You are in the Brett Bugle archives right now. The HOMEPAGE is much more important.

Some good news and bad news in the FOOD category; bad news first.

Mocha Monkey Café is gone forever, it seems. I was craving a "Nutty Monkey" smoothie the other day, went to Beaumont Centre to buy one, and discovered that MMC is quite permanently closed. Bummer!

The good news is that dark chocolate M&M's are not gone forever. I lost track of them for a while and kept looking for them everywhere, and today I was pleased to see them again at the Target across from Fayette Mall. Go get you some.

Today started out, in the early morning hours, with me driving back from Memphis to Lexington instead of spending the night at a Memphis hotel. I decided just to drive home after the wedding so I could have more time at home to sleep in my own bed. The trip was tiring, naturally. I stopped twice and took naps at rest areas (including a 3-hour nap at the Kentucky Welcome Center).

Subconsciously, I think I wanted to be back in Lexington quicker in order to celebrate Danielle's birthday with her. She invited me and a few of her other friends to join her at Mi Pequeña Hacienda, a Mexican restaurant by the Lansdowne post office, where she knew some strolling mariachi musicians would be playing. We ate and sang and danced and had a good time.

When September 25th ended, I slept for 10 hours.

Congratulations to Danny and Jennifer, the newest newlyweds in the family! We are all so happy for y'all.

And I was extra happy to discover that Danny's mom (I call her "Aunt Shannon") is an expert ballroom dancer. The catering crew gave us rave reviews for our rumba.

there is no container big enough to hold all the hate I have for the DJ at Danny's wedding reception, who would not stop screaming into the microphone and blowing all of our eardrums

we just wanna dance, dude

As you can see from my wedding day photo album, I spent a lot of time following the professional photographer around, taking advantage of his placement and posing instructions.

During the wedding, I sat with Cheryl, but I actually didn't sit very much, since I was taking lots of pictures from lots of different angles. (When all was said and done, I shot about 260 photos over 2 days.)

if you know me at all, you know that I can't visit a place without buying and sending at least 16 postcards

Drove to Memphis and arrived just in time for the wedding rehearsal. Afterwards, I visited with Grandma in her hotel room and used her hotel phone to call around and find myself a room. Piece o'cake. Found a place. Checked in. Hakuna matata.

At 11 p.m., Danny called my hotel room and invited me over to his house. He and Jennifer wanted me to help them with their dance skills, so I went, and I did what I could. Pretty tricky thing, that, giving a crash course in ballroom steps...

Spent the day getting my car ready for a big trip (oil change, tune-up, new front brakes), and then Ariana and I donated blood. When I returned home, I started scouring the hotel websites for a Memphis room reservation, but as it turns out, the normal surplus of web-grabbable rooms is now all booked by Hurricane Katrina refugees. My trip will continue on faith, the faith that I will find a place to sleep.

In addition to having two cell phones now, there are some other changes that I've caught creeping into my life...

Money is no longer a concern for me at all. Back in the day, I'd get all huffy about the price of a glass of soda at Applebee's, but this week I realized I only have to program for two minutes to earn the money for it. So I'll buy the glass of soda. And I'll buy a movie ticket now, since it only costs me six to eight minutes of programming work. On the other hand, I still haven't bought myself a nice laptop yet, and Danielle is going crazy trying to figure out why not. "You can easily afford it!" she says. "You would use it every day!" she says. "Let's go get one right now!" she says. "I'll definitely need it to develop pictures during Danny's wedding!" I say.

Another change I've been noticing is that it's easier for me to cry at movies. My past decade of life has seen very few Brett tears, and I'm still not to the point where I'll cry from natural causes, but yesterday, I was moved to tears during the new movie Just Like Heaven. Go see it, and tell me if it makes you cry, too. Help me figure out, what is it about this movie that grabs me so hard?? (side note: read what Dennis Miller says about all this)

Finally, I am much more receptive to Farmer's Markets this year than I've ever been before. This was another of the things I noticed yesterday. I had just eaten a chocolate-chip-pancake breakfast at Winchell's Restaurant on Southland Drive, and I decided to stroll around the Farmer's Market taking place in their parking lot. During the stroll, I smiled at the sight of thin people shopping for fresh vegetables, and I thrilled at the sight of the thin farmgirls selling fresh vegetables. (What a shame that I don't buy or cook fresh vegetables. I could swap syllables with the hotties.)

