Halcyon Repose

I sit here drinking a glass of Earthquake Petite Sarah, and boy do I need a shower.

Rewind to a couple of days ago. My roommate Kenny announced that it was time to rearrange the living room, and he wanted to enlist my help to do so. We had danced around the idea and thrown some thoughts back and forth previously, but apparently he was ready to make the journey towards a new living room with or without me. It was decided that Saturday after my fencing classes were finished, we would move some furniture around to see what effect we could get.

I got up the next morning and did my time at the fencing center. Once I was done, I had a message from Kenny on my cell phone that we were going to meet the other roommate Ed and his GF for lunch, and then we were going to pay a visit to Ikea for some bookshelves and possibly a new coffee table (our current one is on it’s last two legs… literally). I ran home, and had just enough time to change clothes before we ran out to pick the others up for hot wings, and some wandering in the great store known as Ikea. We didn’t find any coffee tables that struck our fancy, but we did get some super cheap book cases to hold our DVDs. We hit another furniture store on the way home that was having a going out of business sale, but alas they were a little out of our price point. Had I the money, I would have done some shopping there, they did have some nice furniture, and a super cute sales lady that I wouldn’t have minded picking up.

After the bomb that was the furniture store, back home we went. Ed and Kenny had already moved some furniture around, so we got to work and cleared out the overly large entertainment center out of the room, turned the area rug around, relocated the TV, and put together the bookcases. While we worked, Ed’s girlfriend threw a Costco’s shepard’s pie into the oven for some late night munchies. Once all this was complete we had a completely new living room that makes the place actually look respectable. Better yet, the new setup is actually conductive to a 5.1 surround sound speaker set up. I have had the stereo to do it for awhile, but the old layout (TV in the corner) did not work well at all.

Last night I stopped by Fry’s to pick up some speaker wall mounts, and when I got home, I discovered that there was only one of the two mounts in the package. Some enterprising individual was kind enough to take one of them, and of course I did not check the package before I got home. Cursing the electronics god responsible for Fry’s, I had to make another trip this evening to return the mounts. Thinking ahead, I put on my work shirt to grease the wheels at the exchange counter. Sure enough when I got there I found one of the employee’s who I knew I could impress with my job, and lo and behold, he finished with his previous customer just as I got up there. I explained my situation to him, and he turned to his supervisor to ok the return. As we were waiting, he asked if I actually worked for the company so eloquently blazoned across my chest, and I smiled at him and told him I did. He then the went on to tell me how much he enjoyed our game, and started on with his in game stories and how he had applied for a position at the company as well, but had never heard back about it. I smiled nodded at the appropriate times, and soon had an in store voucher for a new wall mounting kit.

I quickly by passed the previous set I had purchased. All of the other boxes were wrecked beyond recognition, and plus they were rated for 20+ pounds, and all we needed was 5 pounds of support. I made my purchase, ran home and then started the arduous task of hanging the speakers. I not only hung them up near the ceiling, but ran the wires all the way around the room, so after two hours of playing monkey (on twirling bar stools to boot), I finally completed my task. I poured myself a glass of wine to try it out (it is definitely better have having aired out for about 30 minutes) and I basked in the sounds of the new set up.

There is nothing like the tangible result to a hard night’s work. I now sit here sipping my wine, and watching the lightening play across the sky. Man, I live for nights like tonight.

I have decided that I HAVE to go to this concert. So now the scouring of the internet for decently priced tickets begins.

I recently purchased one of the new iPods (my Creative Nomad didn’t cut it when I saw some of the organizational features of iTunes/iPods), and I listened to Death Cab for a good long time. Since the concert is still a month out, hopefully I will be able to find something I can afford.

If anyone happens to run across any tickets, let me know and you shall be rewarded

So let’s try this again. Since the web is so being a pain, writing long posts in a text editor seems like a wise idea.

So updates on the life and times of Jaime. My back is doing well. I did pull it out again last week helping my friend load up his luggage into my car, but thankfully it only kept me out of service for a week (ONLY a week??? How sad is that?). Pain is mostly gone, but my back is one big tight knot. I am going to stretch out and then try and do some fencing tonight. If things go well, I may be able to fence in the Long Beach Invitational after all. I was hoping to be able to make it to the Miami NAC next month, but registrations end today, and I am still not sure when the events are, nor to I want to make a decision split second with my back being as iffy as it is. The up side to going of course is visiting my friend’s in Miami, but even if I can’t make it, I will hopefully be able to visit them when they have their wedding later on this year.

Concert wise I waited too long before buying the Death Cab tickets. They are completely sold out, so now I have to see if I can track down some tickets from a scalper or something. I wouldn’t normally buy from a third party, but I really want to go to that show, so I’ll have to see what I can find. The New Pornographers concert totally kicked ass. Had a great time, and the second opening band, Satisfaction, was actually really good as well. I picked up their 4 song cd, and they guys were nice enough to sign it for me. We got there too late for the first opening band, The Lassie Foundation, and I am kinda regretting it now. I have heard a couple of their songs, and I have liked what I have heard so far. Maybe I will be able to catch them in another show at sometime.

So why chose the name HalcyonRepose.com?

As is always the case with the internet, my first few choices were already taken. I have long been enamoured with the word halcyon, so I knew my goal from the beginning was to find an available URL that would accomidate my word passion (my other word of choice being ornery, but that doesn’t have the same website possibilities). My first choice was HalcyonDreams.com, and of course that was already taken. Back to the drawing board it was. I did some brain storming lists, but I kept coming back to halcyon. I was doing some research into the word for some ideas, and in the process I found a quotion from Thomas De Quincy that was simply “Deep, halcyon repose”. It immediately struck me as ‘right’ (as all important decisions should) and now here we are.

Where we go from here, we will have to see.

Is this a blog? Well technically yes.

Will it be my online journal? Yes and no. In my efforts to improve myself, one of my perceived defficencies is my lack of ability to communicate. I feel I have made great strides in this over the years, but this is another step down that road. Every time I bear my soul, so to speak, it gets a little easier. In fact just the act of organizing my thoughts into a form I can portray, seems to make the entire process more automatic.

Of course in addition to the above, this will also be a place to put all those digital items that I feel others need access to.