oh, dude.

dude.

i should be at home curled up in a little ball of food poisoning. but it's really not severe enough, and there's not enough sick days left for me to use on this...

last night josh and i went to martini blues in hb to see the golden west college big band (starring my buddy chris and his dad) play. josh had a gift certificate for 50 bucks that he'd gotten from the work xmas party a few months ago, so we figured we'd eat like fat kids, get some appetizers and dinner and all that jazz. the food tasted okay... not wonderful, not even really that great, just okay. (which is a lot coming from someone who bills herself as the human garbage disposal. seriously. i'll eat pretty much anything and be happy about it. especially candy. mmmmm. candy.)

so anyhow, we didn't stay for the whole show and it was weird cuz like right after we walked out both of us started feelin gross in the stomach region.

the band was good, though.

and possibly even better than the band was the coolest old lady ever. ever. she goes walkin by our table and the two of us couldn't stop smiling and staring, cuz this 70something year old woman shuffled by wearing a "keep on truckin'" t-shirt.

it was amazing.

she came up to the table to ask if the food was good and i didn't even hear her the first time, i was so mesmerized by the huge big rig on her shirt.

unfortuately we didn't know otherwise yet, so we told her our dinners were good, probably resulting in her being all messed up in the stomach region, too.

okay here's where you can see that typesetting drawer thing i was talking about - one of my favorite pieces at that coffeehouse show (aside from apple taking his morning constitutional of course) took one of these and had a little scene painted in every compartment, and the dividers acted as little frames. it was cool. i wanna get ahold of one of these typesetting drawers and paint something in it!

i dunno if i endorse the craft associated with this link, but if you're into gluing buttons and things then by all means have at it!

also, why the hell isn't it 345 yet? i wanna go back outside. it's like 70something today and the city of vernon doesn't smell nearly as bad as it normally does. you gotta love the farmer john plant, you really do. my favorite part of their premises is the outer wall is painted with this GIGANTIC mural of pigs frolicking (sp?) around a farm, and some farmers running and frolicking along with them. it's heartwarming. when i drive by it i picture the truckful of pigs that comes to the plant every morning, and i picture the pigs looking at the mural and just getting really depressed and crying because damn if that isn't some kind of terrible false advertising as to what goes on inside...

so uh, you got any gum?

i've got zero interesting things to say except i'm in the process of changing the comments again because jenn's comment box is prettier than mine. when it's finished we will re-enact everyone's favorite scene from everyone's favorite episode of 90210 - i'll be brenda, she'll be kelly, we'll both be using the same comments:

brenda: you're gonna have to go change!
kelly: no YOU'RE gonna have to go change!
dylan: hi guys, we'll make our appearance and then we'll make our disappearance!

annnnnnd scene!

okay i dunno why the comments are all of a sudden not working... they were working on my test blog. this is both confusing and irritating. blarg.

this just in, mark makes a habit of participating in five-gies! alert the people!

oh also, you should go here and scroll down, read the "why i'm so much better than your kids" links. comedy gold.

happy easter!

a while back my sister michelle showed me this site and i think in honor of that chocolate bunny you just shoved in your mouth you should go watch every animation!

okay, so i said i was going to tell you why northwest airlines was lame and then i got distracted by something shiny. i'm back now...

about a month ago, i was very very excited because i'd started pricing flights to savannah to see jenn and trav and a growing number of other kids i miss a whole lot. i had been a bit bummed becasue all the flights i was finding were around 450, 500 bucks. then this email from nwa's frequent flier program came, and said they had sales going on so buy your tickets today! and the flight i wanted ended up being like 350. but i didn't buy the tickets right away, because you gotta schedule your money outflow with your bills, you know what i'm sayin?

so yesterday, i was going to buy these awesome sale plane tickets going from orange county airport to savannah. and the flights we wanted were now coming up as 550 dollars.

