Cinco De Mayo!

So it’s Cinco de Mayo today.
Liz Phair has a song by that name, which I’m actually listening to right now as my way of celebrating Mexico’s…umm….Mexico’s acknowledgement of it being the day after the 4th. Or something.
Anyway, I know it’s not much in the way of celebration, but what else am I going to do? Even if I still drank, drinking tequila, or Corona, or Dos Equis would be out of the question anyway (Yuck!).
In any case, Cinco de Mayo has significance to me beyond the fact that it’s a fancy way of saying that it’s the day before the 6th. After all, a year ago today I quit smoking.
Yay me! Or maybe under the circumstances I should say ¡Viva me!
I’m not really sure how I should go about celebrating my year of nicotine-free living.
I was thinking I might pick up a pack of Marlboros and smoke it as a way of celebrating.
Kidding! I have no intention of ever smoking again, and while I do still sometimes miss it, I know that I’m better off this way.
At least that’s what I keep telling myself.
Honestly, I can’t say that I really want to smoke, but you have to consider that I did it, pretty much day in-day out, from the age of 14 to the age of 32. It’s going to take a little longer than a year to get the habit totally out of my system, I think.
So far I haven’t accomplished much today. I got up, failed to go for a walk, called my mother, talked to her for a while, randomly surfed the Web, and ended up here, writing this.
Given that the tracking number indicates that it’s currently on the truck, at some point this afternoon FedEx will be delivering the Firewire cable I ordered this week.
“Wait a second, you might be saying to yourself, didn’t he order a Firewire cable last week?”
That’s what I thought, too. However, on Monday evening when I was sifting through my mail I noticed that the e-mail that I had assumed was the confirmation of the order I’d made last week actually stated that my order had been declined.
This was a bit puzzling, as there were no problems (that I was aware of) with any of my credit cards, let alone the check card that I had (attempted) to pay for the cable with.
So I went back to the site and tried to figure out what the problem was. It was suggested that perhaps I had entered some of the requested information incorrectly.
They actually asked for more information than most places do. In addition to the card number and expiration date they wanted the security number from the back, and the phone number of the bank that issued the card. As far as I could tell everything was fine, but I re-entered it all just to be on the safe side.
I’m not sure what the problem was before, but this time it went through, and so I should be receiving the cable today.
The external hard drive I ordered over the weekend, though, is another matter entirely. It actually shipped on Monday, but apparently UPS has just decided that they’re going to hang onto it for a while. The tracking site says that delivery has been “rescheduled,” and that it won’t arrive until the 10th. There’s no explanation as to why it’s been rescheduled.
It’s not enough of an issue to me that I’d bother calling anyone about it or anything, but it is sort of odd. I mean, if they have it, why not just deliver it? It’s not like they only send people out to deliver things every once in a while or something. Hell, the UPS truck comes to my apartment complex pretty much every day, sometimes more than once. So it’s not like it’s out of their way, or they have to make a special trip or something.
But whatever.
As sort of a rehearsal for taking the weekend off at the end of the month to fly home for Jourdan’s graduation, I’ve taken most of this weekend off as well.
Actually, it’s not for a practice. Tomorrow night in Leesburg a local writers group is sponsoring a presentation by two book editors and a literary agent about the book selection process.
As I’m trying to get my head back into the writing game, going to this seemed like a no-brainer as soon as I learned about it, not just because of the editors, but also because it represented the opportunity to learn something about this writers group.
The only problem was that it starts at 7:30 on a Friday night.
Sure, I’d be off of work in time to get to it, but that would mean a late night (especially for me), which would translate into a very unhappy early morning on Saturday.
The solution was obvious: take Saturday off.
So I did.
Then I thought about it some more and realized that, as I have enough time in my bank, I might as well take Sunday off as well.
