Squirrels gone wild

Squirrel Attacks Plague Mtn. View Park

Jennifer Packard's 4-year-old son was their latest victim. As she unwrapped a muffin during a picnic last week, a brown tree squirrel pounced on her son, Andrew, biting and scratching as he ran screaming through the park, then hanging on as he rolled desperately in the grass.

``It was such a horror,'' Packard recalled of the attack, which left her boy with a trail of red claw marks, a bite on his upper arm -- and a regimen of painful rabies shots. ``To hear your child screaming the way you've never heard before . . . it was just bone chilling.''
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In non-squirrel related news, yesterday was a pretty good day. When I finally got home I was amped up and raring to go thanks to a hearty workout and repeated listenings of "Over the Mountain" by Ozzy Osbourne (if you have even an ounce of metal in your body, you have to hear this song - an old Randy Rhoads classic off of "Diary of a Madman." It's good and crunchy!!!). It was the first time since I'd been back that both Julie and I were home together for more than 5 minutes, so we headed over to the newly-opened Hamilton's Tavern (formerly Sparky's) with our roommate, and were eventually joined by the Mystery Dater and one of our former roommates. Hanging out with friends and having some drinks would be wonderful enough, but having our neighbood bar back made the evening priceless. They've retained a good bit of the Sparky's flavor, but have made it slightly more upscale with fancy wines and lots of microbrews. I miss the PBR pitchers, art phone (though we will have Reese back!), and dirty couches, but I guess I'll need to accept and move on.

It's been an up-and-down week being back and getting settled in, with lots of backlog at work and more than a little emotional roller-coastering (thanks for helping me get through it, JJ!), but I'm looking forward to the weekend. B-day festivities for J* promise to be exciting, and I'm looking forward to some of the gang getting to meet MLH, and vice versa. The two of us have road trip plans tomorrow (maybe to The Living Desert), and I'm ready to get the keys and go...

If you fall in, you will die

So I'm on vacation, minding my own business for the most part, trying to figure things out, quiet the various demons in my mind, and all that good stuff, right? Then tonight I get a phone call that I never expected to get, which goes and upsets the whole apple cart. I don't know if this puts me back at square one or just expands my options, but right now I'm smart enough to know that it's 3:20 am and I've had more than a few Yuenglings so I'm not going to put too much thought to it or try and make any decisions.

But still, this has really knocked me for a loop and changed the way I'm looking at things, and that in and of itself is probably a very big signal. With my current turbulent state of mental affairs, who knows what's going to happen? I just know that if I'm actually going to test these waters, I have to be absolutely clear about how I feel, what I want, and what I need (not to mention what went wrong) before I go diving in. So if you see a man drowning, make sure to throw him a life preserver.

Excellent water quality, enough food and rest

Some of you may be aware of my fondness for catfish, who've always had a special place in my heart. Thanks to a giant catfish news-intensive summer last year, I somehow ended up with a cubicle wall full of giant catfish pictures (which gets a lot of attention from the residents when they come into the office). I was browsing Ananova the other day and found this beauty, although it's not clear if the catfish in the picture is, in fact, "Big Mama."

Just substitute "water quality" with "Yuengling supply" and that pretty much sums up what I'm looking forward to next week on my vacation back home. Besides seeing all my friends and drinking Yuengling, what I'm looking forward to the most right now is going to the Black Cat on Tuesday night to see Magnolia Electric Co., drinking a few beers, and smoking a cigarette or two (just a couple!) indoors. Ahh, the good old days...

Dream log - 9/9 and 9/10

More random dreams from over the weekend that I'm just putting down here so I'll remember them.

Saturday night (9/9):

What I remember is being out on/in a lake, which also seemed like a fish tank. I was throwing frogs across/into the lake to save them - perhaps they were frozen - but I also ended up stepping on some tadpoles(?) but at the same time I was talking to Kevin Hare, and he or I was saying that those kinds of sacrifices were necessary.

I was then going somewhere and heard some R.E.M. song (Finest Worksong or Electrolite) and said that it was the 3rd time today that I'd heard that song. I then met up with Michael Stipe who was sitting at a table with 2 or 3 other people, and was wearing gray shoes. We were talking about something and I said it was funny that he didn't even consider me a friend, because I felt like he was one of my 3 or 4 best friends.

Sunday night (9/10):

Back at Intensity Skates yet again. This one had a slightly more ominous feel/tone about it - I was coming back/found out about it but wasn't necessarily welcomed back? At some point I was on top of some shelves and Mike Agnew was telling a story about a guard dog they'd had and the dog appeared and was jumping across the shelves at me. Vaguely recall taking a phone order, looking in the warehouse to see if a shoe (a red or white shoe) was in stock that we thought was not, and mentioning that skateboard shoes were so lame these days as I looked through all the different styles.

Then went out the back door of the warehouse, which was at the edge of a canyon. There were really crazy rock formations down in the canyon, and my friends Natalie and Dave ran past me and down into the canyon where they hopped around the rocks. I followed them down and then there were ruins that were submerged underwater. I mentioned that I had gone down into the ruins and explored around a little bit, but not when they were submerged and Josh (not sure where he came from), Dave and I compared notes about what was down there. I vaguely recall that there were cult-ish/demonic overtones to the ruins. Still in the canyon and a very small plane was flying around doing all kinds of loops and tricks, and Dave and I were discussing the proximity of an airport nearby. I then went on to tell Dave about a time when I was at the U of M (although it was a combination of U of M and UCSD) and this squadron of fighter planes came and flew low across the mall/common area and then sideways through a circle of palm trees that had since been cut down. As I was telling the story, I was back at the U of M and ran into someone I knew who asked me what was up with the 9:30 Club. I told them that I hadn't lived there in two years so I didn't know what they meant, and they asked me about some kind of anniversary thing? It turns out this person was Talib Kweli, and I introduced him to my friend Matt, who was with me at the time.

Just get your shit together and get ready to go

The ending of my most recent relationship has prompted (predictably) a lot of soul-searching and a lot of thinking about the big picture, where I am, where I'm going and what I'm looking for. Lord knows I spend enough time brooding about things and being anxious, but somehow I always manage to gloss over/ignore/or avoid (beer helps with this) a lot of the bigger issues and actually taking a look at my life and asking myself what I'm really doing.

I've come to realize that, while still being a quasi-normal, responsible person, I've been avoiding what I guess I'll refer to as "growing up" and facing up to what it actually means to be an adult for a long time. For a plethora of reasons, I've been afraid for the most part to take any risks, set any goals, think in the long-term, and really decide what I want to do with my life. I've known for a good while that I've been a little hazy about the career goals and where I'm going in general, but I think for the first time I'm realizing that I've been taking the easy way out for too long in that I find it a lot easier to stay in a comfort zone and not really take any risks or face up to any big challenges. Comfort is nice and safe and all that, but it can also be really unfulfilling after a point. You can only fill up your time with drinking beer, listening to music, and watching the X-Files for so long before the bigger picture that's been looming in the corner of your eye turns into the 600 pound gorilla in the middle of the room. If that makes any sense.

So what's next? Seeing if I'm grown-up enough to stick with this, to start facing up to some of the harder choices that come along with life and being an adult, instead of just opening another beer and pretending that the 600 pound gorilla isn't really there.