The Jack Noodle Journal

Here we are folks. The last day of July. Yep, now on to August. The last month of Summer. Well, since this was suppose to be the best Summer of our lives, this August must really have some cool things in store to pull us out.

Well I am going to head out on the Freedom Walk today. The weather is just the right temperature for keeping it real. Man. I sure haven’t been much of a consumer these last few months. I would totally love to go spend money in the book store, the record store, and the comic book shop. I am so out of it in those arenas. I used to be so in. No, really… I was. I don’t have a clue about what the kids think is cool now days. I don’t even have cable anymore to tell me that. Well, anyway, enough of the boo-hoo. I’m going to have an awesome walk today and I will be visiting those stores and window shopping.

Gosh I need some coffee. I can’t continue on coffeeless like this. We need to get some coffee in this house pronto.

Hey we went and saw “Austin Powers 3, Goldmember” the other evening. I thought it was excellent. I liked the other movies though. If you didn’t like the other ones you won’t like this one. Man I felt like such a tool laughing as hard as I did. Something about it just struck me as SO wacky. I was in tears during a couple of scenes. That Mini Me is my favorite. It felt good to laugh my ass off. I was in need of some comedy.

Okay after my chores, I’ve got to get back to some serious work on the secret experiments today. I’m slowly gathering together a direction to head in and I think it will be a good one. Well if not a good one, then at least entertaining. I have to keep the fire burning!

Ah Monday, the lamest day of the week. How you doing? The weekend we just finished off sure was short wasn’t it? Oh well maybe this week will go by fast and we’ll be able to make the next weekend longer.

Well I think this week will be pretty cool. At least I hope it will be. I need to keep up with the projects I started last week and keep this train moving down the tracks. You know, things may work out after all! I just have to keep my nose to ground and keep on rocking it! I think as long as I keep reminding myself that I’ll have to keep working hard to keep this job stuff going, I’ll be okay. K and I went to a crazy party on Saturday and I got a few leads that I need to check up on this week.

Hey, our friends Seth and Alicia are finally coming home this Thursday! They have been away in Japan for way too long. I can’t believe it is almost August. The year is almost half over. What the Hell have I been doing for 6 months? Well, I guess I can look over the last 6 months of journal entries to find out.

We are out of coffee again! That keeps happening to me! ARGH! I am drinking some coffee that I microwaved that was still in the pot from yesterday. We totally need to add a coffee plant to the garden.

Okay Noodle, quit screwing around and get to work!

Happy, good, Saturday morning to all of you beautiful people! You guys are really the best. Thanks for stopping by this lovely morning. BLECH! I haven’t tuned in for a couple of days. This week was pretty sparse on the entries here. I didn’t have anything to say for a day or so, and I took a break from the journal. During the days off, I thought of a lot of things to write, and of course when I get back to the journal, I’m not sure where to begin. Maybe I should take a tape recorder around with me everywhere I go so that I can remember thoughts. “Note to self: On July 25, K laughed at me in such a way that, just for a few brief seconds, I could tell that she was utterly insane.”

I have been doing a couple of things over the last few days. I’ve been working on a few secret experiments that have been giving me such joy. I got hooked up this week to a pretty cool crew that I’m hoping I can continue dancing with. Gosh it doesn’t take much to make me happy. All I need is one or two graphics projects a week and I am like a pig in poop. See people, one or two, that’s not too much! Get a hold of me and cough up one or two of your projects! I’m not asking for your first born for crying out loud!

We spent the last couple of evenings visiting with my mother and step dad. On Thursday we went over to Grandma and Grandpa Rumpleton’s house for dinner and last night Mr. Baptist had the parents over for a barbecue. It sure has been nice to see those 2. It’s been too long. I guess we’re going to have to go over to Idaho for a visit before too long.

Young Phillip has gone with us both days. He is such a good traveler. He has been playing and running around like mad. He met my mom’s German Shepherd, “Cali” and the two were instant friends. Cali is quite a bit bigger than Phillip so it was a little nerve racking seeing them run around at first. It seemed like Phillip was going to get squashed at any second. He held his own though. Last night Mr. Baptist’s cat “Momma Peterson” attacked Phillip and I. Phillip was sniffing too close to her 4 kittens and she went after him. Luckily I was in the middle of the 2 and could throw Phillip up onto the table before Mamma Peterson could do too much damage. I got a little scratched.

I REALLY need to get that lawn mowed today! It looks SO bad. Oh man, it makes me sick just thinking about it. I had such hope for that lawn, and now nothing but disgust. I need to pull up some serious weeds today also. What a mess. The stuff we planted looks really good though. The sunflowers on the side of the house are almost up to the roof. Oh yeah there’s a couple of days worth of dishes I need to do also. Chores, chores, chores…

Well this month is nearly over. You know, it didn’t seem to go quite as fast as the last few have. It’s been the longest month of the year so far.

