Book of Jamez

55 y/o malcontent, something of a writer

Author: Jamez

  • PVC, XYZ and Sad Little Girls

    This weekend my friend Eric and I hooked up with our friend Rosy from High School. We wanted to try to get her to relax and have a good time – she’s very serious and we did manage to get her to smile here and there and I do believe I heard a chuckle or two as well. Eric and I are both likely bruised on shoulders and shins from her assaults when we would joke at her expense.

    Eric is retired Air Force and Rosy is active Air Force and when the two of them get to talking about what’s been going on the last 21 years they talk in letters. You would think that I would be used to this kind of thing – having lived in DC for the last 10 years, but I just couldn’t keep up. I just kind of zoned out when they would start and I’d reflect that if either of them were with me at a WoW convention they’d hear just as many letters or in DC with the locals.

    We went to see the Baltimore Aquarium on Friday during the day and that evening came into Baltimore suburbs for a Dinner Theater. We saw the play Midlife the Crisis Musical at Toby’s Dinner Theater in Columbia and were very entertained.

    Each night the three of us were up into the wee hours of the evening like old times and our bodies will be paying for it I think for the next few days. We did get to show Rosy the sites of DC, the fun of Baltimore (that can be had with your clothes on and your wallet still intact) and laughter which she desperately needed.

    I hope that the next time I have a few days with old friends that they remember how old we are and that even as the youngest of us – I complain the loudest!

  • The Black Knight and the Rose

    Over 20 years agoEric “Sleazy” Nelson, Rosy Pieper and James Appel roamed through the halls of G-E-T High School (yes, that’s really a school) causing nothing but trouble…

    Ok, that’s not true, for the most part we were well behaved, Rosy especially – she didn’t even smoke cigarettes.

    We did however form friendships that have lasted on and off for the last couple decades; they both disappeared off my radar when I was drunking and boozing – how dare they – they didn’t actually go anywhere, I just lost touch with reality. Along with several other folks from back they, these friendships remain strong.

    It was just last summer that we were all in the same spot again for the first time in ages and it was nice to see friends at home.

    This weekend Eric, Rosy and I will hang out together and reminisce about old times complain about new times and have a good time, the only regret we are likely to have is that Ted and others wont be with us, as that would make it a truly memorable weekend.

  • Wii

    I made a decision to buy a Nintendo Wii, took forever to actually buy one though – everyone was sold out, out of stock and just nowhere to be found. The system arrived yesterday and I installed it in 6 easy steps.

    At present I only have the game that came with the system, Wii Sports which includes: Tennis, Bowling, Baseball, Boxing and Golf. But I tried them all out and even did the Wii Fitness test which says my Wii Age is 48, argh!

    I was sweating, sore and worked out after playing these games for over an hour.

    The Wii Fit is scheduled to arrive today and that should really be a lot of fun.

    I’ll keep you posted.

  • Superbowl XLIII

    I watched the Superbowl, well, really I watched the ads for the Superbowl – I was reading (Just After Sunset – Stephen King) and tried to pay attention during commercial breaks. Usually the most exciting part of the big game for me is the new commercials.

    First I want to say that this was a chance for automakers to show us something new, something different and something green – I was a little surprised to see any automaker with Superbowl ads at all, these the are most expensive commercials in the year and these folks just begged for money from the taxpayers. If you were going to spend the money perhaps you should have shown us how you’re going to change your business model and make a profit again. Maybe how you were going to help the country relieve itself from its dependence on oil by giving us the vehicles we know you can make, but are unwilling to.

    Second, I know during these tough economic times that NBC had a hard time finding advertisers to fill the spots, but there were entirely too many NBC ads. I did like the Alex Baldwin HULU ad, the Heroes football game, but the rest were overkill.

    Third, this was actually a good game to watch, I gave up on the Cardinals early on, but they came back and stole the show from the ads, engrossing me in the actual game – I know – unthinkable. If they had only come out fighting like that in the first quarter it might have been an entirely different outcome.

    Lastly, I just think it may be time for us to have half time shows move out of the 80s and into the 90s… yes, I know you Bruce fans are all offended thinking this guy will live forever… but I have no intention of watching the show when most of the performers will need to be in walkers to be out there. There are quite a few performers of this decade that could have entertained just as well.

    Anyway, I’m glad the game is over.

  • WoW Free

    On April 13th, 2005 I created my first World of Warcraft (WoW) character. I played WoW every day until the end of December 2008 – unless of course I was out of town. I played every morning before work, and immediately upon my return home from the office – unless of course there was some pressing issue or social thing I had to deal with – reluctantly. What is WoW? A MMORPG of course. MMORPG is Massively Multi Online Role Playing Game. WoW is the undisputed leader in this field and has been for a few years now.

