The Roulette Wheel

Ok. My weekend started a little early. Let me explain. I've been working for AFI Dallas for the last week. Monday I stacked some pamphlets. Tuesday I wrote a letter to John Legiuzamo. Wednesday I helped organize all the plane flights in and out. I've seen and talked to celebrity after celebrity. I've seen six festival movies at this point and been to at least three parties. I have parties every night down here and I even had an interesting happening Thursday night. Let's talk about that as I haven't been able to stop thinking about it.

So I'm at the original Nieman Marcus downtown at this party. It's pretty cool and it starts to wind down. I'm saying goodbye on my way out at about 1am. This beautiful woman I had been helping out earlier in the evening smiles at me and asks the question I have never been asked in such a way. "What are you doing RIGHT NOW?" "um...are you kidding? I'm a single teacher. I'm doing whatever you have in mind!" So she wants to go to another party. Fair enough. So we start collecting people. Then we stand around for about half an hour and we lose all those people. Now it's me, some gorgeous chick who looks like Lisa Lobe but with black hair, some 19 year old kid and his dad. How can I go wrong right? Right.

Well...we head off to an after party for the fashion show that's at Northpark last week. It's sucky...but I have my new buddies with me so everything is alright. This chick (who will remain nameless) gets pretty drunk and after a bit of reassurance I get her to agree that I should take her home. The other two guys are both pretty drunk too and I offered to take them home but they, of course, weren't having it. So she's so drunk that I have to hold her up for the entire block and a half to get to my car. Detail: On the way back to the car she tells me she's smitten with me. First things first on this one: best expression for liking someone ever. Second things second: I tell her I'm smitten by her as well. She brushes it off...in a drunk sort of way like trying to cross the street with cars coming. We get to the car and she keep poring compliments on me. I try, desperately, to chalk them up to drunk-chick. I fail. We FINALLY get back to her place. I had no idea where she lived and she kept falling asleep so it took a little bit. We finally get there and I all but have to carry her. After getting in her building it takes a LONG time to get to her room. So at a certain point I just carry her. We get to her door. She goes in. I go in. She flops down on the bed and says, "don't go...stay...". She's asks this like...oh...6 times during the course of getting her shoes off and getting her a glass of water. Very hard to resist. But then she asks: "why?" "Because if I stay I'm not a gentleman anymore. Trust me...I want to stay...but I can't."

Retrospect? I should have stayed and just not touched her. Slept on the couch or something...but it was 3 in the morning, and I was on south Lamar...and I had to wake up to teach in 3 hours. But I wrote my number on her hand, and on a piece of paper.

It's now three days later and I'm home from the weekend's latest party. I hadn't seen her or heard from her for days. She never called. But she was at the party. Gave me a hug. Thanked me for taking care of her...and that was it. She didn't remember anything she said. She didn't remember anything we talked about. She didn't even remember me coming into her apartment and asking me to stay. On my way out? She was outside talking to your stereotypical burly, rich thirty-something. I said "call me sometime!" "I'm not going to call you." "Well at least you're honest." "I'm always honest.".....right...

Seriously. I swear to god. If anyone ever asks me why I don't drink, please reference this story. People have one, two, more, they say shit they don't mean and it hurts. Maybe not immediately, maybe three days later when you finally see each other again. Whatever the time whatever the should-have-known-better, whatever the reason. It hurts. I don't drink because I never want to make someone feel the way I feel right now and not even know it. Fuck.

Tommy "Fucking, Mister Should-Have-Known-Better" Schubert

I don't tend to rewrite entire posts but I think I'm going to go ahead and do that this time.

I had a fucking fantastic St. Patrick's Day. We went to Fillmore's, my new favorite bar in town, and they had a pretty damn awesome band there playing bluegrass. I don't mind bluegrass...it's a lot easier to dance to than normal country. We were supposed to go with Rebekah and Mike but they never showed up for some reason. Still trying to figure that one out. So it was just Erin, Amanda and I. When we picked Amanda up at her place both Erin and I were like, "Fuck...now we're totally under-dressed..." she looked amazing as usual. I'm not gonna say that Erin and I didn't look pretty good, we did, but still.... Anyway...so we get to fillmore's and the place is literally shoulder to shoulder packed. I mean it's fucking nuts. It did cool off eventually but before it cooled off we all got a little groped. It was nice :)

Erin and Amanda drank...a lot...I think the bill was like 56 bucks before tip. It was pretty intense. I had like 6 Dr. Pepper's so you know that by the time I got to the end of the night I was a little more than wired. But...as it turned out this wasn't the end of the night. We get in the car and they want to get something to eat so we head to the cafe Brazil downtown...emphasis on the BRA-zil. That pathetic joke is gonna make more sense after the next paragraph.

So we're on our way downtown and I've got two rather drunk chicks in the car with me. Amanda starts complaining about her breast size (needlessly), one thing leads to another and I'm banging my head against the window as Erin gets a handful of bra....twice. Let's just say there's envy and then there's THAT situation ;) Needless to say, Erin had an excellent evening as well!

So we do our thing at Cafe Brazil and I take everyone home. There' s a lot more story that goes in there but nothing more that's out of the ordinary. Anyway...after getting home at 4:30 and starting a blog post (which I shouldn't have done) I spent the rest of the day tooling around....thinking about the next party :)

Tommy "psst! How did I get so wet? " Schubert

Ok...I'm really tired and I really need to get a shower BAD so I'm going to try and wake up to get one. That won't happen but I'll try and come back to get one during my conference period. Twenty Black is back and faster than ever. Still messing with the timings and the tweaking and stuff but all in all this is the fastest and most trouble-free build ever. Go figure :)

Tommy "sleep" Schubert

It would seem that Blogger has gone a little nuts. Sorry if that last one triple posted, I'll fix it as soon as I get my new PC up. I'm waiting on my video card and, if you can believe it, hard drive screws. Who knew I wouldn't have what I needed even though I have several hundred nicely organized?? Break over, back to administering TAKS :P

Tommy "excited someone is posting!" Schubert

EDIT: I have managed to fix my posts from my phone. I'll add pictures when I get Twenty Black up and running again.

