Ah where to begin, where to begin.... at the beginning I suppose, now that my "n" key works flawlessly again.

As many of you are aware, I just moved out to Louisville, Kentucky and I'm liviing in the "Old Louisville" section. Its pretty swank. I have 12 foot ceilings and a room much larger than I anticipated. And the company makes it all come together. I really am happy to be able to say that my new roomates r0xx0r ;)

So! To account for the last few days... this may be a long post. Get a sandwich.. you just might need one. (I recommend one from harold's.)

Okay so, My original plan to leave on the 31st to 1st failed. This happened because I was simply done in by the partying before leaving, as all the send-offs cut straight through my packing time, which is, as everyone knows, the last minute (Can you believe my blatant abuse of comma's in this sentence ;) ). Anyway, after partying with Alex, TOny and Liz and the crew of the Osiris at battletech and the festivities thereafter( I Love Margarita's ;) ) (see the Ops Log for the appropriate day), I had an appointment with Alex to see SWAT and a dinner chaser at Bertucci's. This was quite nice and after which we adjourned to the casa Rupprecht and the Rupprecht Cinema One, for a mstie screening of "Star Trek 6".

This, was too fun. Trust me, its fun when mike jumps up on his footstool/ottoman and starts surfing on the back spine of the Enterprise-B while we're all singing 'Wipeout'. Trust me, you had to be there and I wish I had a camera for that. It was worth the slight dew spillage.

After that it was just too darned late to presume to launch considering the amount of stuff I still had to go through. So I didn''t.

On Last day (spt. 1st) I worked like a dog getting everything cleared out. Had lunch with Rick and Joan and got back to see there was a '24' marathon on to help me pack. At the end of which, I was annoyed, because the cable went out. Well, I had things to ship off to people, so I took the op to run over to kat and steve's with some stuff I'd borrowed awhile back. Asked them how 24 ended, and was able to get home with time to spare for sleep. Which, really didn't work out.

It didn't work out because at 2am my brain was swiss cheesed and long story short, I left a few things behind and was running headlong into problem city. Which occured catastrophically 12minutes or so later when my car simply stopped moving on 287 between exits 2a and 2b.

I did the only thing I could do, I called Kat and Steve and dutifully Steve showed up bout 30mins later and after another call, he shuttled me over to Starbase 7 where I bedded down until 7am when I got a call from Lina, explaining that I had left a mess and it wasn't fair for her to have to clean it up. Brain still swiss cheesed I simply put the problem on the to handle list and explained the car situation. Now realizing that I'm at a 24 hourish layover again, I hungup and made plans with a local tow company to tow car and give it the once over.

For those of you who know, my car has been giving me hell for the past month. This is because I have been about 4quarts low in the transmission fluid department I come to find. So, the problem takes about 20minutes with an oil change for good measure, to rectify. It seems now I've got the day to chill and I pony up to the nearest hotel, hit the showers, have a nice warm bath to follow up, before slipping into something slinky and promptly passing the hell out for several hours.

On wakeup, I checked the daylight-o-meter and realized I still had time to kill so I caught 3 movies on HBO and then checked out at dusk, heading over to the condo once again to clean up my mess. 20mins later, mess cleaned up and goodbyes had, I head off to dinner with Kat at Fuddruckers and all is good.

So, on return from dinner, at 10:15pm, I head out with my junk and my lovely pc, and am outta jersey by eleven:30-50ish pm. that night. Some folks got the txt msg on that one.

The Trip

Rain was a great camouflage for my exit but it didn't need to keep up until 2pm the next day! I mean geez! In the middle of the night, rain and fog SUCK and they prevent one from catching the environment they are driving through. At some point around 5am I arrived at my second rest area in mechanicsburg or something I think (I could be wrong) and I needed to catch an hour of sleep. I pulled over a blanket, locked the doors and grabbed my lightsaber pommel (in case I had security issues) and zoned for a bit. My phone woke me up, proudly displaying its alarm and I felt Madeline Kahn refreshed. I went inside, acquired two croissanwiches and headed back out into the lightening darkness on the first of three 200 mi long blocks of driving interspersed with weird turns. The first of which being on the PA turnpike.

So the drive was not much to speak of. I was fighting sleep, unable to find any of the music I needed to stay awake and was a very dangerous driver because of it, as I kept nodding out behind the wheel only to wake up a nanosecond later to regain composure. This long distance journey wasn't turning out to be all that safe, but the universe was looking out for me with those insta-wakeups. Thank you universe :)

So its daylight, I'm getting peckish, there's sun and there's a Krispy Kreme on a hilltop. So I go for all that, and discover that no krispy's are present and decide to forego adding more gas when something catches my attention. A big-ass sign saying "The Lion's Den 24 hour Adult Store". Naturally not able to turn down such a forceful 50 foot sign, I make my way across the street and acquire a leather/pvc riding crop. A conversation piece for later on arrival for sure ;)

Anyway, back to the road. Too many truckstoppy places out there. Its weird when you walk into a convenience store and find showers. Not that truckstop folk don't need such things, its just not something, lil ol' me from jersey is used to on a regular basis. And me walking in wearing a tubetop and sandals probably wasn't what they expected either.... (No I didn't wear a tube top ;) But it sounded good for the illustrtive purpose tho ;) ).

