Yikes. It's been almost a week since I last wrote a rambling. What has happened since then? Let me see...

Saturday and Sunday, I worked half days, going to the stores at 0800, and finishing up at 1400. Fortunately, I had better luck with sales than I had on Friday, though nothing outstanding.

/me has doubts as to whether his true calling in life is that of a salesman. Scratch that. I know I'm not a natural at sales. But I do what I can to get by until something better comes along.

Of course, dad, mom, and I picked bouncing up at the airport on Friday night. He walked off the concourse wearing a big ole Texas hat, designating him as a naturalized native of that faraway state.

Saturday afternoon. As I recall, we basicly just hung out at the house, and bouncing learned the wonders of Super Mario Sunshine. Or something like that.

Oh yeah. I made bean dip too. Lots of it. We stuffed ourselves silly.

Sunday, monday, and tuesday mostly consisted of a lot of odd randomness.

Wednesday, the 2nd of July. We went hiking up at 4th of July Campground. (It would have been even more amusing if we had gone there on the 4th of July, due solely to the name of the place.)

In the evening, bouncing and I made our way to the scottgalvin.com dinner party, where we rendezvoused with all sorts of familiar entities.

Jaeger, Scott, and I journied to the nearby Albertson's to procure cooking fodder. The three of us managed to throw together an odd assortment of pasta, steak, chicken, salad, potatos, and corn. Enough to feed 3 armies.

There was no shortage of cooks at this event. Fortunately, the kitchen was large enough to accomodate a half dozen of us working in it at a time. A meal we did make!

We ate and hung out.

One by one, the attendees departed. bouncing and I, after hanging with scottgalvin.com until after 0100 crashed on a couple of the couches. (We marvelled at how old we have gotten. In days gone by, we would be up making Denny's runs at 0400. But in this case, we were all pretty much beat shortly after midnight. Pathetic. Maybe it had something to do with that lemonade flavored technically alcoholic (but not really) beverage.)

Today, our family drove up Mount Evans.

I attended the weekly newspaper sales meeting in the evening.

Tomorrow, as one might or might not expect in this industry, I have the 4th of July off. But I'll be working full days Saturday and Sunday. (I tried to get all half days while bouncing will be here, but the pre-selected store schedule did not allow it on short notice this weekend.)

Tonight, bouncing is meeting with his former coworkers from a company that no longer exists.

My mom is at home sleeping.

My dad is either on his iMac or his Windows PC. I can't tell which from here.

As for me, I am catching up on my web surfing and contemplating my strange little life, as I fire up System of a Down in my headphones.

Having not quite finished Kiln People yet, I've started reading Simulacra and Simulation, a book given to me by scottgalvin.com at the dinner party. As we drove up the mountain, I even read some portions of it aloud to the family. Their reaction was largely amusement -- that the guy uses a whole bunch of big words and convoluted sentences to say things that amount to trivial silliness, or less.

To a certain degree, I can understand the point. But I also believe that there is a good deal of substance to be gleaned. As to exactly what it all amounts to, I think I'll reserve until I've finished it. He's made a many interesting points over the course of the first few chapters (most of which I can grasp, but several of the references confound me -- who (or what) the hell is "Beaubourg" anyway?) But I will be very interested to see how (or if) Baudrillard draws it all together to form a cohesive conclusion.

bouncing has returned. My dad is going to give us a photo slide show. Signing off.