vonnieda.org

I can see the threads of my reality in the dreams I have every night. I’m sure you all can too. I’m not suggesting I am some super being or anything, I’m just setting the fucking stage, okay?

Last night I had this really awesome drama/adventure dream that I woke up totally stoked from. I believe that is the first time I have ever said “totally stoked” in my life.

For some reason I was riding my bike (motorcycle, to be clear) out in the middle of nowhere and it was getting dark. I ended up on this little back road and I had to stop. I don’t remember why. I pulled up to a tiny house, more of a cabin, or a shack to be honest and knocked, hoping they would put me up for the night. The old man answered and was very hospitable, saying I was perfectly welcome to stay the night but that he was to have company over later and I had to stay away from the living room. I couldn’t be seen there. I wasn’t one to question his hospitality so I went to the room I was shown and settled in for the night.

Later on I hear the company show up and they begin talking. It’s all very serious religion stuff. Not your normal religion, more of your crazy religious person stuff. So I lay back to ignore it. A few hours later my door opens and a girl comes in. She is, of course, beautiful and she sits down beside me and starts to talk.

She starts telling me about her parents (she’s the daughter of the house) and how they are these religious nutcases who picket funerals and burn crosses and all this crazy shit and I eventually realize she is saying that they are the family depicted in some movie that I’d seen. In the dream the movie is something that everyone would know about. It was called “The Devils Children” or something like that. So I’m like “Oh my God, you are the family from ‘The Devils Children’” and she nods yes.

If you are familiar with our local nutjobs, The Phelps’ you know who was being portrayed in this dream.

At this point I realize that if I get caught with this girl in my room I am dead so I try to get rid of her. She tells me I have to help her and that I have to come to her room with her. Don’t worry, this isn’t about to turn into a shitty porn story. It’s gonna be a good porn story. No, kidding. Okay, so we sneak to her room and she tells me I have to get her out of there. She doesn’t believe in what her parents are doing and she wants to get away but, of course, won’t let her.

So I say, okay, we are gonna bust out of here. I take her hand and we’re about to run out the door movie star style but she stops me. She pushes me into the little attached bathroom and hands me a razor. She points to my face and says “Shave.” I look at her like she’s crazy and tell her I don’t need to shave, that we need to get the fuck out of here but she insists. So I quickly shave my face and as I’m doing that she explains.

Her parents believe that people with facial hair are Satanic and they only let me in, and to stay, because they were going to kill me later. If I shave they won’t recognize me and we can just waltz out the front door and say we’re going for a ride.

So I shave and we walk out through the living room completely unmolested. She says “We’re going for a ride, be back soon” and her parents wave us off. We hop on my bike and tear ass out of there. As were burning down the dirt road leading to the little shack I look in my rear views and see that the family, and their company, has figured out the trick and they are chasing us down the road, but they are on foot. I twist the throttle, the bike surges and the freaks are left in the dust. We hit the road and drive off into the rising sun, presumably to have awesome adventures and most likely a very fulfilling sex life.

Man, that was a killer dream.

Now, you may think it would be clever of you to post your amatuer analyzations of the dream saying how I’m looking for escape from this and need affirmation of that in my life. I’ve already done all that, and it’s all true, so don’t be droll.

I’m still here! I’m just busier than a very busy thing!

It’s been a fun few weeks, and weekends. Lots of going out and having fun and generally doing the same kind of thing I’ve been doing, except even more so!

I finally got to do some serious riding Sunday with Carmen and that was a blast. She has a Yamaha whose model I cannot remember at the moment but it’s a really nice sport cruiser and it’s way faster than my bike. Mine is way more uncomfortable though, so I’ve got that going for me. We headed way south on Holmes, and eventually west through Archie and into Creighton and other random destinations. Really nice several hour ride, capped off with some serious fried chicken at RCs in Martin City. Nice.