    You create an avatar, a 3 dimensional character that lives in a virtual world that you can control almost every aspect of. It isn’t just hitting buttons to hack and slash opponents, it’s also dancing, chatting, emoting and more. Each character in WoW was as unique as the player that was playing it at home – except in the case of female night elves which were all the same (wow humor). WoW allowed you to choose between two different factions (think Russia vs US cold war). First there was the Alliance which consisted of Humans, Night Elves, Dwarfs, Gnomes and later the Dranei (the Dranei were introduced to WoW during it’s first expansion pack The Burning Crusade). And there was the Horde consisting of Orcs, Trolls, Tauren and Undead (Blood Elves were introduced to the Horde in the Xpac BC). So after choosing your race you pick a class: Mage, Hunter, Warrior, Druid, Shaman, Paladin, Rogue, Priest and Warlock; there were of course class restrictions, but that’s a long story.

    If I remember correctly my first character was a female dwarf priest, tons of male characters were hitting on me almost immediately, I didn’t feel the need to tell them that I was a guy. Didn’t matter that much, I was looking for my rl (real life) friends and couldn’t find them. Turns out I was on the wrong server.

    I then created a male gnome warrior named Lariq, he had green hair and mustache and was pretty hard to kill (OK, so I tried out lots of different classes and found this one to be so hard to kill – so I sucked in the beginning). Lariq was created on the same server as my rl friends, but I rarely saw them online when I was on. This server was a “Normal” server. When Lariq got to level 60 (the level cap at the time), I was getting bored, I wasn’t a hard core raider and didn’t have the uber gear that would allow me to go to many raids, nevertheless I was fortunate enough to be invited to UBRS and MC (Upper Black Rock Spire and Molten Core) when they were something worth going to.

    I rolled (created) my next character on a different server one I picked randomly called Kirin Tor (KT) which just happened to be an RP realm – RP is Role Playing. RP realms have different rules than normal servers, but are rarely enforced unless players complain, so they are known as whining servers… but I didn’t know that at the time. I rolled Mancy, a gnome male rogue here. Rogues start out very slowly, but can make themselves stealthed which was a lot of fun. Mancy became my new Main (what WoW players refer to as their main character when they have multiples, you can have up to 10 characters on one server and up to 50 characters total). Mancy wasn’t much of a RPer but he did love to PVP (Player vs Player) and leveled almost exclusively that way, he did however manage to hook up with a few raiding guilds here and there that took him along as DPS (Damage Per Second). I was playing Mancy almost exclusively and decided to delete Lariq, which I promptly did.. I figured I would never play that character again so I sold all his stuff and gave away all his gold (currency in WoW). Soon enough Mancy reached 60 and I once again started to get bored with the lack of new things and eventually…

    I rolled Noq, and undead mage on Thorium Brotherhood (TB) also an RP realm, I had found the RP realm folks to be much nicer in general than folks on Normal or PVP servers. Noq was pretty much a solo playing character who also loved to PVP. He was fortunate that he met some folks that made his playing more social and they hung out a lot together online (Grokus, Janka, Meltiece, Zurasha and a few others) back in the day we ruled WSG (Warsong Gulch a PVP battleground instance) and were the closest of friends, we had regular enemies from the Alliance that loved to play matches against us. Of course this was before WoW introduced cross server battlegrounds and made most of us dislike the BGs).

    I soon rolled Ailmeant, a dwarf priest on a PVP server which is a very hard place to level and got him to about 55 before getting bored with him. When BC was released I transferred him to Kirin Tor where he quickly made friends with his leveling buddy Oroblarm, a dwarf Paladin and they were both soon 70 (the new leveling cap) and raiding. I soon paid the $10 fee and had Lariq undeleted and restored to the KT server and renamed him Bubo and leveled him quickly to 70.

    WoW released the Burning Crusade expansion on January 16, 2007, and quickly broke records for how many units were sold. I rolled a BE (Blood Elf) Hunter on TB named Bubbo, BE’s tend to be a little effeminate (opinion) and quicly became the most rolled race in WoW. I played more gay on Bubbo than I do in rl, it was fun to be so campy and self-centered.

    It was the early fall of 2008 and I had been playing for quite a while and was just tired, bored and found less and less desire to play the game. Then my Pa died in November right before the release of Wrath of the Litch King (WotLK) and I missed the first few days of the release and when I came back most of my friends had leveled ahead without me, so I was soloing content again, which wasn’t all that appealing at this stage of the game.

