so i’m at work and see all the patients who walk in to the clinic and i think to myself,

“this is an occupational medicine clinic. around here, the only people we see are mostly men-folk who have job titles like, ‘Roughneck’ and ‘Roustabout’ and ‘Crane Operator.’ after two and a half summers working here, i’ve never seen anybody i know. you’d think i’d maybe see some guy i went to high school with or perhaps somebody i recognize, since we see a lot of people.”

Well. just then walks in a young man named Kyle. I did in fact go to high school with Kyle. My little sister even took a sort of liking to Kyle when they were freshmen. I knew Kyle. he didn’t really know me though.

How weird that i would see Kyle, the first person i’ve ever recognized at the clinic, at the very moment that i realized that i’d never recognized anyone.

when the connection to the main server is down at my work, i can’t do anything. i can’t scan documents, i can’t file documents, i can’t help out my co-workers, and i especially don’t have any computer quirks to fix since no one uses the computers.

it’s happening right now. and it’s kinda weird. so i’m just surfing the internet until then.
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some people have quirks that you notice about them. these habits or odd behaviors might strike you as odd at first but you learn to get used to them or they are so much a part of the person that you overlook them.

for example.

my friend would fill two glasses with a beverage at mealtimes in the cafeteria. This is a fairly standard procedure: i always had at least two glasses of milk simultaneously in front of me at the beginning of the meal so that i wouldn’t have to fight a line later to get a refill. But he would drink the first glass, and then pour the contents of the second into the first glass in order to drink it. Why, you wonder, wouldn’t he just drink from the second glass?

or another friend i have, daniel, will be having a conversation with you, and randomly in between his comments, he would inhale with a very audible squeak. you know, the kind you have after you’ve laughed a lot and you inhale quickly to get more oxygen, violently enough to make a squeak. This wouldn’t happen all the time. just often enough to be a sort of habit. very strange.

sometimes when i’m sitting in the passenger seat of a car when certain people are driving, i can feel them trying very poorly to maintain some speed by pressing the accelerator harder than needed at first, but then let off completely to compensate, and continue in this pulsing fashion for quite a while until the next stop. I wonder if the driver is conscious of this strange waste of gas and somewhat uncomfortable experience. i always assume not, and end up believing that perhaps even i fall into such unconscious patterns when i drive. But it is very obvious as a passenger.

and then there’s my dad. he has a billion of these quirks. they’re mostly conversational, and often are purely delightful to those who are meeting him for the first time and don’t even know what crazy unconscious social quirks he has up his sleeve.

early this morning my father came in my room for a second to wake me up for work and then left to continue his morning routine. once i am disrupted from my dreaming, i often just lay there for 5 or 10 minutes to settle my mind into a regular, get ready for the day mood. During this period, i hear my dad (ever the morning person) fiddling with things in the kitchen, maybe moving chairs, walking across the house. But here’s the quirk:

In these standard early morning movements, he often whistles, hums, or sings a short bit of some tune and then stops. Then, maybe 20 seconds later, after his mind has been playing that same little sound bite of music over and over in his head, he totally unconsciously repeats it, and this cycle repeats all over the house, no matter what he’s doing.

This morning it was the McDonald’s new commercial jingle, the obstinately catchy and funky “Ba-da Da-ta-daaaa, i’m lovin it,” whistled every half-minute or so, leaving off the “i’m lovin it” part.

Oh he probably heard that stupid thing on the tv or something. Well yeah, maybe he did. But does he actually hear some equally catchy tune EVERY MORNING OF HIS LIFE? i don’t think so. But i swear, he’s always whistlin something. it can be anything: movie, play, tv show, classical, rock, church music…

“Flintstones, meet the flintstones… !”
Canon in D
Heyyyy Jude
“It’s the Dick Van Dyke show… da-da-da, dumdum Da Ta-daaaa.”

Dad’s always got a sound clip playing in his head.

Work sucks. still wish i could do something interesting. so goes life.

i got some kind of wacko sinus sickness and have had it for about a week now. i don’t know where it came from, though i suspect it was lurking in the depths of my bedroom closet and i contracted it whilst cleaning said closet.

Despite this sickness, which induces coughing, severe sinus headache, stuffy nose, and basic phlegmmyness, i have recorded 2 (two) songs, both with vocals, neither of which sound half bad. This is a first. i mean, the sounding good part is a first.

so listen to them.

i have 2 more songs that i’ve been writing to give you people, and i plan on following suit.

in other news, jon breaux and i need to jam. surriously. we have somehow conflicted our schedules the past 2 or 3 weeks to the point that i haven’t said so much as “hello” in person with him. it’s maddening. So jon, i’m staying in lafayette this weekend. we should get together and rock the house.

My parents have informed me that our house should be going “on the market” on wednesday. This is top secret information. that’s why i’m writing it on this blog. because nobody reads it anyways.

Speaking of my website, i have had much difficulty with my stupid web host being stupid again. Fret not, friends, i will change hosts in august. As well as all the other amazing things i’m going to do in august. Such as moving into my apartment. And visiting Mercer and Co. for a Newtons concert and Fraternity Rush etc. And that’s that.

