VD, Narcing
Okay, I'm going to ignore updating what every event has been since last I updated because that would be way to fricken tedious. Instead, I'll just shuffle up to this past Saturday and then update through until now.
Due to the myriads of snow that we've been getting, along with me forgetting that I had signed up to work on Saturdays, I continually had to reschedule the service appointment for my car. I finally made it in on Saturday morning. Unfortunately, this was the uber-special 30,000 mile service, which meant that they were going to do a crap ton fo stuff, which meant that it cost a lot of money. Money I don't have. Ah, hello using credit card that I shouldn't be! Luckily, due to my transmission fluid being all synthetic, they don't have to flush the transmission until 60,000 miles. So I got a whole $160 knocked off the price! It was still stupidly expensive though.
Through a bunch of trickery and master planning on my part, I got Ivan to pick up Angela on his way over to hanging out that afternoon. So the 3 of us went out for some dinner at Calloway's down the road from me. I had a turkey club; Ivan had some sort of stuffed chicken; and Ang had meatloaf, if you were curious. Afterwards we drove down to the Paper Jets show at Fergie's in Philadelphia.
The show was pretty good. Happy Accident was opening for us, and they are a terrific complement to our style of music. We set up to play, and, as I turned on my amp, it made a giant screeching sound. Apparently, one of my tubes had busted right open at some point. No one else had brought an amp other than me. Brian was planning on going through Happy Accident's amp, which I ended up using. We put Brian straight through the PA. It made him a little quiet, but at least we all were making noise from something!
I got to use this set as an experiment for how I will be utilizing my new Visual Sound Route 66 Compression/Overdrive pedal (which I happen to love love love). I thought (partly due to this and partly due to technical difficulties) we played a pretty loose, sloppy set. We had decided to just go ahead and try to just make the night fun so we ended up adding a crap ton of songs to the set that weren't originally in there (AC, Hey Sandy, Joseph, Take It All Back). Actually, nobody had actually prepared a set for the night to begin with. About 5 minutes before we went on, Brian handed me a piece of paper towel and a pen and told me to make a set list!
So I thought we had a pretty generic night. But apparently, according to Angela, Tyler, and a drunken Ivan, this was one of the best sets we've ever played. So I guess kudos to us. I hope we keep that energy going for the March 6th show.
Sunday was ye olde St. Valentine's Day, which I spent with my new Valentine, Angela. I went over to her place, flowers in hand, in order to watch that classic romance film, Zombieland. She made me soft pertzels, got Bam a laser cat toy, and got me the "Sex, chocolate, and Barack'n'roll" V-Day card. We were both pretty exhausted from haven gotten up early (and staying out late at the PJs show). I had gone into work that morning to make up some hours that I lost thanks to the blizzard earlier in the week. Ang had been up early to go to her finance class and then church. So even after the movie, neither of us could summon the strength to move off the couch. We pretty much just napped for the rest of the night. But I think that was a pretty great way to spend Valentine's Day. :-)
My drive home from Ang's that night was pretty eventful, though. Driving up 130, toward the Burlington-Bristol bridge, I ended up behind white minivan. I was in the center lane and it was in the right lane. It was kind of vaguely swerving for a bit and then it jumped over into my lane without warning. I didn't take much notice to it though because I assumed that the driver was just getting nervous while driving 60 mph next the giant snow pile that was partly in the right lane itself. As we continued up the road, the van became more erratic, once swerving all the way into the left lane and then all the way back, swiping the snow mound.
At this point I became more cautious, but I had hoped that it was just someone nodding off at the wheel. There was after all considerably less swerving after the snow mound swipe. Foolish me.
The minivan also had been heading to the Burlington-Bristol Bridge and I ended up behind it at the traffic light after going through the jug handle. I quickly noticed that the minivan had pulled up so far beyond the white stopping line, that it was actually in the middle of 130. Beyond that, it had itself centered between the two lanes, blocking the intersection from our end.
When the light turned green, the van didn't move. I honked my horn a few times and the van still didn't move. And at this point, I'm still trying to give that driver the benefit of the doubt. I was thinking that it was quite possible the driver was having a heart attack or stroke or some other medical emergency. So I turned on my flashers, got out of the car, went up to the minivan's window to see what was up, and sure enough there was a woman sitting there, asleep. I tapped on the window and she stirred. I ask if she was alright and she gave me a smile and wave. Not knowing what else to do, I went back to me car. The light turned green again and she didn't move again. When the light turned red again, I went to go wake her up again, when she sped through the intersection!
