Parking.

Originally uploaded by macnab.

Monday.

Friday Night

Originally uploaded by macnab.

Bill carson and jonny gray at the wine bar.

bus-stop

Originally uploaded by macnab.

This bench would be perfect for my fabulous new front porch. Anyone headed to Japan that can pick me up one? Actually, could someone please send me to Japan? Yes. I want the bench THAT MUCH.

macnab ad shot

Originally uploaded by macnab.

So the winning name for my little computer repair/networking/consultation/Geräuschmusik company is “MacNab TechWorks”, which I think is a nice combination of all submitted ideas, and still gets the point across, for the most part. My talented friend L at OliveArgyle kicked out this awesome little retro ad, and BANG! I’m official. Does this mean I have to start paying taxes?

Hot Toddy

Originally uploaded by macnab.

Just went to see ‘volver’ with mr. Carson, and the thought of penelope’s tears drove me to drink.

I’m really having a blast with these “30 Boxes” people. I’ve set it up so that all new commenters, if they’ve attached themselves in some way to the social network of API-spewing information, including myspace and flickr, you can learn more about them. Make friends, on my behalf, please! I’ve got such nice ones. Let me be a conduit through which soul mates can find one another, and stalkers can discover new prey!

And now you can view all these blog posts in friendly, time-obsessed Roman Calendar from (a big apology to my orthodox Jewish friends… 30 boxes doesn’t have a Hebrew version, so just subtract about 2000 years or so to any given date) by clicking on “View Blog Timeline” at the end of any post. Bang! All your favorite journal entries by me, with any photos included, organized in the date in which they appeared! What’s the point? Well, there isn’t one. But it’s kind of cool, I think. You now know what I do instead of unpacking the box that may or may not contain my toothbrush!

It’s never easy, ever, to move from one place to another. There is an excitement about the process, usually, but it’s never easy. There is always a point during moving, for me, anyway, where I am overwhelmed with the amount of work to be done, and stuck with boxes on the floors. I’m not a tidy person, even when everything has it’s own place. But I’m not a slob, either, and when things are in a state of complete chaos it tends to break down my own personal level of order. I start ignoring rooms that have the most clutter and stuff to do in them. I walk around them completely. It’s so much harder to focus, and it’s almost impossible to get things done. This, I have been told, is a fairly classic clinical symptom of ADD, which, at least, I’m glad to hear is a “symptom” that other people can relate to, so I don’t feel so alone. My brother seems completely immune to this situation, this tendency to become stymied by disorder instead of galvanized by the desire to fix it, and had his bedroom set up in one day, beautifully.

I’m still working on it. And the process doesn’t end with just the moving of stuff from one place to another. There are lists longer than one would think possible to complete. And then there is the ex-landlord.

Similar to the ex-lover, the ex-landlord can take respond to the tenant’s leaving (”the breakup”) in a variety of ways. Sadness, relief, or anger are not uncommon reactions from the ex-landlord when told that they are losing a tenant. My landlord has tended to portray sadness and relief during this move; she really hasn’t had a reason to be angry. She gets to raise the rent on our old place, and that should allow her an extra pair of shoes a month, or something. As a landlord she was incredibly inconsistent; downright loving at times, attentive, even. And then you’d become aware of a constant, subtle manipulative game being played at all times with her. This game usually involved complaining about how desperately poor she was, how the real estate market was drying up and she wasn’t selling anything, how people were constantly ripping her off and she was literally living hand-to-mouth, and so if I could just always be prompt on the rent check, and deal for one more week with the leaking bathtub, and the broken toilet, that would be so helpful. It was of course very difficult for me to be sympathetic to her situation, because in my lifetime as an artist I have never lived hand-to-mouth, wouldn’t know how that would be, at all.

So I would do my very best to send the rent checks on time… oftentimes forgoing a needless trip to a grocery store to purchase food for the week, so that she’d have food on her table. It only made sense! If it weren’t for her I would be homeless! I owed her my life! I was, however, a little confused as to why it took her nearly two weeks to cash each monthly rent check, if she needed the money so badly, but I guess she also suffers from this “ADD” thing. It must be contagious! I should be more careful who I come into contact with, obviously.

I’m “David Sedaris-ing” a little, here, of course. It’s fun to paint my landlord as a wacky insane bitchy caricature of a human being. She drove me crazy, at times. She continues to, even now… I agreed to have her cleaning team have a go at the old apartment, and she is currently making a huge deal out of how filthy the place was, how it took them two days, and floors had to be waxed, blah blah. This melodrama is only happening for one reason; she’s going to take a healthy fucking chunk out of my security deposit, and wants me to know damn well why she’s doing it. As I have said, I might be untidy, but I’m not a slob. Five years in one apartment is a lot of living, and of course there will be wear and tear. And of course I would never spend the amount of time keeping up a rental that I would, say with a place that I owned myself. I certainly could have spent a lot of my own money beautifying the apartment I was living in, but at some point you just can’t… you can’t justify doing so. I fixed windows and painted the rooms lovely shades of chocolate, lavender and lime. That’s where I had to stop with the upkeep.

But I’ll take this final bit of craziness like I’ve taken it for five years, and move on… literally and figuratively, with no hard feelings towards her or the process. My new landlord is amazing. She’s also my boss. And as lovingly as I care for her office and her graphic design and computers, I will care for the new apartment. She plays no games and her attentiveness is genuine. And if I’m late on the rent, she can choose to take it either out of my paycheck, or my hide.

The list is getting smaller, thank God, and I might just soon be able to walk from the bathroom to the front hall without completely avoiding the office. And when that’s done we’ll have grand party for friends and relations for this new sexy drool-worthy place. Wish me luck!

Bean dip.

Originally uploaded by Matthew Bivins.

Office party.

Today was a joyful geekfest, indeed. When I wasn’t lapping up all the fanboy and girl jabber about the iPhone, I was marveling at an online calendar and more from 30boxes, a “little webapp company that can” that, as far as I can tell, has three employees that never ever sleep.

I could write you a lengthy and excruciatingly nerdy post about why I am a fan of all these “web 2.0″ applications, and why it’s necessary for me to use them, but I will refrain because I can truthfully say that no one in their right mind would give a damn about that sort of information from me. So I’ll keep it short and simple: I love finding people in the world that really seem to be working overtime to make things work better and better. And I love it when those people working so hard seem to absolutely love what they do. In the eight hours since I’ve created my first 30boxes.com account, the little geeky elves came out with a smart little tweak that I really appreciated. I have no problem with my current calendar program, Google Calendar, but these folk seem to want to work as hard as I do in life, and I’m hopping aboard those with a similar work ethic. So if you’re looking for a way to organize your life better beyond the constraints of Outlook or even iCal, check 30boxes.com out. They’re so cute!

Oh, and help me come up with a name for a company that would offer computer repair, installation, networking and consulting. Something without the word “geek” or “nerd” in it, preferably, even though this post might take the cake as being the geekiest of its ilk. Also, refrain from suggesting anything with the word “Palmetto” in it. Like, “Charleston Palmetto Lowcountry Computer Geeks to Go!”

iPhone

Originally uploaded by absolutwade.

The consummate geek within is absolutely beside himself.

UPDATE: I just realized that this darn thing comes out… pretty much on my birthday! So, if anyone is wondering what they could get for Matt this year…