I walked into my favorite coffee house this afternoon. Not necessarily because I needed a fix of caffeine but mostly because I just needed some time to decompress and putting off driving home. The midtown Caribou coffee is usually filled to the brim with assorted hipsters, random gay guys, young college students, and older professionals like myself.
Today, the only open seat was on one side of the fireplace in one of the leather chairs. These are not the connected types, but the regular ones. They were just pushed closely together as if a couple had been sitting together earlier in the day. I quietly settled in, opened up my laptop, and started reading some emails as I sipped my Americano. The guy sitting next to me instantly gave me this dirty look as if I was invading his personal space just by breathing the same air as he was. Each time I sat my cup down on the end table, he would let out this long sigh and roll his eyes at me. For the next twenty minutes, I made no conversational attempts or acknowledge his constant sighing. The only sound from my side of this rather uncomfortable seating arrangement was the tapping of my keyboard. Yet, I got the under his breath "shessh" as I came back with another cup. Eventually two cute girls finished doing their homework by the window and left. He loudly gathered up his belongings and moved to the chairs they had left empty.
A little while later, he got up for a refill and left his seats open. A couple people in front of him in line was a young mother and her adorable fussy toddler, who was upset that he couldn't get a cookie or something. They came toward me and asked if the second chair was taken. I was about to happily welcome them down when apparently someone she knew called her over...directly next to the open seat next to the dick head. The rather annoying man came back to his book to find a screaming toddler would be his new sitting area companion. I sat for the next half hour watching Junior play games on an Ipad at full volume, cry about his missing Rice Crispy treat, and make himself at home by laying across his mother's lap while picking his nose. The man was not amused at all. When I left, he was still giving everyone the stink eye for being on this planet with him. I finished my work on the laptop and had an enjoyable conversation with an exchange student from Paris who took light next to me.
Lesson of the day: Do not be an asshole to strangers. Life can come back to bite you in the ass.

20 worst songs of all time according to ME

These are going to be mostly rock (If you can call them that) songs because the new popish songs are just too easy to pick on as well as too plentiful. This list will most likely going to change as I drive this weekend. Don't judge me.....

• Snow - “Informer” Screw this fake jamaican accent white boy.  
• Limp Bizkit - “Faith” Yes, I went through a Limp Biscut* phase when I was in my 20's. It was a phase and eventually the hormones evened out and I learned that there was no need for violent screaming in songs. 
• Baha Men - "Who Let The Dogs Out?"  I have always hated this abominably foul example of what passes for popular music. 

Paradise by the Dashboard Light - Meatloaf
November Rain - Guns N Roses
Hotel California - The Eagles
Pretty Fly For a White Guy - The Offspring
Fly Away - Lenny Kravitz
Pour Some Sugar on Me - Def Leppard
Stairway to Heaven - Led Zeppelin
Old Time Rock and Roll - Bob Seger
I’ll Wait - Van Halen
Born in the USA - Bruce Springsteen
Love in an Elevator - Aerosmith
Uptown Girl - Billy Joel
Kokomo - The Beach Boys
Amber - 311
Semi Charmed Life - Third Eye Blind
Rock Star - Nickelback
Open Arms - Journey
Every Morning - Sugar Ray
Dani California - Red Hot Chili Peppers
I’d Do Anything For Love (But I Won’t Do That) - Meatloaf

I cut my finger open with a serrated bread knife while trying to slice up a salmon and tomato poppy seed bagel.
Yup.

This would be labelled as "Zach Cooks" but I'm a moron. 

Music time: What better to do when working late into the evening.