At this point, I realized that she was going to get someone hurt, even if it was just herself. So I called 411 to get the number for the Burlington police. I had memorized the license plate number, so even though she had driven away, I could still report her. Amusingly, the operator connected me to the Burlington Police Adminstration Office, not the dispatcher. Also amusing is the fact that you can't press 2 to get to the dispatcher. You have to call an entirely different number! Considering I was driving, I couldn't really write the number down as it whizzed by in the recorded message.
So I was ready to give up. The woman was at least out of my sight. So you, you know, also out of mind. But as I pulled up to the toll for the bridge, she was right there in front of me. And then I sat there. And sat there. And sat there. I wondered if the toll attendent noticed somethign was off with this woman and was purposefulyl holding her up until the cops got there. but I knew this would bother me forever. So in order to clear my consience, I put my flashers on, got out of the car, and walked up to the toll both to see what was happening. As it turns out, the woman was having trouble getting her money together this whole time. I gave a short spiel to the guy in the booth about trying to call the cops and how she had been asleep at the intersection, hoping that he could call the cops for me.
As it turns out, which I learned later, toll booths have a button that calls the cops. So two seconds after I started explaining to him what happened, the cops pulled up! Needless to say, she was totally drunk and failed every test the cops gave her. They took her away and moved her car. I felt so guilty, especially for having to have to say, "Call the cops on this woman," right in front of her. After the fact, though, the attendant said that he was suspicious due to the fact that she had issues counting her money for such a very long period of time, but because she seemed so with it (her speech was not slurred at all and she seemed lucid), he didn't feel comfortable doing something about until I came up. In the end, it felt like the right thing to do.
So yeah, that was a new and exciting adventure. Getting someone arrested.
And that's all that I can summon the energy to write about. So far the week has been kind of boring. Paper Jets show tomorrow night. Making t-shirts with Ang on Saturday. I'm thinking on Sunday I will head to the comic book store and use the gift card Jess got me for my birthday.
Due to the myriads of snow that we've been getting, along with me forgetting that I had signed up to work on Saturdays, I continually had to reschedule the service appointment for my car. I finally made it in on Saturday morning. Unfortunately, this was the uber-special 30,000 mile service, which meant that they were going to do a crap ton fo stuff, which meant that it cost a lot of money. Money I don't have. Ah, hello using credit card that I shouldn't be! Luckily, due to my transmission fluid being all synthetic, they don't have to flush the transmission until 60,000 miles. So I got a whole $160 knocked off the price! It was still stupidly expensive though.
Through a bunch of trickery and master planning on my part, I got Ivan to pick up Angela on his way over to hanging out that afternoon. So the 3 of us went out for some dinner at Calloway's down the road from me. I had a turkey club; Ivan had some sort of stuffed chicken; and Ang had meatloaf, if you were curious. Afterwards we drove down to the Paper Jets show at Fergie's in Philadelphia.
The show was pretty good. Happy Accident was opening for us, and they are a terrific complement to our style of music. We set up to play, and, as I turned on my amp, it made a giant screeching sound. Apparently, one of my tubes had busted right open at some point. No one else had brought an amp other than me. Brian was planning on going through Happy Accident's amp, which I ended up using. We put Brian straight through the PA. It made him a little quiet, but at least we all were making noise from something!
I got to use this set as an experiment for how I will be utilizing my new Visual Sound Route 66 Compression/Overdrive pedal (which I happen to love love love). I thought (partly due to this and partly due to technical difficulties) we played a pretty loose, sloppy set. We had decided to just go ahead and try to just make the night fun so we ended up adding a crap ton of songs to the set that weren't originally in there (AC, Hey Sandy, Joseph, Take It All Back). Actually, nobody had actually prepared a set for the night to begin with. About 5 minutes before we went on, Brian handed me a piece of paper towel and a pen and told me to make a set list!
So I thought we had a pretty generic night. But apparently, according to Angela, Tyler, and a drunken Ivan, this was one of the best sets we've ever played. So I guess kudos to us. I hope we keep that energy going for the March 6th show.