500 DOLLARS!?!?!??! WHAT?!?!!?! WHERE'S THE SALE IN THAT!

so i call nwa, because obviously there's some mistake on the website. turns out there was no mistake... it's not a "you're a frequent flier program member, here's a good sale on any flight you fly", it's "there's only a limited number of those sale price tickets available so buy it right fucking now or we'll jack the prices up to higher than they were before you saw the sale."

so after some sleuthing online i found tickets for 360, which isn't bad at all. it's flying outta lax instead of john wayne, but that's a small price to pay. so yes. plane tickets are purchased!!! and now i'm off to search for a grand deal on a rental Hummer, because if we do track down josh's senator relative in atlanta for lunch i'd like to be driving something a little... gubernatorial.

also on tap this morning, i'm making some business cards to take with me to that coffee shop show. i finished the painting last night and i'm pretty jazzed with how it turned out! the only thing that bugs me is i didn't use light enough greens in the grass, and so Apple's feet get a little lost. but other than that it turned out quite brighthappy, and i'm gonna spend some time making out with it before the drive to echo park.

bahahaahhaha i love on the oc last night how chino's brother got accosted at the mall for stealing just because he looked like trailer trash.

if that really happened in the oc, everyone would get security called on em every ten seconds, because MAN do we dress like a bunch of trailertrash hobos!

in other news, if you like the aquabats you should come to the vault 350 in long beach next friday night, the show's only 15 bucks hot hot hot!

and add to the list of kids coming to savannah in april that vinnie kid we worked with at the civic center and had a couple of classes with, to boot! his trip that made him unavailable that weekend was pushed back so he's gonna try and catch up with us at the reception dealie or sidewalk arts or both.

i'm buying plane tickets to georgia after work. i'm so excited i'm peeing my pants right now. seriously. it's embarassing.

i started a painting last night for a show at a coffee joint in echo park - it's an experiment, really... let's see if steph can sell a painting of an apple walking through the park. if i can i'm maybe going to do a bunch of em, see if i can pay down some of the massive school/car repair/general credit card stupidity that's built up over the years. more on where you can see (and maybe buy if you love me) this masterpiece after saturday, when i find out if it's accepted or not.

and MAN i love friday. and vacation plans.

cheers to my car, cuz it was just the clutch pedal pin and was only fifteen bucks to fix.

jeers to work, because it isn't saturday yet.

what did you do last night?

i bet you watched tv.

lemme tell you, while you were being lazy, sitting on the couch eating cheetos and yelling at ryan seacrest while he licks his own face on national television, josh and i were out there making a difference.

making a difference means we were driving around downtown long beach with the windows rolled down, yelling "PLEASURE CRUISE!!!" at every pedestrian we saw.

i have no idea how to correctly spell the pronunciation of pleasure cruise i'm talkin' about. you know, the getting stopped at the drawbridge variety. jenn?

also, because getting my car fixed four times in the past two weeks wasn't enough i'm going back this morning. i love how every time i've gone (except for the tire valve) it's been clutch related, but different parts of the clutch mechanism so i get to shell out more cash. this time something broke in the actual clutch pedal. it still works, i still got home, but i don't wanna take it on the freeway and get stranded you know what i'm sayin? hope my boss is understanding of my lateness. and of the fact that i can't buy a new car.

finally, after about thirty bazillion different tries, a host of different swearwords and a bit of bleeding from the fingertips, steph emerges victorious with a handmade crocheted hostess cupcake pincushion!!!

take that, fred flare!

who wants to hear how lame steph is?!? come on, you know you do! read this excerpt from an email i just sent!

**************

and i just wasted an entire morning driving to los angeles, which is 30 miles north of long beach. i've been looking for a cheap used 4 drawer file cabinet, cuz a new one's like a hunnerd bucks and i be poor. so i find a listing on www.craigslist.org for one for 30 bucks and i'm like hot damn let's go! call the guy up, he tells me where i'm headed, and out the door i go. and the closer i get to hollywood the worse the traffic gets... which is normal, given. but today it was UNBEARABLE. there was a huge anti-war protest going on right there on hollywood blvd, to the point where they had to shut down a bunch of streets. it took over a half hour to drive 2 miles. the word for that, kiddies, is GAYNATIONS!!! garrrrh!!! so i call the guy, explain whats going on and that i'm really on my way... finally i get there and it turns out the whole thing was a waste because i'm overly optimistic and i didn't even stop to think that this thing wouldn't fit in my car. we tried fifty different ways of shoving it in there, and nothin. so i wasted probably 3 hours driving to and from l.a. and i didn't even need to go to begin with.

the lesson here kiddies, is i'm retarded.