    So I think I originally spent $40 on the game, and the monthly subscription rates were 14.99 for one month (46 months 689.54), 13.99 if you subscribed for 3months (41.97) (46 months 643.54) or 12.99 for a 6 month sign up (72.94) (46 months (597.54). I spent around $40 for BC and $40 for WotLK. I would play every work morning for about 2 hours, then when I would get home I would play until it was time to go to bed and on weekend I would play all day, from 7:00 a.m. to 12:00 a.m. or later. This is typical for players of WoW in my opinion. I don’t think it is really that much different than TV, monthly cable bills are about $70 starting out and many that I know spend hours in front of their TV never noticing the time slip away – but as a WoW addict I probably shouldn’t judge.

    Anyway, I hope it’s over now, I had a great deal of fun, met some people that I hope will always be in my life and generally didn’t mind the time I spent in Azeroth (the planet in WoW’s name). When and if another great game comes along that everyone is talking about I’d probably give it a shot, but I would hope that I wouldn’t be quite as engrossed in it as I was in WoW.

  • You Don't Have To Look At It

    So I was having lunch with a friend the other day. Having recently gone back to my old very short hair cut, with a sad face she commented:

    Oh, you cut off your hair again, why did you do that?

    To which I replied: yes, I felt better with it this short and liked how I looked.

    She said: Well you don’t have to look at it unless your looking in the mirror.

    Which really has just managed to get on my nerves over the last few days… I know, I know… I’m not supposed to let things like this bother me anymore, but this is typical of this friend. It’s not just me that she talks this way to I’ve heard her talk to her children and other friends with the same disregard for their feelings.

    I guess after a while I just want to avoid hanging out with this person and just trying to remain friendly without getting close enough to be insulted again. But what kind of a friendship is that? Not much of one at all, but certainly less passive aggressive attacks – so maybe its worth it.

  • Health

    Have I mentioned how much I hate the gym? no… well, let me tell you: I really hate going to the gym.

    I don’t know how people can go and “enjoy” or “love” going. All I ever feel when I go is uncomfortable.

    But I need to get healthy and lose weight, so

    I bought a rowing machine. I actually kind of like using the rowing machine and its in my bedroom staring me in the face (Just came yesterday). So now I’ll get to use it, hopefully.

  • Lost on the Spiritual Road

    When I was thrust into sobriety (it wasn’t my idea I swear) I hated the concept of God. For years the whole notion of this gray haired figure in the sky condemning me for all I had done wrong or for what I was led me to just not want anything to do with “Him”. Hate begets hate I guess.

    I recall that in my youth when my biological mother was in the hospital on numerous occasions I entered the hospital a few times and prayed to the god of her understanding and asked that God to make her well. That just never did happen – but I underestimated the depth of her sickness, it was all in her head.

    So when I found something to hope for in AA I made a deal with God as others understood him: “If you can make me as happy as this kid (long story), I’ll do whatever you ask me to do.” That’s just what I did for the next few years, my interpretation of his message through AA is what I tried my best to do.

    Fake it til you make it – that’s what they say in AA. Pretend to believe until you really believe. But what do you do if you’ve faked it for a few years and maybe here and there found moments of time that maybe there could be a something out there, but probably not. What do you do when you know in the deep recess of yourself that there isn’t a talking snake.

    That’s just part of it. I can honestly say it’s been years since I’ve looked forward to going to a meeting, years since I’ve come from a meeting thinking to myself “I needed that.” Dangerous.

    In April of 08 Suzanne and I were at a meeting in NY and I wasn’t at the meeting. I was marking off the things that they were doing wrong, I have no idea if it was a good lead or if the message would have been helpful – I was buy taking the meetings inventory.

    I keep looking and listening for the fundamentals of recovery that, well that I used to believe in. How are all of these people that I see staying sober in what I consider group therapy? I have no idea.

    Tonight I went to a meeting near my office, there is still a glimmer of hope in my head that there is good AA out here and when I find it I will feel better about everything… but it wasn’t what I would consider to be a good meeting for the most part. One girl talked about someone showing here a page in the Big Book with a prayer that she found helpful – I was shocked to hear it.

    I subscribe to the Grapevine, an AA speaker of the month CD club and read my Big Book fairly regularly. I go to one meeting a week, sometimes (like this week) I force myself to go to more than one – but I don’t want to anymore, and I find that its more of a chore than anything else.