How have you all been doing? I feel very out of touch. I feel like I am in another funky fog this week. Some of you are missing in action. Maybe we should have a get together soon so everybody can get updates on how the Summer has been so far. Jeeze Noodle, it hasn’t been that long since you have seen people! Yeah I guess I saw people last week. I don’t know for some reason these last few days have been a Jello space / time force field in which I have been trapped.

Hey! My mom is coming to town! They should be arriving tomorrow afternoon. Gosh I haven’t seen her in so long. It will be very nice. She needs to the heck out of Idaho and move back here. That’s too far away. The school that she works at is a year round school and their Summer break is almost over. She wanted to get out here for visiting before she had to go to work again.

Believe it or not I actually have been pretty busy with some projects these last couple of days. There has been some interesting developments in Seattle with Geoffrey, and some strategies with the 62nd & Radish posse. Hey, there’s even a few paying gigs now in the hopper. Maybe this bad economy thing is all over with. We’ll be back to showering in gold before too long!

Looks like we are in for a HOT Monday once again my friends. Temperatures could get to be 100 today! Bring it on, we love the SUN!

We were living it up at the beach these last few days. It was SO beautiful… Gosh, hold on here, I’m getting distracted…

The Beach was great. We went to the lovely town of Rockaway Beach, Oregon. Good town, nice people. There was a Harley convention there this weekend. Hogs everywhere. It was great.
Oh, hold on… got to go take the dog out.

Oh my goodness the puppy at the beach was an awesome thing to behold. Phillip was running around everywhere. He loved it. Man we really wore him out running up and down the beach. He went into the water a little bit. We showed him how to run away from the waves coming up the beach. As I was fond of telling K over and over again, “Everyone should at least once in life experience the joy of introducing a puppy to the ocean.”

One of the bikers walking down the beach had another Boston running circles around him. We introduced Phillip to “Rebel” and the two ran around and played like crazy. Rebel was a year old and huge with tons of muscle. Rebel had a studded collar. Those Boston Terriers look kind of scary when they’re bigger. Is Phillip going to be that scary looking in only 9 more months? Maybe it was Rebel’s biker daddy and biker mommy that added to his look of toughness.

We stayed with K’s old friends from high school at the grandparent beach house. There was lots of good talk, lots of bad talk, lots of drink, some board game heated competitions, and not much sleeping. Thank goodness the work week has started so that I can get some napping in.

Hey everybody! How is it going?
Well “The Phantom of the Opera” was excellent. So good. I was very impressed. The sets and costumes really blew me away. When the show first started out, my jaw dropped a couple of times at how cool the sets were and how fast they changed. I think the first half moved me the most because you are struggling to take it all in at first and by the end you grow accustom to the spectacle. I can’t believe how fast some of those performers changed out of costume. One guy went out one side of the stage, walked around, came back in on the opposite side wearing a totally different outfit with a white makeup on. The singing was magnificent. They could really do some amazing things with their voices. It’s funny how many of the songs I already knew, but wasn’t sure where I had heard them. The man who played the phantom had an amazing range. He could really thunder it out.

Oh man crowd watching there was another show in it’s self. Boy, our fair town of Portland can really give birth to some weird audiences. I think there was a little bit of everybody in the crowd. I can’t believe some of the ass holes that were there. During the intermission a group of sleazy men who thought they were at an NBA game cut in front of us in the drink line. They talked bad about women, then gave the bartender lady a bad time and held the line up the entire break, buying drinks for the rest of their sleazy group, not allowing anyone behind them to get in an order. I think they were more suited for a sports bar. The thing that bugs me about those jerks is that they probably have jobs. Thankfully the show was so good that it drew you into the music of the night and made you forget about all of the nonsense in the world.

Oh yes, I did get my hair buzzed yesterday. I feel a whole lot better now. Getting the old hair cut is really good for the health. I am all nice and clean now. I think this is going to be a good weekend. I’m going on a mental retreat, revisit my battle plan and hopefully get some new strategies going to get this train back on it’s tracks. I’m going to do some writing, reading, and drawing. Part of the new strategy could be a redesign of this very website. I know, I know, that’s crazy talk.

