch” quote last time.

Anyway, here’s a new, and much easier one (this movie also has a Detroit Red Wings tie in.)
“A. You can never go too far, and B. if I get busted, it’s not going to be by a guy like that!”

I haven't forgotten about my Blog

But since I only have the 3 readers, and we've been pretty much together for the past week I haven't had anything to really write about that you don't already know.

Anywho... Movie Quote:

"Mad fish Harry went mad, and John the Gun shot himself.