Sunday was ye olde St. Valentine's Day, which I spent with my new Valentine, Angela. I went over to her place, flowers in hand, in order to watch that classic romance film, Zombieland. She made me soft pertzels, got Bam a laser cat toy, and got me the "Sex, chocolate, and Barack'n'roll" V-Day card. We were both pretty exhausted from haven gotten up early (and staying out late at the PJs show). I had gone into work that morning to make up some hours that I lost thanks to the blizzard earlier in the week. Ang had been up early to go to her finance class and then church. So even after the movie, neither of us could summon the strength to move off the couch. We pretty much just napped for the rest of the night. But I think that was a pretty great way to spend Valentine's Day. :-)
My drive home from Ang's that night was pretty eventful, though. Driving up 130, toward the Burlington-Bristol bridge, I ended up behind white minivan. I was in the center lane and it was in the right lane. It was kind of vaguely swerving for a bit and then it jumped over into my lane without warning. I didn't take much notice to it though because I assumed that the driver was just getting nervous while driving 60 mph next the giant snow pile that was partly in the right lane itself. As we continued up the road, the van became more erratic, once swerving all the way into the left lane and then all the way back, swiping the snow mound.
At this point I became more cautious, but I had hoped that it was just someone nodding off at the wheel. There was after all considerably less swerving after the snow mound swipe. Foolish me.
The minivan also had been heading to the Burlington-Bristol Bridge and I ended up behind it at the traffic light after going through the jug handle. I quickly noticed that the minivan had pulled up so far beyond the white stopping line, that it was actually in the middle of 130. Beyond that, it had itself centered between the two lanes, blocking the intersection from our end.
When the light turned green, the van didn't move. I honked my horn a few times and the van still didn't move. And at this point, I'm still trying to give that driver the benefit of the doubt. I was thinking that it was quite possible the driver was having a heart attack or stroke or some other medical emergency. So I turned on my flashers, got out of the car, went up to the minivan's window to see what was up, and sure enough there was a woman sitting there, asleep. I tapped on the window and she stirred. I ask if she was alright and she gave me a smile and wave. Not knowing what else to do, I went back to me car. The light turned green again and she didn't move again. When the light turned red again, I went to go wake her up again, when she sped through the intersection!
At this point, I realized that she was going to get someone hurt, even if it was just herself. So I called 411 to get the number for the Burlington police. I had memorized the license plate number, so even though she had driven away, I could still report her. Amusingly, the operator connected me to the Burlington Police Adminstration Office, not the dispatcher. Also amusing is the fact that you can't press 2 to get to the dispatcher. You have to call an entirely different number! Considering I was driving, I couldn't really write the number down as it whizzed by in the recorded message.
So I was ready to give up. The woman was at least out of my sight. So you, you know, also out of mind. But as I pulled up to the toll for the bridge, she was right there in front of me. And then I sat there. And sat there. And sat there. I wondered if the toll attendent noticed somethign was off with this woman and was purposefulyl holding her up until the cops got there. but I knew this would bother me forever. So in order to clear my consience, I put my flashers on, got out of the car, and walked up to the toll both to see what was happening. As it turns out, the woman was having trouble getting her money together this whole time. I gave a short spiel to the guy in the booth about trying to call the cops and how she had been asleep at the intersection, hoping that he could call the cops for me.
As it turns out, which I learned later, toll booths have a button that calls the cops. So two seconds after I started explaining to him what happened, the cops pulled up! Needless to say, she was totally drunk and failed every test the cops gave her. They took her away and moved her car. I felt so guilty, especially for having to have to say, "Call the cops on this woman," right in front of her. After the fact, though, the attendant said that he was suspicious due to the fact that she had issues counting her money for such a very long period of time, but because she seemed so with it (her speech was not slurred at all and she seemed lucid), he didn't feel comfortable doing something about until I came up. In the end, it felt like the right thing to do.
So yeah, that was a new and exciting adventure. Getting someone arrested.
And that's all that I can summon the energy to write about. So far the week has been kind of boring. Paper Jets show tomorrow night. Making t-shirts with Ang on Saturday. I'm thinking on Sunday I will head to the comic book store and use the gift card Jess got me for my birthday.