**************

(but also, in my defense, it did almost fit. there was only a few inches sticking out of the left rear door. but it was enough so that the door wouldn't close, and call me crazy for not wanting to drive around hollywood, and then on the fwy, with one of the doors tied almost-shut with some rope.)

and napoleon dynamite's the best movie ever. the end.

dude, the server my hotmail account is on is down and that's gay for two reasons... number one i was supposed to call someone about picking up a file cabinet this morning and i can't get into my hotmail to get the phone number and two, i can't get in there to tell my old friend aaron how much i laughed at the demo reel he sent. the commercials on that dvd are pure comedy gold i swear.

someone explain to me how gmail works, i'm too lazy to look it up. angela?

so michelle and i have been working on that fun video project for the disneyprom fundraiser, right? and we decided to do a music video for the vandals' cover of queen's "don't stop me now". so a couple of nights ago i copied hollywood potato chip for michelle, and it's now her kids new favorite cd. which is really funny because her kids are 4 and 2.

yesterday when she was driving the children home from preschool the song "atrocity" was playing. and all of a sudden from the back seat she hears the cutest little 2 year old on the planet start singing loudly and happily with the music...

"I'M BUILDING A BOMB! I AM, I'M BUILDING A BOMB!"

she got him to sing it for me later and my legs gave out and i was literally rolling on the floor laughing. she also decided maybe it wasn't such a good idea for them to be listening to punk rock, even if it was bright, upbeat and happy and musically amazing...

p.s., black dots kick ass, alert the people!

HARRSHASHASHAAAAAAR SHARSHAR!!!!!!

that my friends is my best simpsons leprechaun impression.

in honor of the holiday i brought lunch to work, featuring the super-old meatloaf in the back of my fridge that recently turned green.

no, i'm kidding.

i'm not really sure it's meatloaf at all.

so while it's always nice to have a work day off, sometimes it doesn't feel as work day off-ish as it should...

went to the auto shop yesterday at 8am with the hopes of being done at 10, with the rest of the day to play. grrrr, the shop i go to's been having problems with the place they buy their parts from, and at 10 they hadn't even started working on the new engine mount yet. i had no idea, but apparently the model year of your car doesn't always equal the model year of the parts inside the car. and the parts supplier wasn't lookin' up the right info so they brought a '92 engine mount twice, which would make sense because my car's a '92. but turns out my engine mount's a '93.

finally got out of that auto shop around noonish. drove to hb to have lunch with josh at chicago for ribs. i'd give it a two meh's up, but meh's are generally very blase so how's about we set those two meh's down on a table, you can pick em up later. the pizza and chicken fingers we had were okay, but it didn't have that certain... i don't know what. you know?

after lunch i had an hour and a half to kill before needing to be at michelle's to work on the video, so i start meandering around huntington beach and i happened to pass the credit union where i started a savings account like 4 years ago with twenty bucks. have i done anything with the account since? no. so i figured hey i'm gonna go get my twenty bucks back! but no, they've taken out fees on that account due to inactivity, so i only got $10.85. but still, that's $10.85 i didn't have before lunch, you know?

also stopped in at what a girl wants - i had found the name to that place months ago in the phone book when i was looking up thrift stores, but didn't really know where on warner it was, happened to pass it on the way to lunch and was all hm, i should go check it out. so i went, and it was one of those crappy thrift stores that's all BRAND NAME ITEMS FOR LESS!!! so it's a used gap skirt, and instead of paying 50 for it you can pay 30. i wanted to be a jerk and ask the lady "uh... you know this is used shit, right? you know i could probably find this same gap skirt at goodwill for 5 bucks?"