I just have a simple note today. Erin L. texted me early today and told me that Gary Gygax died. I denied it until after class and then went straight to look it up. It's true.

Gary Gygax died this morning at the age of 69, he's been relatively sick the last couple years. He's survived by his wife Gail.

To imagine how many lives have been shaped and how many industries took direct cues from his work is just too much. Few people in the world have had such an impact on so many of the things I love.

I rarely cry when famous people die...this one I'm actually still a little misty about several hours after finding out. I wish his remaining family all the best and I hope he's rolling twenties where ever he is...thank you for being a part of what makes me me Mr. Gygax.

Tommy "trying not to cry in the middle class" Schubert

Just as a note I should be gutting my PC tomorrow assuming all my parts come in as planned. This means I could potentially be unreachable for the mere span of a couple hours or several days. Please cross your fingers that it's the former and not the latter. I'll be saying goodbye to Twenty Black and saying hello to....well...Twenty Black. I won't be changing the case so the way I'll see it is it's the same PC. Sorry if I disappointed anyone by skimping on my usual anthropomorphism. This is the same way I have really done everything. It's the opposite from the way I handle people. With people I don't care what they really look like on the outside, with my inanimate objects it's really all about what they look like on the outside. Yeah...that might not make much sense but how many of you knew I completely gutted Zod's engine and transmission and never changed the name? ;) It's just how I roll I guess. I like to think if it as a gift to Twenty Black and myself...for 4 long and awesome years of service. I think he'll appreciate it. I know I will. On that note several of you know that I keep all my electronics in perfect working order, so the below list are the parts that I'll be selling. Prices listed. Discounts given for sex.

Processor: AMD Athlon 64 3200+ ----> $20
Motherboard: AOpen AK86-L ----> selling only with processor...otherwise free.
Hard Drive: Western Digital Raptor 10000 RPM SATA 74 GB ----> $109
Video Card: ATI Radeon 9800 Pro 256MB ----> $150
Memory: 1GB Mushkin Blue pc3200 ----> $40
Power Supply: Antec Truepower 430w ---- $30

Basically I'm parting with everything except the Dual Layer DVD-RAM drive and the case. If you would like to supply money for a case and a drive I would gladly re-build it for you with the OS still intact. I might even leave you a little porn...if you ask nice.

Tommy "Parting is such sweet sorrow" Schubert

I was just thinking about something just now as I was waiting in line to get back on a plane and end my weekend. There was this guy standing in front of me and he had red hair. I was wondering when he had the realization of, "Hey! I'm a red head. I'm going to have to spend the rest of my life that way". Was he upset? Was he happy about it? Did he care? Or did he just accept himself for who he is?

We have a lot of things about ourselves that we just can't change no matter how hard we try. No matter how much we hate it, no matter how much others might envy us over it, we just can't change it. When we have the realization that we possess one of these qualities (we ALL possess one of these qualities it's just a matter of realizing it) we have some choices to make. Accept it. Love it. Hate it. Try and change it. Force a change.

Each person's is different. Maybe your too fat, too skinny, straight hair, curly hair, pale, myopic, too smart, too dumb, too tall, too short, it doesn't matter what your deal is, to you it's a problem. So just so I don't have to call anyone out...I'll go ahead and use myself as an example so this can make a little more sense.

***time lapse of at least a week***

I'm really skinny. Always have been. All the time people are saying shit like, "you're so lucky you can eat anything you want and as much as you want!" "I wish I was your size." etc Etc...and of course it's usually women... Me? I was born this way (yes, woman sized). Always been this way probably always will. My choice from the list above is to both accept it and do something about it. I literally must eat every meal and tons of food just to MAINTAIN my weight but I have to do regular weight training if I want to gain anything. And even then it takes absurd amounts of work to gain anything. To some people this might seem like a dream but to others, like me, it just sucks. But I didn't choose to sit around and do nothing but complain about it and hate myself. I work out and eat lots of protein. I accept this as something that's a part of who I am and something I can only have a small effect on. A little over a year ago I weighed between 134 and 138 depending on how many meals I forgot to eat that week. (yes I genuinely forget meals) I decided that I was done being regularly insulted for being skinny so I started making sure to eat big meals and meals high in protein....and then I started working out three times a week almost without fail...before the end of the summer I weighted 155. It's the most I've ever weighed in my life. But I was still getting shit and I still only looked different to the trained eye.

So I took the popeye challenge the other day and have been talking to my students about it a little and after explaining it to them they really liked it. I encouraged them all to take the challenge.

The popeye challenge is simple. It's named after the cartoon character that I have been called, with usually degrading intentions, for the cast majority of my life. But people tend not to think about what they call someone. Popeye looked pretty fucked up. Let's be real about that, he has retarded huge forarms, constantly smokes a pipe, constantly squints an eye, hunches and snorts spinach like it's cocaine. But no matter, "I 'yam what I 'yam" he still spouts. The challenge is to accept who you are for everything you are. That's it. Just be who you are! :).
I could choose to get pec implants. I could do all kinds of things to make myelf bigger. I could choose to love myself. I could choose to hate myself all the time. I could choose to just accept it. I could choose to simply work on it. You already know my choice, but....what's yours?

Tommy "my PC parts will be here tomorrow!!!" Schubert