Set Up For Disappointment

I made tortilla soup (from a mix) the other night, and, in accordance with the instructions I cut some tortillas into strips and fried them as a garnish for the soup.
Why does fried food have to be so bad for you? The soup itself was okay, but the fried tortilla strips were so good I almost filled up on them and ignored the soup.
That’s probably the most exciting thing that’s happened in the past couple of days, so you haven’t been missing much.
Today I was wondering if Scott and I were going to do Riff Trax night tomorrow. I was going to send him a text to ask him that, but before I got the chance I got a text from Stacy inviting me to their house tomorrow night, which answered that question.
Of course, it wasn’t until afterwards that I realized that this would mean having to be out on the road with all of the drunks, but oh well.
As I mentioned, not much of interest has been happening over the past couple of days. I’ve mostly been engaging in some hard drive hygiene, deleting/archiving files, and trying to organize my pictures, both those I’ve downloaded and those I’ve drawn.
Riveting stuff.
Stacy just called to inform me that they’re ordering Chinese tomorrow and to ask me what I wanted. She also mentioned that there would be someone else there whom I don’t know, and, as this someone is a woman and single, she didn’t want me to think that they were trying to set me up with someone.
That sort of thing happens every once in a while. That is, in some sort of gathering there’s going to be a single woman and my friends inform me ahead of time so that I won’t think that there’s a set up. The thing is, it’s unlikely that I would actually think that anyway.
There are a number of reasons that I’m unlikely to make that assumption, but I suppose the biggest one is the fact that I’ve never actually had friends try to set me up with someone. In fact, and I don’t say this to be insulting, just stating the facts, pretty much all the friends I’ve ever had have been utterly useless in that regard. Either they don’t know anyone they can set me up with, or, if they do, it just doesn’t occur to them to do it.
(I have several theories about that latter point which I won’t bother getting into.)
The last time I suspected that someone was trying to set me up with someone was somewhere around ten years ago, during my drinking days.
Some friends and I were headed over to Michigan Tech to check out some live performances being done as part of the Winter Carnival. Among the performers was the niece of my friend Ginger.
Ginger kept raving to me and our friend Jeff about how talented, sweet, and generally wonderful her niece – who was only a few years younger than Jeff and I – was, to an extent that it seemed as though she was trying to generate interest in her.
Jeff and I both noticed this, and, to be a bit shallow, we also noticed how everything she had to say about her niece essentially boiled down to “she’s got a great personality.”
So it was with some trepidation that we headed over to watch her niece perform, as neither of us was inclined to be set up with someone who, assuming it to be shorthand for fat/unattractive, had a “great personality.”
Once she got on stage, however, we saw that “great personality” wasn’t a euphemism for unattractiveness: she was hot.
And extremely talented.
So Jeff and I immediately changed our thinking on the whole set up thing, and were preparing to square off – as we had on several occasions with several other women – in competition for her attention.
(I lost each and every competition with Jeff, by the way.)
Of course, it was then that we found out that Ginger never had any intention of trying to set either of us up with her niece; she was just very fond of her and inclined to rave about her.
This became abundantly clear when Jeff said, “Your niece is really nice,” to which Ginger responded, “Yeah, and her girlfriend is a real sweetheart, too.”
D’oh.
(I would say that the there was a set up going on the whole time; Ginger setting us up for a cruel joke, but that sort of thing really wasn’t in her nature.)
So yeah, I don’t often worry that my friends are trying to set me up with anyone.