went to rite aid and i think loreal's discontinued my hair junk, which pisses me off to no end... a whole row of billions of different types of hair goop and how is it nothing acts quite like the stuff i can't get anymore!?!!

came out of rite aid and found a mostly flat front tire. it was grand. went to the gas station across the street and filled it back up and hear air whizzing outta the valve when i put the cap back on. so i went to the goodyear place next door and hallelujah it was just needin' a replacement stem for 8 bucks. so glad i took that ten outta the bank!

the rest of the night was uneventful - hung out at michelles, watched some lovely tv show about skeletons and stuff on discovery. actually that show was kind of icky. but a good night nonetheless.

okay i hope i don't get a limited time offer to buy cialis online without a perscription sent to my email today because hotmail's totally broken and won't let me in... and i'd hate to miss out on such a great and obviously legitimate offer...

yay for making an animatic for the first time in years! and yay for the vandals!

so yesterday i got my clutch replaced in Chuckles, the Happy Weenmobile Clown Car of Doom. and driving with the new clutch made me realize just how bad the old clutch had been... driving hasn't felt like this in at least two years, i think. that's a long time to be driving on an old clutch.

the wonderful thing is i got a huge discount on it because i found out when i walked into the shop sat. morning that he thought i had been saying "timing belt" when i had clearly said "clutch" both times we'd talked on the phone. and being the upstanding guy he is, he let me have the timing belt price. which is about half of what i should've paid. further proof of this shop's upstandingness is i asked them to also check the brakes and they said no work was needed on them.

downside is they did find out one of my engine mounts is busted, so i do have to give them another 150 this week because apparently it's bad to be driving around like that. go figure.

today i'm bummin around my house cleanin' up the joint, doing laundree, and working on a music video michelle and i are filming. it's gonna be funny funny stuff the end!

oh this cracks me up. i got some class reunion email this morning and there's an rsvp list set up on classmates so you can see who's going, right? and it just makes me giggle because some dude named rodney, he says he's a no and in his comments he says "why would i go i don't even like you people".

i'm pretty likeable guys, right? right?!?!?!

*sigh*

i'm gonna go have a drano smoothie for breakfast.

and is it wrong to want to pay the 39 bucks for a year on classmates as a solid gold dancer just so i can wreak havoc on the currently barren message boards?

note to self, update this on the website:

fix spacing on blog
make dotted line thinner if possible
add new blogs to links (angela, fugly, conversations with famous people)
fix shop bg, was sharing bg with blog and can't have the word bubble

do you like the font on "message from flight deck" on the blog or change it?

yeah that's right i'm making a grocery list of changes here. you'll learn to deal, i'm sure. is there anything else on the website you'd maybe change? cuz i'd like to know. so i can shoot your ideas down because who's building this thing people. jenn and mark, that's who.

oh my god, and now i just put a new post up and everything over there works fine. go look!!!

it's not gorgeous, it needs a bit of tweaking and if i could make that dotted line prettier somehow that'd be cool. but it works!!!

and more importantly than all of that you should barrage jenn norwood with calls and emails and electronic cards and nonsense news from cnn because today my friends is her birthday. cheers!

garrrrrr, so frustrating. spent a large chunk of last night trying to get this blog ready to move to it's new home with the extensive help of jenn and mark. progress was made, and then plop, all we're seein now is a white screen and we're a bit at a loss as to what happened or how to fix it. garrrrrrr is my new catchphrase, since i'm spicy is already taken.

if you go http://www.stephlehman.com/blog.htm you'll see what i'm talkin about. the stumper is that the code is totally there on the blogger end. but when you look at the source code on this page on the website, there's absolutely nothing there. wtf, mate, wtf.

is it weird that i'm excited about the water cooler at work now having arrowhead water instead of what they had before?

last night, after 20-some-odd tries on the cupcake project i finally got the bottom to look like a cupcake bottom. i'll pause for effect here.

...

