Weekend update
"Gonna ride down to the river where it runs,
Gonna watch TV and pray for decent reruns"
This weekend was...um...adventurous. Saturday, as always this time o' year, was football day. Though it seemed to be non-stop from the on set. Then after the game we went and saw my grandmother who's in the hospital. Good news is that she gets to leave tomorrow, but she has to go to a nursing home / rehabilitation center for at least a couple of weeks. Which we all think will be a good thing. Then we went to my uncle's house, and watched the remainder of the games. I didn't get home until very late Saturday night / early Sunday morning.
So Sunday morning rolls around, and my buddy Pillowpants wakes me up with a phone call. He's wanting to go to Harrah's Cherokee Casino, a casino on an indian reservation. We roll out earlier than I'd hoped, and started drinking beer around noon. We didn't finish our last beer until about midnight.
Since the casino is located in a dry county, we [Pillowpants] had to drive about 20 minutes to another city to buy beer. We hauled ass back to the casino parking lot, and pounded brewskies. I only drank two, but Pillowpants had about four. We headed towards the casino, Pillowpants in his cast, me walking about twenty steps ahead of his crippled ass [he recently broke his foot, but I'll get to that later]. :) We get in, and I lost about $30. Pillowpants' goofy butt won $200. On a 25ยข poker machine none the less! If he'd won on a $1 machine he would have left $800 richer!
We left the casino, and headed in a direction towards the interstate that was given to us by a fellow traveler. Well, he was an idiot. We ended up driving 1 1/2 hours only to find that we were still 1+ hours away from Knoxville. If we had taken the route that we came, we would have gotten back to my place in about 1 hour.
From my place we headed to Union Jacks, a British-themed pub. Pillowpants ended up buying me supper, and kept the beer train flowing in my direction. Since he was $200 to the better, which he told me at least once every three minutes. But it's all good in the hood, I kicked his ass at pool all 4 times. So we're hangin', drinkin', and playing pool. The whole time I'm drinking this weird, imported beer, and hating all of 'em. Then Pillowpants realizes they have my staple, Miller Lite. So I proceed to curse the boy a time or twenty. Though it's probably a good thing I didn't realize that they served ML until later. Otherwise I'd probably had one too many.
After whipping his butt at pool we moseyed up to the bar, and started chatting up two "beautiful babies."* Pillowpants told them he broke his foot saving two children from a fire. Which they saw right through. Then the truth came out, he broke his foot in a bar before even taking a sip of alcohol. We proceed to try and extract from the ladies what would be the best story for Pillowpants to tell women about how he came to his present predicament. One of them and I came up with the idea of him concocting a tale in which he saved a baby from a drunken / meth-addicted mother. That seemed to fit best.
The ladies left shortly thereafter, and we headed out too. No numbers were exchanged, which Pillowpants and I made vulgar remarks about what the rest of the evening would entail. In the end, my tired ass rolled back into my driveway 'round 1 o'clock Sunday night / Monday morning. This morning came too soon, and work was hectic as always.
One potentially good thing came out of the drunken merriment with Tom. We were talking about his divorce, and how he felt that that time was wasted time. He missed out on a good chunk of his youth, and some killer opportunities because of his ex-wife. Who cheated on him. His mind's in an angry, yet good-natured mood. He makes jokes about his "whore of an ex," but does it with a laugh. He spoke of finishing up getting his Masters, and his plans thereafter. He wants to open a small restaurant and bar. Kind of like Union Jacks. But have live music, poker nights, etc. He said that he kind of feels like he's just been wasting time the past few years, and wants to make his mark. We kept talking, and I mentioned that if I had my druthers I'd love to resurrect my magazine while also doing design work. I figure it would take me about 3 solid days of work to put together the entire magazine. I told him that I wouldn't do the magazine until I could afford to do at least six months worth of issues without a single advertisement. I told him of my woes in dealing with some of the venues around town. They all were either very pessimistic, or wanted ads for free. I want to be able to publish six issues, and if it does well go back to those cheesedicks and tell 'em it's full price or they can screw themselves. I hate that negative mentality that it's not going to work because they can't wrap their minds around it. I'm sure no one but the originators thought Metro Pulse would make it as far as it has, and I'm sure they even had their doubts. All this came spewing from my mouth when Pillowpants blurted out "well hell, my company [a credit union] is willing to buy one ad for the price of the print run." Based on my previous estimate of what it would take to produce the magazine, Pillowpants is willing to help me out. Now this was early on when he had only had one beer. Which if you know anything at all about Pillowpants you know that's not even making a dent. I just shrugged it off, thinking he was talking out of his ass.