    The three sides of the old AA triangle are: recovery, unity and service

    So if I only have one, all I have is a very flat plateau I guess – I’m going to take a few steps to see if I can repair this, I’m not sure that I can… bless them, change me – I recently heard in a meeting.. well, sometimes you have to change yourself, and I guess it’s time.

  • Never Quite What I Expected

    This was quite possibly the oddest year I’ve ever had. I started out the year surrounded by a host of friends supporting me during a small crisis and ended up the year with a host of friends surrounding me during a major crisis. I’ve been very fortunate to have such good friends, family and mentors in my life… and this year it paid off.

    First, the list of Favorite Things of 2008
    Movie: The Dark Knight (Heath Ledger was spectacular and it was a great comic book story)
    Album: Evolver (John Legend) – if you buy any album this year, buy this one
    Video Game: World of Warcraft – Wrath of the Litch King (I am getting a bit bored with the game, it’s been my favorite for 4 or 5 years now)
    TV Show: CSI – lots of changes over at CSI this year, not sure if I’ll like it after all the changes are done but I’m trying to remain open minded.
    Airline: Northwest/Delta – the way they helped me in November was just beyond what I expected – Kudos to them
    Coffee Pot: I got a new one, Cuisinart and it’s the best.. I bought one for Lisa it’s that good
    Gadget: Kindle – electronic books I love this thing and I have a ton of books on it.
    Web page: Facebook – dang this thing is addicting and fun

    As per usual, every Sunday morning if we are in DC – Mark, Robert and i have breakfast somewhere before our Sunday meeting. Annie’s changed their menu this fall so we are currently looking for a new place to eat – we may have found one after much searching.

    I started out the year following up on quitting my job, I had made the decision to quit back in November of 07, and events that happened in December just made me want to hurry out that much sooner. I gave notice, a months notice and told them I’d be happy to help them out for a while until my replacement was settled in. Then I was fired the following week (yes Gary fired). They locked me out of my work station and wiped my Blackberry clean. I was resentful for a while, but most of it got out in my blog and I felt better.

    Jim DiLuigi (who was also fired, but in December) and I wasted no time, but started up Access-Ability Consultants, Inc and have been working steadily since. Its a nice arrangement and we have a lot of fun. This year we made a profit, so that’s a very good thing. We have lots of very busy days and lots of days where we have time for Charlie to send jokes or to find cheap things for Jim to buy at Heartland America. Jim is the Treasurer for Historic Takoma which provides plenty of work for both of us, but doesn’t actually pay the bills 😉

    One of the nicer things about working with Jim is his family. As a result of the new company I’ve been fortunate to get to know some very special people better than I had a chance to know them before: Ana Maria, Lisa (and Rankine), David (and Regina), Mark (and Kate) and Jim’s Mom and brother as well. I will let you know that it got a little tense during some of the political circus this year as the DiLuigi family are not all the same political party… it was fun to see some of the back and forth banter.

    I’ve tried dating this year, been on several dates with several men … yes, JUST dates. There have been some promising candidates, but I’m not going to settle for less than I deserve, why would I want to. I’m still looking and its been a lot of fun. wish me luck.

    The cats (Q and Mouse) are fine, though Q has some kind of psychological disorder – or i assume so cause the Xrays found nothing ($338 later) to tell why he wont poop in the box.

    This was a high school year, not just the faux high school reunion, I also spent time with Eric and Kelly here in DC, and then Eric and I had a great weekend at the Renaissance Fair and Baltimore this fall. Ted, Eric, Rick, Jeff, Tim… hell a ton of folks are on Facebook, so I know what’s going on in their daily lives.

    I took several trips this year.

    In April Suzanne and I spent a weekend in NY (NJ and NY really) and besides someone breaking into her car (they didn’t steal anything, and the Ipod I had bought her for Christmas was in the Jeep – we think they were looking for the GPS) we had a great time. I saw my first play on Broadway – Young Frankenstein. I heard alot about Paul (Suzanne’s fiance) this weekend, but I didn’t get a chance to meet him until December. Suzanne’s dog Destiny had been very old at this point and Suzanne had her put to sleep, it was sad.

    In May I took a trip for my AA birthday (14) I went to Ft Lauderdale, but didn’t have quite as much fun as I normally do (read what you want into that).

    In June I took my first trip to Wisconsin for Scooters going away party. He graduated high school and took off for basic training. It’s always nice to spend time with Pat and Brenda and I, of course drove down to see Ma, Pa and Rhonda in Galesville and also visited Jim’s daughter in Nashville – that was very enjoyable it was nice to spend time with Lisa, her husband Rankine and their dogs Daisy and Buddy. so of course I missed gay pride in DC again… nothing new there.