YAWN! YAWN! YAWN! Sleepy boy here once again. I think I’m sleepy this morning because I stayed out late last night. Young Martin’s band, Fake Fake played last night at the Ash Street Saloon, downtown. For some reason the guys are constantly getting bumped in the line up to the last ones playing. They started at 12:00 AM. There wasn’t many people at the Ash Street but there were quite a few people out for a Wednesday night. We went to the Shanghai Tunnel after that and there seemed to be a medium sized crowd there. Matt, Eugene and I finished up there. Hey good job with the rocking, Fake Fake. Martin, it’s always quite pleasurable to see you beat those drums. People, go check out Fake Fake when you get a chance!

Gosh well what should I do today? God, I really am starting to get tired of this routine. Have I mentioned that yet this week? I need a vacation from my vacation. We might be heading off to the beach this weekend, maybe that will help. I need to get back to working strongly on the experiments. I definitely have been uninspired this week, and most of last. I have acquired so many good starts to projects these last few months but no finishes. I need to gather up all of my starts, write out a list of them, and take some more stabs at those puppies. You know, I think I’m going to get my hair buzzed today. That will make me feel better, a nice haircut.

Mr. Baptist and Ms. B got 4 tickets to go see “The Phantom of the Opera” tonight. They invited K and I to go. I think that will be pretty fun. I haven’t seen an Opera yet in person. Would that be considered a real opera though or is that a play? It’s a Broadway Musical? I think it will be pretty cool. Maybe there will be some inspiration there?

At last! Coffee is in the house! Ah… fresh life giving coffee. Everything is going to work out fine now that I have coffee in me.
Wow, it’s looking a little cloudy out there this morning. That’s actually kind of nice. The lawn needs some major watering so if it rained today that would be perfect.

It’s Wednesday once again. As I say every Wednesday: “Best day of the week!” Is it still the best? I don’t know, but it’s got to be better than that sucky Monday we’ve just been through. Yes friends, it’s the day of the week that we let freedom ring and keep it real for all of our brothers and sisters.

Mr. Phillip C. Noodle has his kindergarten class tonight. He is doing very well. His parents are the ones that need a little work. We haven’t been doing his homework assignments like we should be. I misplaced last week’s sheet. Don’t tell his teacher. I think she already knows though. “You haven’t been training your puppy at all! F for you! You have now condemned your son to forever ride the short bus!”

Don’t let me forget tonight to return the DVDs we rented. “The Royal Tenenbaums” and “13 ghosts”. The Royal Tenenbaums was good. I thought it was pretty entertaining. Gene Hackman did a good job. I would have liked to have seen more of Ben Stiller in it.
13 Ghosts was stinky. We had the desire to see a scary movie and were sorely disappointed. The set was awesome and some of the effects were cool, but it just didn’t deliver. One of those kind of flicks that had great potential but got lost somewhere.

Gosh did you ever have a day when you found yourself getting increasingly annoyed as the hours went by? Yesterday was like that for me. I was so perturbed the whole day. I don’t know what my problem was. I was getting bothered by every little thing. I was a big grumpy baby all day long. I think I’m just tired of all of these little headaches joined together forming a tree of anguish, next to my cabin on Mount Pile O Crap. Oh well, today will be better I’m sure. I’m just so tired. Maybe it’s from sleeping too much.

What’s in store for today huh? Well hmm I don’t know. I started the dishes yesterday but didn’t finish them, so maybe I should do that. I have to head down to G’s house and deliver some dirty pictures I drew. Maybe I’ll take young Phillip with me for the walk. It might be a little warm now for puppy walking though.

The lawn looks like crap again so I think that will need a mow. Boy oh boy you should see the plants in our garden. Everything is growing so well throughout the yard (including weeds). The sunflowers and corn on the side of the house that the laboratory is on, are growing up to the windows.

I sure have been enjoying my Summer reading, “House of Leaves”. Gosh, what a good book so far. Any second now I think that I will get to a spot in the book and not put it down until it is finished.

Hey, what up? It’s stinky Monday once again. Time for everybody to head back to the office. It is beautiful day out there. The weather has been absolutely marvelous these last few days. Gosh, I’m having a bit of trouble focusing on writing this morning. Come on Noodle, concentrate! There’s no coffee in the house again this morning. ARGH! I think we need to grow coffee beans in our garden so that we won’t run out of coffee.

How was your weekend? Ours was pretty good. We had a fun day yesterday, driving out to Banks Oregon and helping our friends John and Lisa move into their new house. They have got the heck out of the city and are trying out country life. Banks is about 35 minutes out of Portland heading west towards the coast. They’ve got a nice piece of property out there. Their new yard is huge. A great place for their 3 dogs to run around. We totally should have brought Phillip, but didn’t. Their dogs are bigger than young muscle man Phillip. We tromped around in the back woods and found the creek in the back. Matt says I was walking through some poison oak. I hope not. That would stink. I do feel kind of itchy this morning. Maybe it’s just in my head.