Also of note has been the O.A.R. and Jack’s Mannequin show last weekend, which was fun, but not totally my style of music. We missed most of Jack’s Mannequin and from the sounds of it that was okay. O.A.R. was good, and played well, but they were just a little too mellow for me. Hit Charles’ party after that and had some great bbq and chilling and drinking.

Waverunning, Nikko, Empire and Grand Emporium, Harry’s for Christine’s birthday, more Empire, running out of gas…

I can’t believe I ran out of gas.

And I’ve been going to the dentist every few days to have more teeth pulled out. I think I am done now, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they suggested that I need to get the rest pulled out just to be safe. If they do I am replacing them with titanium ones. That would be awesome.

I was just behind a girl driving a car who’s license plate said “GEEKGRL” and who had the following bumperstickers:
Motorcycles are everywhere. Look twice, save a life.
Federation of Horsepower
Kansas City Marching Cobras

I didn’t even know they made girls like that.

I tried to indicate via head motions (as I was on my bike) that I wanted to marry her but I don’t think she got it.

It’s so embarassing when I involuntarily bust out the air guitar in my cube while I am working. Sometimes I just can’t help it. I’m sitting there looking at a problem and the band hits a particularly awesome riff and I just stand up, legs spread and rock out for a few minutes.

The rock. It’s in my bones.

Let’s see…

Worlds of Fun, The Princess Bride at Screenland, Illegal late night swimming at Scotty’s, Boating and waverunning at Smithville, D’Bronx, The BT Show, The Grand Emporium, Lunch in Weston along with high speed shenanigans, Capote (excellent!), Stirfry at Lake’s (also excellent) and Pirates of the Carribean 2 (awful!).

Not bad, not bad.

If anyone sees my liver please tell it I miss it and I’m very sorry and please come back. We were meant for each other.

Friday night I met up with Adam and Jo and headed to 75th Street Brewery for a little boozin and that was a lot of fun. Quiet night, but lots of good talk and beer and pretzels.

Saturday Adam gave me a hand putting on the last piece of my new bumper, so now my car is complete again. It’s nice to have it back. I missed it. After that I ran down to the homebrew store and got ingredients to make some beer! It’s been a long while but Adam and Jo got me a gift certificate for the homebrew store for my birthday so I figured it was about time. I bought the stuff to try to clone Skinny Dip from New Belgium which is my new favorite beer. After that I went and bought a few new games and Adam and I did some killin’ for the rest of the evening.
JoLynn and Sarah stopped by later on to get keys and to show off Sarah who is ultra-pregnant. She looks great, and that baby looks like it’s ready to come out.

Sunday I had to do chores cause my planned Monday brewing session had ballooned into grilling and a house party. So I mowed the front and back lawns, cleaned up a ton of trash, pruned down some of the flora and just generally cleaned up the house. A few hours later Adam and Jo were feeling bored so we decided to go rent a boat and spend a few hours at the lake.

We went up to Smithville cause I’ve rented there before and it was nice. Loaded up the waverunner and we headed out. By time we got there, and found the right marina it was already 4pm and we could only keep the boat till 6. We got it anyway and started to head out to the lake. Adam was driving the boat and I was on my waverunner.

We had been talking earlier about how funny it would be if we saw Chris and Nicole and a few minutes outside of the no wake zone I saw JoLynn pointing and waving at another pontoon boat. I went over to investigate and it was Chris and Nicole! They were out with a ton of their friends and I rudely begged them to let us join them once we returned our boat. It worked out really well. We got to hang on a much nicer boat for the rest of the evening, and had a great time hanging with everyone, and they got to go for awesome rides with me on my waverunner. Chris was the only one sober enough to ride it himself, which he did, and I think he fell in love.

When we eventually bailed out of there we picked up some pizza, headed back to my place and called it a night. Or so I thought! Adam and Jo left and after I cleaned up some I went to bed. I felt super tired but I couldn’t fall asleep. Lake called me around 10:30pm and asked me to come up to Sidepockets so I got dressed and went up there and met him and his friends. They were all completely trashed so I did my best to catch up.