**Small update as of 10 minutes ago** – I just read Anthony Lane’s Review of Episode III and I almost cried I laughed so hard. Despite his negative review, however, I still recommend the movie.

new and noteworthy:

this weekend was a pretty big one in the scheme of my summer so far. considering most days have been the nine-five routine of work (which is not as much fun as our friend davey likes to imagine) actually getting out of the house and into the world was a welcome change and accomplishment.

i saw bunches of old friends at a dinner back home and it was alot of fun. I can’t believe that a whole two years of my college experience have already come and gone. and that i still have so much in common with people i haven’t seen in said amount of time. i felt great about the whole experience, and as i wondered with dave, will we still be able to get together like that in ten years time? dave, then wisely reminded me that in ten years time i would have lived half my life over again. whoa. i’ll leave this discussion at that.

i saw the new Stars Wars. And guess what? I really liked it. now, i’m no hard-core dress up in a costume and whip out my light-saber star wars fan, but like most kids growing up in the eighties, i watched the movies and thought they were uber-cool. star wars was my first exposure to true sci-fi and the pleasure of constructing a whole galaxy in your own imagination. so, like most casual fans, i suffered through the first two updates (more or less) but had high hopes for this one. and boy did it deliever. i couldn’t believe how emotionally involved i got in the movie, how even at the end, when i knew what would happen, how i wished it wouldn’t and things could be different. i also couldn’t believe just how bad the dialouge was. geez. but even that was part of the fun.
of course, being the nerdy kid that i am, when i got home, i did some web browsing to see what others were saying about the movie. mostly i wanted to read up some confirmation of my own feelings i.e. that maybe there was something not quite right with George Lucas’s universe. for me, although the movie tied up a lot of loose ends, it also left me with a ton of questions.
my concerns are best expressed here.

finally, i helped Katie move into her new place in new orleans. although, i was a little sore the next day, it was fun to get someone settled in their new home, especially one right in the middle of one of the cooler cities on earth. so it’s a win-win for both of us.

and of course, i miss my sister. as i mentioned before, she’s in georgia for an internship and although i saw her briefly on saturday, it wasn’t enough. all that sibling humor dave posted about, well, you get used to having it around. alas, no summer can be perfect, i guess.

from where i left off:

Midland. Amazing things happened there, all underneath an impenetrable cloud of personal revelation. Met up with some kids i never thought i’d see again, not quite forgotten some 8 years ago. a lot happens to people in the 8 years of their adult development. Met up with a couple other kids: Mike Braunstein, D. Blackketter, Danny Anderson, Susan Singh. trinity folks. spent about 8 hours hanging out with David Blackketter, got on a little hacky sack game. then much more hacking with braunstein and danny.

Anyways, i was in town for 5 days and i saw nobody else from my high school. people move on. live in different cities. make new friends. I was kind of jealous of julie and her convenient St. Ann’s reunion that brought all her old friends together for a last time before they all start college.

Wish i coulda, should’ve done, hoped i’d seen…

But that ended. and i have lost no respect for that small town in west texas. In fact, i appreciate it so much more now. Incredible.

In more impressive news, i started writing again in Texas. A song or two, a story, a poem. I feel so much better about life now that i have time to write. Jon Breaux knows exactly where its at with the paintings!!! i love it. i want to do that too. how relaxing.

I had a phone conversation with Nic Vascocu who’s living up in new york and we talked about writing and music and where we’ve been and where we’re going. Nic is probably the most enigmatic yet familiar person i’ve ever known. He said he’d come to louisiana to visit his grandparents and we’d meet up again. i can’t wait.

My family is moving, and for the past week, i have been working my tail off every spare minute for my parents getting the house ready to sell. Interestingly included in this work is the bizarrely Comeaux mixture of Myself and My two sisters Michelle and Julie, together again. all three of us. hasn’t happened in 4 years it seems. My parents have not stopped laughing at our antics. We, despite our polar opposite personalities, having grown into our own adulthood, still share the basic building block of sibling comraderie: humor. We have nearly the exact same sense of humor. It is non-stop. it is perpetual. it is instantaneous. And… it’s funny.

I started working again for my uncle. same old gig. blah blah scan documents press buttons blah blah. Nothing even remotely interesting like Jon Breaux’s biogeographic research.

but i’ve been mentally preparing myself for my change of colleges. For repetition’s sake, and for my thousands of new readers per day that i always get (heh), i’ve spent the past 2 years at Mercer University in Ga. and now i’m transferring and going to finish my electrical engineering degree at LSU.

This summer i feel like i’m in the smack in the middle of every transition in my life… nothing is staying the same.

What else…. Oh yeah. Alex Daugherty, the lead singer of the Newtons, gave me a call at 2 am last night. It was probably the best drnk call i’ve ever gotten. He’s hilarious. We talked mostly about the newtons and how he called to tell me he thinks i am a very fun person to play music with. And he was really excited about the band’s prospects. And he said if we do some more songs and write really great ones, and put on more concerts, we will play and suddenly people will “see us and say ‘Oh my goodness, Newtons, have sex with me immediately’”. In other words, people will really like the band and appreciate the music.

Right on, brother Alex.

If you haven’t heard the newtons yet, and would like a CD, email the band. listen to high quality, but short samples. or visit our bandspace website for low quality, but full length listens. Note: i highly suggest the CD. I recorded and mixed it myself. it’s a personal accomplishment, and i prefer if my listeners had the highest quality available.

So. In conclusion, i will end with several pages of photographs.
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