    In July I took another trip to WI, this time for my pseudo 20 year reunion. Just a few of us decided to meet up and reminisce. It was a trip to see Rosy, Ted, Eric and Jen again. I hope we do it often. It was very nice and I stayed at Ma and Pa’s for 4 days I think. I got back and the next night went to see George Michael perform at the Verizon Center with Mark and Robert – I don’t much care for concerts so that’ll likely be my last one.

    In August, Pat, Brenda and Anna (Scooters girlfriend) came to DC to visit Scooter after Basic and then make me play tour guide… they had fun torturing me. In August a friend, John Dunn, died, it was sudden, unexpected and sad. He was one of the nicest people I ever met here in DC, he was mourned by many across the area.

    In October Jim and I finalized plans to take a trip to Cancun in November, I invited my good friend Brenda to go with me and then gave her a hard time every other day. One day I called and told her that the passport number she gave me was listed as invalid… she turned the car around and headed home… then I told her I was fibbin… she swore then. lol

    So of course the day my Pa died in November (15th) I called her as she was about to board the commuter plane to come to DC for the trip to Cancun and at first she didn’t believe me … don’t cry wolf.

    My Pa dying was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to live through. I cried like I had never cried before and I still miss him. I hope that I will always miss him. I get teary and sad off an on since I found out. I don’t really want to talk about it here… again… I miss my Pa. I am trying to be a better son, trying to be a better brother by staying more in touch with Ma and Rhonda… and as a result I’m trying to be a healthier person also. I had so much support from friends when this happened, and I am so very grateful that they were there and I hope I can be there for them if a similar situation occurs.

    In December I spent 5 days for my birthday in San Diego, exploring, playing tourist and relaxing. It was the most beautiful city I’ve ever seen. I can’t wait to go back.

    The weekend before Christmas I went to Suzanne’s, met her fiance Paul and her new dog Farley. We had a lovely visit.

    That was my year, it went by entirely too fast, but overall it was a good year. The people (salads and dogs) that have moved on this year made me into the person I am today – which is a good thing.

    If you want to know full on details about anything that was written above, try looking at my blog: http://mrjamezq.blogspot.com almost everything that happened this year to me was documented.

    I hope you all have a lovely year and I hope that I may get to share just a tiny fraction of yours with you.

    love

    jamez

  • VA Beach Visit

    This weekend I returned to Virginia Beach to visit Suzanne, meet her fiance (Paul), and her new dog (Farley). I took the long way there – Jim and I drove up to New Jersey to get his mother and brother for their holiday weekend, and then dropped me off just in time at the BWI airport. This was my first visit back to the Virginia Beach area since I moved back to DC in the summer of 2006.

    When I arrived in Norfolk Suzanne and Farley were there to greet me, it was nice to meet the dog I’ve heard so much about, he’s an adorable English Bulldog. He was enamored with me immediately, proceeded to make love to my leg in the car on the way to Suzanne’s house. That was the most action I’d seen in a while.

    When we arrived at the house the music was blasting and Paul was upstairs finishing getting ready for dinner. When he came downstairs I saw that he is one of those individuals that doesn’t photograph well: he’s cuter than he looks in the pictures Suzanne has shared with me in the past.

    We headed off to dinner at a mexican restaurant where Suzanne and I used to eat pretty regularly. We were joined by Rodney (an friend from the rooms), his new girlfriend (who’s name I can’t recall) and one of Suzannes sponsee – Jennifer B I think. Dinner was nice, lots of conversation and laughter. Then Suzanne, Paul and I headed to a meeting – Paul’s not an alcoholic, but he plays with them in the Navy – the meeting was open so he was free to attend. It was a good meeting on step 8 and I’m glad we were there.

    Saturday morning when S&P went off to try to kill themselves in a body step class (Suzanne is the instructor) I watched cartoons and tried to fend off Farley’s advances, he’s a very insistent lover. When S&P returned we went off to have a quick lunch and then… shopping at the mall. The shopping wasn’t as bad as I feared, not too crowded so maybe there is something to this recession thing.

    Saturday evening we had dinner at Carrabba’s cause I love their spicy chicken soup, and then headed out to see Four Christmases with Vince Vaughn and Reese Witherspoon, we laughed alot and I grabbed a new tag line for the holiday’s:

    You can’t spell families without lies.

    Sunday was mostly uneventful, I said farewell to Farley, Suzanne and I got manicures and then I came home.

    It was a nice, relaxing weekend and I’m glad I had the chance to meet Paul and Farley.