The Last Candle

Conglomerate!! <p/> rnd: Had kind of a busy weekend — and not just solely because of schoolwork for once. Friday night was a mini-LAN party in Grand Rapids with Ben and some of his pals. It was pure Unreal Tournament for about six hours straight, which is plenty enough to burn me out solid. There was also only five people total, due to the impromptu nature of the party, so the variation in skill wasn’t so diverse either — which means I got smoked pretty often. But I still had fun, and Ben says there’ll be many more parties in the future with more people. <p/> I drove back to Mount Pleasant from Grand Rapids (where the LAN’ was held), arriving home at about 5 AM. “Wind-down time,” which means goof off for a while, lead to a 6:30 AM sleepytime, consequently causing me to get up at 3 PM on Saturday. I had a TON of work to get crackin’ on Saturday. Suffice to say that a lot of it was relegated to Sunday’s workload. <p/> But on Sunday, Amber, Anthony, Jill, and Sarah came to visit! Well, Amber and Jill came to visit Sarah, one of their previous roommates, and Anthony came with to join in the fun. They all eventually rumbled up o-vah here, and we all went to Applebee’s and had a…semi-grand time. I dunno about those chain restaurants: no good beer, expensive but sub-par food. (If I went by myself, I would go to Mountain Town Station every time for the excellent microbrews and delicious but inexpensive entrees. And say nothing about be surrounded by all sorts of pictures and antiques and baubles and garage sale items strung up all over the place. But I didn’t go by myself: the greatness of company eclipses any ole’ restaurant shortcomings. Unless the food was poisoned and the waiter was sociopathic.) <p/> politics: I’m behind in writing a fisking of Chad Livengood’s most recent whining in CM Life, but it should pop up within a couple of days. Or you could just visit the link and behold the absolutely inane logic and absurd bias yourself, which contains such gems as the Bush camp calling Kerry a “liberal” as evidence that they’re getting desperate. Welcome to Chad World, where Bush and Republicans are impotent morons who can only commit acts of pure idiocy, while Kerry and the Democrats are infalliable intellects with hearts of gilded silver. <p/> music: Still listening to Nightwish’s Once, and I’m slowly edging towards the conclusion that this is one of the best metal albums I’ve heard yet. Very near Epica-status. I hope to do a track-by-track review soon, just so I can output the many details from Once that I’m enjoying so completely. <p/> and finally, more rnd: Poor Ashlee Simpson!