I did pretty good 🙂

Monday I woke up feeling like hell, but I had a busy day ahead of me so I spent an hour or two bringing myself to life and then I hit the road. If I was going to be grilling I needed a grill. I bought a pretty nice, but cheap, propane grill and brought that home just in time for Adam and Jo to arrive for brewing.

Brewing went pretty well, and while I did that Adam built the new grill and Jo cleaned the house. I have great friends 🙂 JoLynn also did a bunch of shopping for the party and she found some Kaffir Lime Leaves, which I really wanted to add to the beer. They took off to get cleaned up while I finished the beer and then people started showing up to party!

The house party was thrown together kind of at the last minute and I was afraid it would be a flop but once everyone got plenty of food in their bellies and started the drinking it turned into the house party of the century. Seemed like it at least. I didn’t crawl into bed until like 6:00am and there were still a few people partying at that point. Lots of fun!

I woke up around 3pm on Tuesday with Tony calling me to come drink some sangria. I wasn’t much feeling the sangria but I did want some food, so I went to his place for a cookout for a few hours. I even got a few sips of sangria in… and it hurt. Spent the rest of the day just chilling, cleaning the house, doing laundry and healing up from the previous three days. Around 10pm I hopped on my bike and rode out to Parkville to catch the last 15 minutes or so of their fireworks show which was really cool. Lots of other fireworks on the way too.

So, my weekend was a blast. I didn’t have any plans at all on Friday afternoon and ended up busy every day of the long weekend. Very cool. Everything was just super great until 2:30am Wednesday morning…

That was when I woke up feeling like the side of my face was gonna fall off. I have had a few problems with my wisdom teeth in the past and I guess the bottom right side one decided it was time to stop fucking around. So my life was pure misery until about 2:30 this afternoon. I got in with a dentist (first time in 7 years or so) and they went to work. Unfortunately the gum around the bad tooth is infected, so I got antibiotics for that but she offered to pull one of the other teeth while I was there and it sounded like such a good time that I went ahead.

It wasn’t really that bad at all. I got rid of the top right one and I go back next Thursday to get rid of the bottom right and bottom left. I guess the pain probably hasn’t really set in yet, but I’m not worried about it. I have a bottle of Vicodin and a bottle of Gatorade and all the time in the world 🙂

Aparently The Hurricane was sold recently, and it’s either shutting down, or being remade, or something. I can’t really find any news about it. All I have so far is a few pictures Courtney sent me of a going away party thing where they put a “RIP Hurricane” sign out front and one of the regulars had his name scratched into a bar stool.

I hope they don’t turn it into a club, or something lame. I have lots of good memories from that place… and a few bad ones. The Hurricane is the first bar I ever went to in Westport, and where I saw Jono’s band play the one time I saw them play. Not to mention the endless number of nights I spent there in the last year swilling down PBR or Stella and hanging out with Ricardo.

I wonder what happens to Ricardo?

The Hurricane was absolutely my favorite bar in the city and I’m pretty sad to see it go.

Wow, it’s even worse than I thought. Courtney sent me these links:
http://www.patchchord.com/article/137/my-story-of-the-hurricane
http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/entertainment/columnists/hearne_christopher_jr/14425461.htm

A more upscale clientele? A VIP room downstairs? Limo service to Blonde? Jesus Christ… I’m going to throw up.

And a few more…
http://www.pitch.com/Issues/2006-05-04/music/wayward.html

In an awesome fit of luck I found a nearly pristine front bumper for my car at the dealership and the parts guy sold it to me for $90! If I had to buy it new (which I was getting ready to do) it would have been $400 for the part and another $380 for paint! WOOT! My car is finally whole again! So happy!