Not Much To Report

I haven’t really done anything terribly productive today.
I did go out and get a haircut, and do some grocery shopping, but beyond that? Nothing, really.
I’ve spent most of the day messing around in Photoshop testing out different techniques for enhancing/restoring images.
Why? Well, in my constant search for reference images I often find pictures that I really like, but that I can’t actually use because they’re tiny and low-res, with lots of JPEG artifacting and whatnot.
So if I can find ways to edit the original images to get them to a point at which I can actually use them as source material for drawings, that would definitely be a plus.
(In particular I have a low-res, heavily shadowed screen cap of Scarlett Johansson that I would love to draw – and have tried to draw many times – but it just doesn’t have enough detail to work from.)
Beyond that I’ve been attempting to restore some deleted files on one of my external drives, files that I just realized that I needed today – mostly image files, but some documents as well – and then remembered that I’d deleted a while back when I hadn’t realized that I would one day need them.
I’ve tried a couple of undelete utilities, but they all get to about the 80% mark in scanning for recoverable files, then crap out. I figured that this was due to some bad sectors on the disk, so I did a scandisk and set it to attempt – which is the keyword – to repair bad sectors, and it came back and said that it had fixed the errors, but the undelete utility crapped out at the same point again. I’ve just run another bad sector repair utility, and now the undelete utility is chugging away yet again. This time it found one more recoverable directory than it had in previous attempts, and it’s also making a shorter estimate as to how long the scan will take, so I’m hoping that’s a good sign.
If not, oh well. I don’t really need the files, I’d just like to have them.
(They’re mostly sketches and unfinished pictures, which I thought I had backed up somewhere else.)
I decided I’ll (probably) mow tomorrow morning. So there’s something to look forward to.
I’ve been looking at some business card printing sites, as I’ve been thinking about printing up some Heroic Portraits business cards so that I can leave them lying around in public places the way evangelists who aren’t bold enough to actually evangelize leave Chick Tracts lying around.
I meant to do some work on some more sample Portraits for the Gallery today, but got too caught up in the whole undeleting thing and the photo enhancement stuff.
Other than that it’s been a pretty quiet day here at Casa de Threshold.

Down Too Long In The Midnight Sea

I never got around to posting anything yesterday not because I was busy, but just…well, because. For the most part very little of note actually happened.
Today has been much the same. I’ve mostly busied myself with some hard drive hygiene, backing up files I want to keep and deleting files I don’t in an effort to free up some space…so that I can fill it all up again and start the cycle over.
If I were still gainfully employed, I would simply buy some more hard drives, or maybe one of those Windows Home Server systems and some more hard drives, but I’m not, so it’s onto DVDs and CDs (or into binary nothingness) for the files cluttering up the drives I do have.
I’ve also done a bit of work on yet another picture that is now fairly close to being finished, but I haven’t felt terribly motivated about it.
Two entertaining things did happen yesterday when I went downstairs and turned on the TV. I was flipping idly through the channels and ended up in the 600s, which are the digital music channels. I was checking out the MTV2 Headbanger’s Ball music channel when the song Holy Diver by Dio came on.
I found this hilarious because a) it was Dio and b) when we spoke on the phone a bit ago, Kevin and I actually talked about Dio, and specifically the song Holy Diver.
(I know that most of you won’t understand why, but seriously, Dio and particularly Dio performing Holy Diver, is just inherently hilarious. Kevin, I’m sure, gets it.)
The next little moment of joy came when I changed to the generic Metal channel.
Back when they were still cool and were busy making good music rather than suing people for stealing it, Metallica had recorded a few strictly instrumental songs, my favorite of which is Orion.
It took a couple of seconds for my brain to wrap itself around the information it was being presented, but I soon realized that the Metal channel was playing a cover of Orion – performed Flamenco style.
This is obviously one of the most awesome things ever.
It was recorded by a Mexican acoustic/folk duo, Rodrigo y Gabriela.
Flamenco Metallica is possibly even more awesome than Metallica played on cellos (By a group from Helsinki, Finland, called Apocalyptica), though I’m not sure I’m willing to go quite that far (Mostly because Apocalyptica covered so many Metallica songs, as well as songs by several other metal bands. My favorite non-Metallica cover by Apocalyptica? Faith No More’s song From Out of Nowhere. For Whom the Bell Tolls is my favorite Metallica cover.)
Again, you have to know the song – and have a particular sense of humor, I think – to appreciate why this is awesome, but take my word for it. The only thing that could make it more awesome would be for it to be performed by Charo.
(And Kevin, you need to find a copy of it; you’ll dig it, I think.)
Anyway, that pretty much brings you up to speed on what’s been going on since my last update. I know you were dying to find out.