I made this
wallpaper and this
wallpaper. They are related, but the first is only 1024×768 with 1 variation, and the second is only 1600×1200 with 15 variations.
As most of you know, I’ve been having a hard time lately. So, lately, I’ve been trying to live the single life to the max. So, Saturday, I decided to dub it Miles Day.
Miles Day began at 10:30. I was up, showered, and dressed in that order. I queued up some kickin’ tunes on iTunes (lately it’s been Death Cab for Cutie – that guys needs a girlfriend he can hold onto), and I took off for the monopolis that is Sioux Falls.
The trip went well. I did not fall asleep, nod off, and I got to sing a lot. Apparently, everyone else knew about Miles Day, too, because the streets and stores were crammed to the gills with people.
First stop: Petco. I noticed the other day that Haji’s skin is getting pretty dried out. I know. “How can you tell? She’s a turtle! She’s the driest animal in the world! What, does she creak when she crawls now? Does she have another wrinkle? Do you get a shock when you pick her up?” Look, I just know, okay. So, I’m hoping that getting her new soil, and moist soil at that, should help her out. But, Petco was busy. Apparently, winter isn’t the best season for selling reptiles; little kids want some sort of large, dentally-challenged rodent to ignore instead. So, it took a while for me to find the reptile area. I think I passed the same Petco employee three times, but I apparently didn’t look lost enough. I grabbed two bricks of soil, and, while at the checkout, donate four bucks to some sort of animal saving thing. The neat thing, I got to write Haji’s name on the little carboard ornament things.
Then I walked across the street to Barms and Nobul. (I wrote it that way because the way I wrote it before didn’t look right, so I deliberately misspelled it so no one can make fun of me.) If there’s one thing worse than driving in Sioux Falls, it’s walking in Sioux Falls. The driver’s in Sioux Falls are not only impatient, but they are blood thirsty. Like the hounds of Mordor. Barms and Nobul was nice. I love books. I had meant to get a book on Spanish Verbs, but I instead walked out with the Complete Works of Emily Dickenson and Diary by Chuck Palanuik. The return walk was even worse. I had to wait through an entire cycle of traffic because some idiots got themselves into a “snake-eating-tale” kind of paradox traffic jam.
Back in the car, some neato bedito driving, and I got back on the road. The next place I went was to Best Buy. My usual reason for going to Best Buy is to purchase music. HAHAHHAH!!! Yeah, right. I go for special collector editions of movies. I considered Punch Drunk Love. Some day I’ll get that and Magnolia. I looked for Snatch, but I must have missed it. I was, however, going to buy the X-Men Collection. Then I got to the line. When Best Buy gets really busy, they set up some shopping carts and make you wade your way through the software. I would have had to start at the printers, and I had a movie to catch. I stashed the DVD in a rack of phone cards and left the store.
My next stop was West Mall 7. West Mall 7 gets movies a little after the big names, but it only charges $3 per show. Flat rates for popcorn, candy, and soda. You just say, “Give me a soda.” They don’t pressure you to buy a large instead of a small even though the small is for your 8 year old hyper-active diabetic half-son because you promised him one high sugar snack a week and his mom had him the rest of the week. I went and saw Shark Tale. It wasn’t bad. There were couple of moments where I laughed out loud, but no one else did at those moments. And when everyone else laughed, I was thinking, “Oh, I got it; I just didn’t ‘hink it was funny.” I kinda fell into the crack of being older than the kids who were there and younger than the parents who were simply doing it to keep the screaming down. But I got my own enjoyment out of it.
After the movie, I hit church hardcore. My church of choice on Saturday nights in Sioux Falls is Our Lady of Guadalupe. The cool thing about it’s Saturday mass is that it’s bilingual. Megan and I went a couple of times. It’s a bit odd being one of four people who don’t natively speak spanish. I was a minority. I, of course, understood half of the mass for sure, the English half. Of the Spanish half, I got about 2/5 of that. Of, 2/5 of 1/2 is 2/10 or 1/5. And 1/2 plus 1/5 is 7/10 which is about 70%. So, if the mass was a dollar, I would have first probably gotten three quarters from the clerk, and then the clerk redoes the math in his head, being Chinese and all, and then takes one of the quarters back and give me back two dimes instead.
The Spanish speaking people really know how to do church music. They are a passionate people who know how to have a good time and relax. They even have siesta time in the middle of the day. But, if there is one thing they know, it’s Jesus and how much it hurt when he died. So, when they lament him, the music is deliciously minor and mournful. When it’s a responsorial psalm, though, the tunes seem fit more appropriatly as the background soundtrack for someone’s quincienera. That, and they can usually tell when you can’t speak spanish. For instance, everyone before me in the communion line was Spanish speaking. So, he says, “El Cuerpo De Cristo” and they say, “Amen” (pronounce ah-men). Then he gets to me and says, “Body of Christ”. I almost didn’t answer because it through me off, but I think my skin color was a dead giveaway.
My next, and last, stop was HuHot. I was probably one of the only single parties there, but I didn’t mind. The place was just as crowded as everywhere else had been. I got egg drop soup. I had a good time. A good meal, simple and quiet and lonely. From there, I left for home to discover that my Radiohead DVD “The Most Gigantic Lying Mouth of All Time”, which was their internet only TV show for a while. After getting home, I spent some time at Bob and Holly’s, just hanging out. Bob got a new computer game called “Hot Rod Jungle Fever” or something. It was one of the worst computer games I have ever seen ever in my life. And that is very extremely true.
Sunday was mostly nothing. Saw Megan for a short while, when she came over to borrow a book. That was tough, confusing, frustrating, wonderful, and every sort of other emotion I could possibly have ever at the same moment. I go up and down and up and down on this subject. If you guys are still reading this, please continue to pray for Megan and I as we try to figure out what’s going on and what will go on. All I usually do is *sigh* and Ugh. I can’t help but think that I would be better at this if God would just tell me his plan so I can help him along. But no.
Al, why haven’t I leaped yet?
…new post!