Anyway, moving along it took me several rest area stops to get here as my stomach was giving me trouble and the ambient heat necessitated some stop off's to deal with the pass-out factor.

And then after much delay at 4pm I arrive and we leave everything in the car because it won't get hurt where its at anyway. and dinner beckons.

On Arrival

Arrival was fun, I tapped the buzzer and Amy came down after accusing me of being a tease by txt'ing her that I was here, instead of just hitting the doorbuzzer in the first place. Ah well, I txt therefore you get ;)

We head upstairs and I'm introduced formally to Ben, whom I immediately considered to be exceptionally tall, perfect for the high ceilings here. He's not all that hugely tall of course, but he's about 8-10inches taller than me, so now I feel normal sized here instead of 'tall' and the ceilings reinforce this fact. I hope ben doesn't mind tall comments ;)

So the first night, we're set to have dinner with Jonathan who happens to also work at the place I have applied to work. He comes over and we order pizza from Pizza Magia (pete-s-ah Muh-gee-ah) and it was, in fact, quite quite tasty. We got a large pepperoni and a large bbq chciken version and both were, as we may have mentioned a second ago, tasty ;) The company of friends was great, I enjoyed meeting Jonathan and after he left a little later, we went down and got the major totables from the car. One of which contained the dvd collection and other media which has contributed to the 'Leaning Tower o-media" which may be pictured below, later ;)

Anyway, we got in, got the compy setup and started to go through some things and it was good.

Full Day 1, Region 1

This place is quiet. Very quiet. Hunting rabbits quiet. So it was at 9a.m. when I was left to my own devices at Compusa, right next to the Barnes and Noble, where I could commune with the force, technology and cheesecake. And boy howdy did I ;)

So here's my wonderful new G-force Fx 5200 Video card upside down and mounted in my box. The green sliver below is not a modem... its my new 2.4ghz wireless NIC that is 804.11b and 804.11g(draft) compatible. That's right babies, Your rec chief is now stylin with uber fast and detailed graphics (with an onboard S-video out for fun with a vcr or dvd recorder) and a steady 11Mbps connection to the World Wide Bite Me ;) It is sooooooooooooooooooooo sweet.. it brings a tear to my eye ;)

Later this night a new friend came over to the apartment, her name was Suzanne and she's an anime nut. Mentioned the Hathor, she seems down with that ;) We ordered chinese here tonight for dinner as no one felt like cooking and it was alright, god I miss good chinese food. Like, when they use seperate dishes and oils to cook the seafood and chicken and beef in. And they have chicken fried rice here.... very weird. Gonna have to specify Pork fried rice I guess next time.

The day went by fairly quick and Amy got hired by the local comms company I am looking to join. She will now be working there full time doing tier2 customer support for cable modems and the like. Myself, I am still awaiting the call, but the word is, that they know my name there, so I can only hope that means they are slating to call me. If not, I've applied to IGLOU, the source of my current 11Mbps connection and am waiting to hear from them ;)

That night I went to bed at midnight surrounded by a riding crop, a cell phone, and the plans to the Constellation Class for light reading.

Full Day 2, Region 2

I'm a download addict ;) So far, I've downloaded 4 episodes of Ghost in the Shell Standalone Complex, and downloaded the full Vangelis BladeRunner soundtrack (mine forever getting scratched from usage). I've picked up a few other things here and there online, but not too much. I also have installed Unreal Tournament:GOTY on both mine and Ben's machines... so we should be kicking each other's tails in quite liberally soon enough ;)

Anyway, took a little time to go to the grocery store today and pickup some most needed food items for the house. Did I mention how quiet it was in this place ;) Its so quiet, that if you screamed, no one would hear you. Oh and I found out about a place called Leather and Lace nearby... wonder if they are hiring?

Right now, I'm finishing up this log, and am going to make some changes on the avenger website. Updates really ;) Hope everyone is doing well back in jersey land ;) I've also put some pictures here so you can see some of the new digs ;) Enjoy!

My Bed in my new room, Me, Amy and Ben in my new room.

(c 2003, Lourdes C., Recreation Dept., Medical Division, USS Avenger NCC-1860)

Addendum: You can go to http://www.cafepress.com/lesravienne and help me out a little bit and get some darn funny swag. Make sure to share the link with your friends ;) This works better in mass ;)