But it turns out he wasn't. I talked to him again this morning about it, and he said that yes he would be willing to purchase one ad that would cover the cost of producing the magazine. Now all of this is based on the original estimate I received well over a year ago. So right now I have my friend Barakas' brother working on an estimate for me at his print shop. I'm not putting all my eggs in one basket. I realize that even if it does go through, and I am able to output the magazine that I cannot quit my job. I need that income to help out on some of the expenses that are tying me to that job now; mortgage, utilities, etc.
But this could be a door opening for me. If this works out it could be that I could eventually quit my job at the print shop to do the magazine and design work full time. Which has been the dream since I was in high school. To be able to work for myself has always been my goal. I've been studying the business structures of every company I've worked for, looking for the cracks. Their shortcomings, missteps, and pitfalls. If the estimate comes back, and it's in the ball park, I could be on the road to a new chapter in my life. The content for the magazine is easy to come by, it's the money that has been the holdup.
So we'll see what happens. I'm somewhat overly anxious to get those numbers from Barakas' brother. I want to see if it's a possibility or all just a pipe dream.
*We made fun of Swingers the whole day, talking about "meetin' beautiful babies." :)
Until next time:
"I don't want you to be the guy in the PG-13 movie everyone's *really* hoping makes it happen. I want you to be like the guy in the rated R movie, you know, the guy you're not sure whether or not you like yet. You're not sure where he's coming from. Okay? You're a bad man. You're a bad man, Mikey. You're a bad man, bad man." - Trent [Vince Vaughn]; Swingers
Gonna watch TV and pray for decent reruns"
This weekend was...um...adventurous. Saturday, as always this time o' year, was football day. Though it seemed to be non-stop from the on set. Then after the game we went and saw my grandmother who's in the hospital. Good news is that she gets to leave tomorrow, but she has to go to a nursing home / rehabilitation center for at least a couple of weeks. Which we all think will be a good thing. Then we went to my uncle's house, and watched the remainder of the games. I didn't get home until very late Saturday night / early Sunday morning.
So Sunday morning rolls around, and my buddy Pillowpants wakes me up with a phone call. He's wanting to go to Harrah's Cherokee Casino, a casino on an indian reservation. We roll out earlier than I'd hoped, and started drinking beer around noon. We didn't finish our last beer until about midnight.
Since the casino is located in a dry county, we [Pillowpants] had to drive about 20 minutes to another city to buy beer. We hauled ass back to the casino parking lot, and pounded brewskies. I only drank two, but Pillowpants had about four. We headed towards the casino, Pillowpants in his cast, me walking about twenty steps ahead of his crippled ass [he recently broke his foot, but I'll get to that later]. :) We get in, and I lost about $30. Pillowpants' goofy butt won $200. On a 25ยข poker machine none the less! If he'd won on a $1 machine he would have left $800 richer!
We left the casino, and headed in a direction towards the interstate that was given to us by a fellow traveler. Well, he was an idiot. We ended up driving 1 1/2 hours only to find that we were still 1+ hours away from Knoxville. If we had taken the route that we came, we would have gotten back to my place in about 1 hour.
From my place we headed to Union Jacks, a British-themed pub. Pillowpants ended up buying me supper, and kept the beer train flowing in my direction. Since he was $200 to the better, which he told me at least once every three minutes. But it's all good in the hood, I kicked his ass at pool all 4 times. So we're hangin', drinkin', and playing pool. The whole time I'm drinking this weird, imported beer, and hating all of 'em. Then Pillowpants realizes they have my staple, Miller Lite. So I proceed to curse the boy a time or twenty. Though it's probably a good thing I didn't realize that they served ML until later. Otherwise I'd probably had one too many.