Oh, speaking of thin girls, I've just updated emelle's website again today. Her slight resemblance to Reese Witherspoon is what motivated me to buy a ticket for Just Like Heaven. I miss my Hollywood sis.

I now have two Cingular cell phones, so I really, really want to know if you have a Cingular account. If you do, you are in my "unlimited calls" network, and I will be more likely to call you at random times to say hello. Will you please write me immediately to tell me your mobile phone carrier, before you forget?

And now, here's some explanation of my transition from zero (0) cell phones to two (2) cell phones.

Cell phone 1 was given to me on 9/9 by the company I write code for. They felt like they'll soon need me to be on call, so they set me up with a prepaid Cingular/Nokia phone.

Cell phone 2 was purchased tonight in order to get a magazine salesman off my doorstep. He was begging me to help him out, as if his sales on September 17th were going to make or break his career, and I certainly did not want any magazines. But he was incredibly convincing in his desperation, and he offered me everything he was carrying — sunglasses, watch, cell phone, shirt, pen — just to make this one sale. So I said, "here's $20, I'll buy your cell phone from ya." He was extremely happy, so very very happy. I was happy, too.

It is important to note that I will not be getting rid of my landline, ever. Apart from portability, there is nothing to love about cell phones. Landlines are unbeatable and irreplaceable.

nothing exciting to report; it's all pretty much part of the same old routine these days, with work or band practice or whatever

one tiny irrelevant thing I want to mention: yesterday I discovered (for the first time) that my website can be found on PROGIDY, huh! Looks like Prodigy has gone into the cloning and misspelling business.

The past two days have had some very surprising social opportunities, hey hey!

Yesterday, when I got home from work, I had a voice mail message asking me to go to a big fancy dinner on really short notice. Sounded like an adventure, so I returned the call and said yes. Just an hour later, Salina Ramsay and I attended the Thoroughbred Owners & Breeders Association Awards dinner together; we ate hyperdelicious food and danced to the two live bands that performed. Unbelievable! To think, when I left for work Friday morning, I had no clue that my night would be like that.

Today, Danielle recruited me to help her with a website she needs changed, so she picked me up at home and took me to Fauntleroy's coffee shop on Maxwell Street. We spent a good bit of time there, mapping out our web development strategy. Then tonight we decided to see Crash at Carmike Cinemas.

Call me up; invite me out. I'll leave my schedule open for you.

Sorry to have been so silent in recent days, but I've been very busy (which is a nice change of pace from early August when I had nothing to do).

20050907 - had to transport a computer from my company's Richmond office to my company's Danville office and set it up

20050909 - my boss drove me to the home office in Newport so we could meet with the accountants, which went really well

Three things I'm thinking about lately:
1. A nifty hip-hop song, "My Kentucky Home", is being played frequently on local radio, and I wish it would get some national exposure so that I can snag a free copy on BitTorrent.
2. I am in preproduction on a movie called Bored in Lex Vegas. I'll be compiling my ideas and writing a screenplay soon. After that I'll find a film crew and fly my sister into town so she can become "Danielle."
3. If I sit at home alone, or if I sit in the food court of Fayette Mall alone, what's the difference? I'm still alone. Even if I do something exciting like travel around Australia alone, or if I attend a Labor Day cookout where there is a good crowd of people, same thing. That kinda bites.

Oh, here's a fourth (bonus) thing that I'm thinking about. Today, September 5th, is the birthday for THREE women that I personally know. One of them is my current boss Beverly, and the other two are former dance partners I rarely see anymore. But they are all in my address book, and I wished all of them a happy birthday today.

Now that I have my new passport ready, I can use the pickup lines created by Ludacris in his song "Pimpin All Over the World" —
I'm takin you places you only see on TV, tryna show you how you livin is trife. How many guys you know can bring the Travel Channel to life? One day we on the Autobahn, swervin, drivin; next day we in the sun on the Virgin Islands

Woo-hoo! Or, as the kids say, woot! My new passport just arrived in today's mail. Even though I did not pay extra for expedited service, it was printed exactly one month after I wrote the check to pay for it; can you believe that? I'm pretty excited now. I am just one Priceline.com click away from seeing Australia, the Bahamas, Italy, or Japan for the first time.

make your way into my archives: August 2005, July 2005, June 2005, May 2005, April 2005, March 2005, February 2005, and January 2005. Or just head over to my news page from 2005 and 2004

For search engines: Kentucky KY 40504 USA, not Lexinton