,,,

so anyways, yes, does this mean i'm back on putting up my website? haha, you foolish mortals! no! i'm spending an entire day in olde towne orange this saturday at auto quality care, getting my new clutch installed! because driving with the old clutch in stop and go traffic is becoming downright scary. i called the guy at auto quality care to get a quote on how much it would cost me, and he's all $380. i was floored, because i was expecting near a thousand. for the sake of convenience, i called the car repair shop across the street from my apartment building, too, and those guys do indeed want close to a thousand to do the job.

called the guy in orange again just to make sure he wasn't leaving anythng out, and apparently his prices are just way, way better than oconnells. so screw that, breakfast at watson's here i come!

sunday maybe i'll work on the website some more. did you go check out jenn's redesign? it's superb! mr. food told me yesterday while we were making out that oooo it's so good! whether that was in reference to her website or my kissing technique i don't know, but let's just say it was website.

also, i'm very scared that i'm possibly going to miss the oc tonight, and my crappy vcr won't record it. pass the drano over here, i've got two glasses ready to go! though dinner at roscoes is almost as good as televised teen drama.

i'm so in denial.

okay so it's reunion year. not just crazy savannah reunion year, but 10 year high school reunion year. i may have mentioned this before.

and while i was classmates updating my info the other day, i realized i'd not taken full advantage of the pictures you can put up there. one for how you look now, one for how you looked then.

and when anyone asks for a little kid pic from me, the first thing i think to use is this:



and now i'm running rampant on the internet, trying to remember all the other websites i can put pics on so i can shove this one down everyone's throats.

what the hell is up with this billion posts a day crap? don't get used to it; i'm sure it'll pass soon.

p.s., today i get to start calling around looking for pricing on a new clutch for my car cuz it's starting to be a jerk. i'm gonna start hemmoraging money, i can just feel it.

ahahahhahahaha i'm gonna turn my living room into a trophy room, with the heads of all of the stuffed animals i've hunted over the years up on the walls!

someone somewhere in this department is listening to offsprings "smash" cd. i can hear it very very faintly. i love it.

i'm very, very disappointed in the los angeles county court system.

you see, this week i'm on call for jury duty. and this is the second time i've ever gotten jury duty, and the first job i've ever had where if i was called in, they'd still pay me.

and did i have jury duty yesterday? no.

and do i have jury duty today? no.

if i don't get jury duty tomorrow i'm going to the courthouse anyways.

allright kiddies, how's this grab ya?



p.s., josh called me this morning from work to tell me they'd arrested nick carter lats night for dui in huntington beach. and this reporter does her research, folks. i just did a google search for the words nick carter arrested, and all that came up was stories about an arresting incident in tampa in 2002. i'm sensing a bit of confusion, maybe some pent up rage even, in this former boy-bander. my professional opinion is dump him paris, he's a boozer, a user, and a loser! and there's that whole he was in the backstreet boys thing.

it's disappointing josh wasn't the booking officer, either, cuz he totally would've sold the mug shot to smoking gun.

okay i don't understand this at all.

when i wrote to toyota to tell them about Chuckles hitting 250k miles, i gave them my address. in california.

i got a piece of mail today that had been forwarded from my old wisconsin address. it was from ups, saying they'd tried to deliver my package from toyota three times and now they're sending it back to the sender.

how the hell did toyota get my old address, and why did they send it there?!? i left the big wis almost a year ago! wtf, mate!

also, i've got a cramp in my left pinkie finger... crocheting cupcakes is much harder than knitting anything i've ever knitted before. i've now started over like 10 times... and progress is definitely being made, because i'm doing better and better for slightly longer periods of time before i screw it up beyond belief. i'm just not hip to the crocheting vibe yet. but i'm gettin' there... i can't wait, though, seriously, to be able to knock one of these out in a couple of hours.

i went to big lots today because i'll be doing some travelling in the end of april, and i had seen in this week's ad that they were selling big name suitcases at low, low prices and i just wanted to check em out. so michelle and i went to the big lots in westminster, and i about crapped my pants because i found this huge hot pink suitcase for 40 bucks. and it was like a big fat matched luggage set - there was one inside that, one inside that, one inside that... they were all hot pink and all freaking awesome. so of course i was going to buy the set, because 40 bucks for all that suitcase seemed like a really, really good deal you know? even if i don't travel much. so i roll the suitcase behind me through the rest of the store, get to the register and the cashier opens the suitcase to make sure i didn't steal any crap and she finds all the other suitcases nestled inside and she's all oh, these are all sold separately.