I suppose I could have taken Friday off, too, but I opted instead to just leave three hours early (which still makes for a nine and a half hour day) to give myself some time to do stuff before the presentation starts.
So I have an extremely short work-week ahead of me, followed by a lot of extra time off.
Kathleen had been planning to go with me to the presentation, as she’s also looking to get into writing, but it looks like I’ll be flying solo. At first it seemed that she might have to be out of town for her new job (her new, FIVE DAY A WEEK job, where she was assured that she wouldn’t have to travel much, but then was told right before she started that she might have to go to Raleigh, NC, on her second day).
Now, however, it looks like she’ll be taking care of some family business instead.
Either way, the end result is that she’ll probably miss the presentation.
Now, however, we’ve learned that Sarah McLachlan will be here next week.
The concert is on a Thursday, which is a bit of a pain, but I have enough time in my bank that I could take all or at least part of Friday off (assuming that there are no staffing issues that day), but the question is whether or not Kathleen could.
I would like to see Sarah (seeing as how I love her and all), and given that I’ve gotten too old (or at the very least, too sober) to go to metal concerts, mellow, adult-contemporary pop music would seem to be the most suitable choice of live performance for me.
God, that’s depressing.
Don’t get me wrong; as mentioned, I love Sarah. But to think that I’ve gotten so old that I wouldn’t even consider going to a metal concert…*sigh*
Anyway, speaking of women I love, the other night I started working on a picture of my beloved Rachael Leigh Cook.
(Mmm....Rachael Leigh Cook....)
There are so many other pictures that I’ve intended to work on, some of which, like a picture of Fontaine I started a while ago, are nearly finished, but when I was idly sifting through pictures I noticed this particular picture of RLC. It looked like it would be fairly simple to crank it out in a hurry, so I decided to give it a shot.
So far it has been…until I got to the hair.
I’ve been deciding, more and more with every new picture, that I really hate hair.
I’m starting to think that, if I’m going to continue drawing, either I’ll have to find subjects other than women, or else they’re all going to start looking like Lt. Ilia in “Star Trek: The Motion Picture” (or “Moondragon” for any comic book geeks out there).
For all non-geeks, that is to say that I might have to start drawing women bald.
I’m just sick of drawing hair. I have a bunch of unfinished pictures sitting on my hard drive, essentially complete except for the hair, hair which I’m disinclined to try drawing.
The irritating thing is that, often, the hair is what makes me what to draw the picture in the first place, and frequently, in the final product, the hair is one of the best aspects of my picture.
But it’s such a pain in the ass to draw, and I’m never really happy with how it turns out.
Of course, in the case of this picture of RLC, if I were to draw her bald that would necessitate having to draw an ear from scratch, as well as one of her eyes, which would be more work overall, especially since I would be doing so largely without reference.
Just giving up seems like the best option.
Or, you know, I could work hard and try to draw the hair.
We’ll see.

Gets Me Every Time Dept.
Last night I was checking out the Web site of MC Chris.
MC Chris does a lot of voice work on the Adult Swim shows on Cartoon Network, such as providing the voice of “Hesh” on “SeaLab 2021.”
He’s also a rapper.
Kind of.
Basically, he’s a nerd rapper, rapping about things like Boba Fett, and making random nerd comments in his rhymes, along with the obligatory comments about his sexual prowess and his mad gangsta skillz. It’s all pretty funny, and is made more so by his voice, the sound of which just cracks me up every time I hear it.
Check out his site here. You can actually download a complete copy of his album “Life’s a Bitch and I’m her Pimp,” which includes some random skits, along with his raps about the wonders of Robitussin, the aforementioned “Fett’s Vette” (which is hilarious), and the especially entertaining “Fucking Up My Christmas.”
Of course, if you want to hear his best work, head over to adultswim.com and download the classic “I Want Candy” (he raps under the name MC Pee Pants on that one), which was featured on one of the greatest episodes of “Aqua Teen Hunger Force” ever.

Anyway, hopefully FedEx will arrive soon so that I can go for the walk I didn’t go on this morning.
I may be back later, ideally with a completed picture of RLC.