After whipping his butt at pool we moseyed up to the bar, and started chatting up two "beautiful babies."* Pillowpants told them he broke his foot saving two children from a fire. Which they saw right through. Then the truth came out, he broke his foot in a bar before even taking a sip of alcohol. We proceed to try and extract from the ladies what would be the best story for Pillowpants to tell women about how he came to his present predicament. One of them and I came up with the idea of him concocting a tale in which he saved a baby from a drunken / meth-addicted mother. That seemed to fit best.
The ladies left shortly thereafter, and we headed out too. No numbers were exchanged, which Pillowpants and I made vulgar remarks about what the rest of the evening would entail. In the end, my tired ass rolled back into my driveway 'round 1 o'clock Sunday night / Monday morning. This morning came too soon, and work was hectic as always.
One potentially good thing came out of the drunken merriment with Tom. We were talking about his divorce, and how he felt that that time was wasted time. He missed out on a good chunk of his youth, and some killer opportunities because of his ex-wife. Who cheated on him. His mind's in an angry, yet good-natured mood. He makes jokes about his "whore of an ex," but does it with a laugh. He spoke of finishing up getting his Masters, and his plans thereafter. He wants to open a small restaurant and bar. Kind of like Union Jacks. But have live music, poker nights, etc. He said that he kind of feels like he's just been wasting time the past few years, and wants to make his mark. We kept talking, and I mentioned that if I had my druthers I'd love to resurrect my magazine while also doing design work. I figure it would take me about 3 solid days of work to put together the entire magazine. I told him that I wouldn't do the magazine until I could afford to do at least six months worth of issues without a single advertisement. I told him of my woes in dealing with some of the venues around town. They all were either very pessimistic, or wanted ads for free. I want to be able to publish six issues, and if it does well go back to those cheesedicks and tell 'em it's full price or they can screw themselves. I hate that negative mentality that it's not going to work because they can't wrap their minds around it. I'm sure no one but the originators thought Metro Pulse would make it as far as it has, and I'm sure they even had their doubts. All this came spewing from my mouth when Pillowpants blurted out "well hell, my company [a credit union] is willing to buy one ad for the price of the print run." Based on my previous estimate of what it would take to produce the magazine, Pillowpants is willing to help me out. Now this was early on when he had only had one beer. Which if you know anything at all about Pillowpants you know that's not even making a dent. I just shrugged it off, thinking he was talking out of his ass.
But it turns out he wasn't. I talked to him again this morning about it, and he said that yes he would be willing to purchase one ad that would cover the cost of producing the magazine. Now all of this is based on the original estimate I received well over a year ago. So right now I have my friend Barakas' brother working on an estimate for me at his print shop. I'm not putting all my eggs in one basket. I realize that even if it does go through, and I am able to output the magazine that I cannot quit my job. I need that income to help out on some of the expenses that are tying me to that job now; mortgage, utilities, etc.
But this could be a door opening for me. If this works out it could be that I could eventually quit my job at the print shop to do the magazine and design work full time. Which has been the dream since I was in high school. To be able to work for myself has always been my goal. I've been studying the business structures of every company I've worked for, looking for the cracks. Their shortcomings, missteps, and pitfalls. If the estimate comes back, and it's in the ball park, I could be on the road to a new chapter in my life. The content for the magazine is easy to come by, it's the money that has been the holdup.
So we'll see what happens. I'm somewhat overly anxious to get those numbers from Barakas' brother. I want to see if it's a possibility or all just a pipe dream.
*We made fun of Swingers the whole day, talking about "meetin' beautiful babies." :)
Until next time:
"I don't want you to be the guy in the PG-13 movie everyone's *really* hoping makes it happen. I want you to be like the guy in the rated R movie, you know, the guy you're not sure whether or not you like yet. You're not sure where he's coming from. Okay? You're a bad man. You're a bad man, Mikey. You're a bad man, bad man." - Trent [Vince Vaughn]; Swingers
posted by The Big Man | 11/08/2006 09:40:00 AM
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