"but i found them this way on the floor," i told her. "they really look like they're supposed to be sold like that."

was it still a good deal for that big suitcase at 40 bucks? of course. but the checker was a bit snotty about the whole thing so i smacked her in the face with my purse and told her to screw it, i wasn't taking any of them.

what she doesn't know is there's a big lots here in long beach, and i'll probably go there and buy one tomorrow, because while i hated being treated like a shyster at that store, i do love a good bargain.

hey there kiddies, if you'd like to see the best pic ever taken of one jenn norwood and myself, then you best get yer ass to mark's blog, and scroll down to his march 4 entry. it's accompanied by a lovely little piece about how we heckled and heckled his choice of shirts until he became hopelessly addicted to dance dance revolution.

it'll all make sense when you read it, i swear.

every now and then i'll go back to my high school's website and look at who put their contact info on the alumni page, mostly because i'm a dork but also because i'm very curious as to who out of the 480 or so people in my class will show up to the reunion this summer. what are the chances that the maybe 5 or 6 people i wanna see will go? no seriously, someone figure out the statistics on that. my crack team of investigators went to vegas for the weekend.

i figured, hey, i'll play ball, i'll put my info up too. that was a few months ago. the other day i went back there and you can tell it's reunion year because the number of kids on there jumped from like 20 to 40. funny. so i updated my stuff, got an email back saying it was approved and up on the site, went back, and my name was removed entirely from the list.

it's okay, i get the picture... i wasn't one of the cool kids then, i'm not one of the cool kids now.

and i miss jenn on the internet and i hate my email the end!

i'm done, i swear. i just wanna say this is cute, but kinda icky.

okay i just gotta say i think this is awesome.

go to google.

do a search for steph lehman rocks the house.

two things are completely sweet about this. maria's blog comes up in the top five, and there's a lehman high school in ohio. a catholic high school.

i wonder if that crest of theirs is some kind of actual real lehman family crest. not that i want it, cuz i'm changin' my last name to jones. it's still neat, though.

so irritating, that hotmail. how am i supposed to properly slack off without split-second emailing?

also, i think i quite like the taco design without the black line. it cleans it up a little. arguments for and against black outlines will now be heard!

black lines:


no black lines:


also, what color shirt would one put this on if one were to get this for their birthday?

and who ordered the london symphony orchestra, possibly while high? cypress hill, i'm looking in your direction...

i'm such a woman of my word. resume section's up. i'm so glad it's over that i refuse to shut up about it. though at this rate it's only two pages down, five billion to go.

okay two things:

number one, i sat down thinking hey, i'll do the resume portion of the website tonight because it's just slappin' some text on that page, right?

no. cuz nothing in this stoopid build your own website thing has been easy. cuz i keep coming up with more design stuff to do to it. but i guaruntee that resume's gonna be the hottest piece of paper around, you know what i'm sayin?

number two, did i tell you that in addition to the two little annoying yappy dogs that live next door to me, there's also a little yappy dog that lives across the hallway? and did i tell you about how much i hate little yappy dogs? and how they're now going apeshit, barking at each other for no apparent reason? it's like living in a paris hilton sandwich!!! garrrrr!!!

okay i'm really working now the end!

how lame... for some reason this week hotmail on the mac here at work hates me with the fire of a thousand suns, and won't let me send mail. and the odd occasions where i can send mail, it literally takes two whole days for people to get what i sent.

i can't slack off under these conditions, i quit!!!

also, it turns out i didn't have anything devestatingly interesting to say, so drop your pants and rock to the oldies!

hey there, kiddies, it's been a busy week...

i don't understand why hotmail all of a sudden hates me when i'm at work, but it does. or maybe it just hates safari now? it seems to work slightly better in firefox. but only slightly better...

hmm, turns out i didn't have much interesting stuff to say today after all... except that everyone should drop their pants and rock to the oldies!