Meme: Worst roommate

While on active duty, I lived just off base at Fort Leonard Wood. The apartments were cheap. They were dirty. But most importantly, they were close to work. I only lived there because I could be in my office within 12 minutes of walking out of my door. The way the apartments worked was that there was no single lease upon an apartment, but you as a renter would sign a lease on you having a room of your own. This way, if your roommate was deployed, there would be no problem making the rent. The bad side to this was that you didn't really get a say in who lived with you. As long as there was an empty bedroom, someone would eventually be living with you.
A couple weeks after I moved in, a young private from Rhode Island moved into the adjoining room while he waited for his clearance check to come through. The first thing, the very first thing, he did when he came in was to light up a cigarette in our communal living space. I had quit smoking not long before this so I was really sensitive about the smell. The room was rented out as a non-smoking room. So, when I asked him to smoke out in the outside gazebos, he flipped out on me. The third day, he woke me up on my day off at 4am, to complain that my 32" television was too small for him to enjoy. When he hooked it up to his video game system, there was a conflicting video decoding error and he blamed me and my television for breaking his old system. Also, he thought that my "Pump up the Volume" movie poster should be taken down from the kitchen wall since the movie was about how a kid broke the law over and over, thus would be a bad influence on his well being......really.
I did try to be his friend. I really did. The first weekend that he was there, he complained that there was nothing do in the area so I invited him to hangout with my (at the time) girlfriend for a night of putt putt and movies. All night long, he did nothing but complain that we were forcing him to do what we wanted and he just wanted to go home. Fine, we did and took off on our own. That Sunday, we invited him to join us in the living room for a night of old school NES Mario, PBRs, and meatball sliders. My girlfriend, Tracy, even invited one of her friends to join us in hopes that he may like her. About 30 minutes after he had eaten a lion's share of the sandwiches, he hid a case of the beers into his room, yelled at us because he was being "smothered". A week later, I was sitting at my bedroom desk when I overheard him talking on the phone to his family about how I was a horrible roommate because I had made him feel unwelcome here since I had stopped inviting him to anything. The next week he left one of his god awful smelling frozen pizzas in the oven at full blast while he went on a walk to "talk to mother nature". When I came into the apartment, the room was full of smoke and the oil from the pizza was dripping down onto the heating element building a fire with each drip. He would later blame me for the destruction of the pizza and smoke damage because I should of checked on it while we was gone. The last weekend, before I left FLW, a great friend from Georgia came in for the going away party. She and her partner slept in my room on Friday while I crashed on the couch since their hotel room was not available until the following night. All night long, and I mean ALL NIGHT, he would randomly come out into the living room, wake me up, only to complain to me about how it was rude of me to allow them to do this in his apartment. We went into St.Roberts for drinks and a dinner before the party so I thought that this would be one last olive branch to be nice to end our relationship on. I bought everyone dinner that night. He sat at the corner of the table, didn't talk to anyone else, and just got incoherently drunk off his ass on the most expensive ouzo on the menu. At the party, he pulled Tracy aside and told her that I was going to hell for supporting sin in his home.
After I left, a few of our mutual friends told me that he had complained to them that I had left him with a cleaning bill of 1000$. He refused to let Tracy into the apartment to get the stuff I had left behind for her and sold it all to make up the money. I know I hadn't left anything wrong in the apartment. It was so clean that I had gotten my sexurity deposit back which was rare in the complex.
Now everyone has personality conflicts sometimes. I know this. But, there was just not one redeeming quality to this person. He was lazy. He was closed minded to new things. He was anti-social. He was just a plain dick. I have never lived with another roommate since then for the reason that I don't want to take the chance that I may run into another person like him.

Monday has come:

My major grant is being pulled from me in the Spring and given to someone from a more ethnically diverse background because the American educational system needs to "support the education of those that cannot support themselves".

Fuck this. Looks as if I will be paying out of pocket.

Woke up thinking you were next to me.
I hate this feeling. I miss talking to you. I hate that you think that I am going to lie to you. I wish that I had never been so insecure at the time in myself to think that you wouldn't like me for who I really am.
There are mistakes which we make in our lives that can never be forgiven. This is the mistake that I hold upon myself.
Good night, Sweet Dreams.
Wherever you are. 

Better lipsyncing than Glee..

Growing older and being responsible sucks.
 I have a meeting in the morning so the customary birthday dinner and drinks out has been postponed until Friday night.  Instead of partying like a 20 year old, I'm relaxing on the couch with Netflix (Airplane the movie), Buffy laying on my feet, and takeout Cantonese. 

A little girl just sold me a solo cup of homemade lemonade.

It was delicious. 

As I was driving home this afternoon and stopped at my usual gas station, North of Macon I saw a symbol of my own childhood which warmed my heart. 

This afternoon was one for the record books. The sun was out for once, my windows had been down since I passed through Forsyth, my favorite music was playing on the radio and that the day couldn't of turned out better. That was when I noticed two little girls setting up a stand as their mother sat in the shade behind them. They were selling for their school, supposedly for school supplies. As soon as I saw them, they started smiling from ear to ear, beckoning me to come buy a cup. I pulled up and gave them a couple bucks for a solo cup worth of overly sweet lemon juice. Then just thanked them for the delicious cup, congratulated them for being so ingenious for their idea and cruised away. They were so happy. 

I know that this is not very news worthy. But, they made my ride home very enjoyable. 

Spending the night in my home office, no one else is home, time to turn on some music.