Too much of a good thing?

So I got a Scottevest jacket a little while ago. It's just now cool enough that I thought I'd wear it to work today.

As I started putting my usual junk in my pockets, I realized this jacket may actually be too much of a good thing.

I like pockets. I wear cargo pants and they're usually competely full of junk. Similarly, my jackets are often filled with junk. Hell, I carry a messenger bag that's so full of junk it probably counts as weight-lifting.

This jacket has 19 pockets of excessively-zippered glory. The problem? I can't figure out what pocket has what.

That's just silly.

Won't stop me from wearing this thing, though.

*sigh*

I have problems.

Lessons

So, two things I have hopefully learned from last night's unexpected interaction with my neighbors:

1) When someone knocks at the door, take the time to go find my glasses.

2) Don't answer the door wearing boxers. Put on some damn pants. The conversations get a lot less awkward.

That's just... awesome!

I love my neighbors.

That statement could apply to the folks I work around and the folks I live around. I'm consistently pleased with how awesome my cube neighbors are, but that's not what prompted this post.

So last night, as I considered crashing early to shake the icky impending feeling of a possible head cold, I got a knock on the door.

I can count the number of times someone's knocked on my door with one hand and still be able to hold a cup of coffee (mmmm... coffee... no, mustn't get distracted...).

I open the door and it's the daughter of the neighbors from across the hall.

I should clarify: on my floor there's three families whom I believe to be Chinese (I'm guessing this based on what I recognize of spoken language) and one family that's Thai (I got this based on them telling me such).

All my neighbors rock. They have nice kids. They're all friendly. They all don't seem to mind me. We all watch out for one another.

Good times.

That said, we don't hang out together or anything. We all keep to our own business, for the most part. If we knock on one another's doors for whatever reason, it's to point out something like "your car has a flat tire" or "someone broke into your car or storage unit" or "hey, I've got some of your mail" or whatever.

This time, the mom and daughter greeted me at the door (okay, the teenage daughter greeted me. The mom was hovering in the background) with moon cakes.

As I have had it explained to me by co-workers (and now my teenage neighbor), Sunday was the Moon Festival (or the mid-Autumn Festival or variations on that theme). Part of celebrating this is giving out things like moon cakes and the like.

So, to my surprise, my neighbor hands me four moon cakes and wishes me a happy Moon Festival.

I can't recall my exact response. I think I was a bit startled (and, I was under the weather...). I recall stammering thanks, then asking the girl about her pending high school graduation (standard questions: how's school? Do you know where you're going to college? You know, the kinds of questions about real life that you hated hearing when you were graduating high school...). Then that was it. Feeling strangely flattered, I put the food in the kitchen, then crashed out at a ridiculously-early hour.

I woke up this morning and found the cakes in my kitchen as I was making breakfast.

My neighbors rock. I need to think of something nice to do in return.

Monday already?

Busy weekend!

Okay, Friday was low-key. I needed that to get caught up on watching "Burn Notice" and cleaning and such.

Saturday was the game. We started late-ish and it was pretty non-stop 'till about 9:30 or so.

Oh, and Scott gave me a sword as an early birthday present.

Scott rocks.

It's an awfully purdy sword. I'll have to take a pic.

The accompanying card will earn horrible vengeance from me, but the sword is awesome. Too unwieldy to swing around (which is good, given how tiny my apartment is), but it looks friggin' awesome.

I think I unloaded half of my current favorite books in my library on Erik and Jay.

Sunday was family time. 'Nuff said. I never did make it out to the Solano Stroll in Albany. Ah well. Another time.

Getting the pulse rate up

I woke this morning out of a vivid (and really weird) dream to instinctively look at my alarm clock.

"Oh SHIT!" I exclaimed (quite loudly... sorry neighbors), thinking I was late for work.

I was nearly up, out-of-bed, when I realized today is Saturday.

I wonder if I should be disturbed at how easily I fell back asleep (into the same weird dream)?

---

I've decided that I'll do okay in a pending zombie apocalypse, even though I don't own any firearms. I think I can do okay fashioning really nasty traps.

My imagination is perfectly suited for the diseased mess that is my mind.

And thank you, television and movies, for helping fuel that.

---

For the first time ever, I'm doing an overseas exchange for a defective product. It's a strange feeling. Makes the world feel smaller, somehow.

Following up

So I've trolled the news, curious if there's any info on this supposed home invasion that hit in my 'hood yesterday.

Nada. Zip. Zero. Nary a peep.

I don't think my neighbor is the type to yank my chain or exaggerate. News coverage is hardly an indicator anyway. I have to admit I'm really curious for more details.

Ah well.

Fringe

I finished watching the pilot of "Fringe" last night.

I wasn't expecting to enjoy it. I really wasn't. I mean, they have a Dobson's Creek (sp?) alumni in it, for god's sake.

Damn if Abrams didn't get me hooked anyway. I think it was the face-melting scene in the first ten minutes. Genius.

And the twists were pretty damn good.