I also bought and installed a smaller front sprocket for my bike. Now I’ve got more torque and a little less top end speed. With my added torque I was finally able to do my first wheelie. Sort of. I don’t know if a half inch of clearance counts, but it definitely felt like a wheelie. Now it’s just a matter of practice 🙂

I pretty much did nothing but work on cars and bikes this weekend. My hands are black with grease but it was sure fun. I learned how to take serious parts of my bike apart and put them back together. Hopefully. I haven’t died yet.

I joined my company’s beach volleyball team a few weeks back but with my trip to Europe I missed the first two games. Last night was the first one where I was back so I headed out to The Beach and tried to remember how to play.

I did remember how to play, and I did okay but there was an Incident.

I was having a good time, and was pretty enthusiastic and doing quite a few dives and such. Some of them were good, and I made a few good saves. On one I went for a straight out dive, bumped the ball with my fists and got it up over the net but when I landed I landed straight out like superman and my balls slapped the packed sand.

It doesn’t do to cry on the volleyball court, but let me tell you… I wanted to. One little tear might have slipped out into the sand.

It was a lot of fun though, and I wished we had played longer. We played three games, and lost them all, but we got better quickly. The first game we got owned, but the second and third were pretty competitive.

It’s a mixed team deal, so we have three guys and three girls. The problem is that there’s a rule where if a guy hits the ball a girl has to hit it too before it goes over the net. That keeps you from having a few girls stand in the corner while three burly guys actually play. Unfortunately I had trouble remembering the damn rule and fucked up a few times. One of the guys would put up a great set and I would slap it over the net and then everyone would look at me like “What an idiot. He did it again.”

The Beach seems like a pretty fun place. It started to get pretty crowded as we wrapped up our games, and lots of people were swilling down pitchers. My whole team left so I didn’t stick around, but it seemed like a place that might be lots of fun.

Today I got up nice and early, had a quick breakfast and checked my email and then headed off to find my way to Stonehenge.

I knew that I could find a train from Waterloo Station to Salisbury, which is 9 miles form Stonehenge but after that I didn’t really know what was up. The trains leave from Waterloo every 20 minutes, so that didn’t take very long and it was only a 2 hour ride there.

Once I got there it was pretty clear there wouldn’t be problems getting to Stonehenge. Lots of busses, bus tours and tourist information. I got a cheap bus fare and had about 45 minutes to blow before I headed out. I was kind of hungry so I wandered down to a pub on the corner to see what I could scrape up.

This pub was like something out of a movie. Everyone in there knew each other and they were all asking about each other’s mums and kids. When someone new walked in the door they were all like “Allo John!” or whatever. Weird.

I had a pint of cask cider, which was tasty, a plate of chips and some talk with the bartender. She asked me if I was going to Stonehenge and I said “How did you guess? Wrong accent?”. She said that everyone that comes into the pub asking what food they can get quickly is going to Stonehenge. Heh!

So I took the bus ride over, and Salisbury is very pretty. Stonehenge is actually in, or very near, Amesbury which is also very pretty.

The entrance to Stonehenge is very touristy, but that’s across the street and a tunnel. Once you actually get on the grounds it’s very nice. No tourist crap, but lots of people. Only problem is you can’t really get near it. There is a rope fence a good 25 yards away from it you can’t go inside. Aparently during the Solstice, next week, they let you in so you can commune with the moon goddess or whatever.

Stonehenge is… well, just like the lady at the bar said, it’s just like the pictures. It doesn’t move about. It was awesome to see it in person though.

On the trip back I fell asleep on the train and almost ended up heading back towards Salisbury. Someone was nice enough to wake me up right before the damn train left again. That sucked.

So that’s it for my tour of Europe! It’s about 5:30pm right now. I am going to find some dinner, and a few beers. Maybe do some laundry so I have something cleanish to wear tomorrow and then pack and hit the sack. I have to be up pretty early tomorrow to find my way to the airport.

So, thanks for reading and thanks for the comments! And don’t forget to check out the last batch of pictures from London yesterday and Stonehenge today!