Let’s talk about being scared. Well, again. It’s been a bit since I’ve written anything in here, so I should give a little background as to what’s been going on in your favorite Moondoggie’s life.

So I was out in Boston in mid-October, visiting the glorious Barb, love of my life. I come back home from a great almost-week to find the back door to my house open. Yes, my house had been broken into. Somehow, that doesn’t sound descriptive enough. Let’s try this: my house was broken into and my state of well-being had been anally raped. Yeah, that sounds a little closer.

The bastards didn’t get very much - looks like something scared them away in the process. The kind officer told me I’m more than likely not the one who did it, as this would probably have happened during the day as that’s when most residences are knocked over. Of course, a few minutes later as we’re walking the house, he gives me this worried look and asks if I’ve already looked through the house to see if they’re still here.

And oh, how I wanted them to still be here. Just a few prized moments with them before the police arrived, that’s all I asked. Alas, it was not to be as the cowards hightailed it out of there with a DVD player, a VCR, and half of my DVD collection. Like I said, they didn’t get very much, but it’s the violation that just kills you. Not to mention paying the insurance deductible. There’s no such thing as a victimless crime, kiddies.

So now I’m developing a nifty little obsessive-compulsive disorder to cope. Before I leave the house, every door inside must be shut. When I go to sleep, every door but the bedroom is shut, and I have a nice little Home Alone/Rube Goldberg alarm system going on. Not to mention my little arsenal next to my bed. No firearms or such - we’re talkin’ blunt instruments, baby - a gun’s too good for ‘em. I find myself slipping into a specific routine to keep myself sane. To get back a little peace of mind.

Of course, since I’m exceedingly forgetful (my lawsuit against Memento is still pending), occasionally I don’t remember that I haven’t gone through all of the steps for whatever reason. This is why the habits must be formed. Last night I scared the bejeezus out of myself because I had forgotten to shut the door to the laundry room before going to sleep.

My latest fright was about an hour ago. I had left the door to my office open, since I was just going to take a short nap. It’s right around the corner from my bedroom, and since I left the monitor on, it lights up my bedroom door when darkness falls. Darkness dropped, and everything would’ve been fine. That is, if I didn’t have my hockey girdle (the big black shorts) hanging on the office door to dry. Imagine living alone, then waking up to find someone looming in the doorway, arms raised above their heads. If it helps, add in bad eyesight and no glasses. That’s what I thought too - “Holy FUCK!”

Latest interesting way my mind works: as soon as I saw the evil looming person, I realized it was the shadow of my hockey girdle being thrown onto the door. The part that realized this lives in .000001% of my brain, right by the ear. It told me I shouldn’t panic, but you know how mob scenes can get - it was more than a little overwhelmed.

So now I sit here, a couple more years removed from my life, though as Denis Leary says, they’re taken off of the bad part - the end. Here I had always thought it was the smell of my hockey gear that would kill me. Turns out it’s the shadows I have to watch out for.

Time to go watch some TV.

You know, it’s interesting the little tricks your mind plays on you to keep you going through life.

I’ve been thinking about fear a lot lately, what with all the craziness in the world and living in SF and all. I was on BART yesterday morning, picturing exactly what would happen to all of us on the train when the terrorists blew up the first car of the train. Actually, I think I was picturing what would happen if they just took out some of the tracks. Something like that.

Anyhoo, I was picturing a train wreck. Newton’s laws being what they are, things would be tossed about in the car as we quickly ceased our forward motion.

“Good thing I’m in a rear-facing seat,” I smugly thought to myself. Then it occurred to to me that I’m always in a rear-facing seat because it just feels more comfortable to me. Perhaps an imminent BART disaster lingers in my subconscious, pushing that pleasure button every time I sit down facing the back of the train. I typically stay away from the seats that face each other. with my new morbid outlook it makes sense - someone’s going to get thrown at the other people, therefore it’s best to be away from that section.

Interesting how the mind works.

I just went back into the archives to see how bad my color combos looked and… the purple has all changed to red. Weeeeeeird.

Well, this is my first post in our new world. I’ve held off from posting anything, mostly because I figured no one would really care to hear someone on the other side of the country talk about the effects of the events eleven days ago. Then I remembered that almost no one reads this, so what the hell.

First off, to those two or three of you who ordinarily stop by here, you’ll notice a patriotic little color change. One day the purple will come back, but until then, I’m flying my next three favorite colors. If you look back in the archives you’ll see some rather grim color combinations, just because I haven’t worked through all of the posts yet. Patience.

I guess the main thing I’m wondering (like everyone else in the country, I’m sure) is “when will I feel normal again?” Assuming I can ever feel normal again (as normalcy goes in my neck of woods). I was happy with my complacency. Reveled in it, in fact. Now I’m missing it like a long-lost friend. Everything in the world has taken on ominous overtones.

In those halcyon days of two weeks ago, I could see two police officers walk past without a second thought. Now I start to wonder. “Are they looking for someone? Did someone call in a bomb threat? Is this just a safety measure?” Two weeks ago, I would hear the sound of a fire engine’s siren (many times each day) and just assume that there was some small fire somewhere to be put out. As long as the sound didn’t get close, everything’s okay. Now I rush over to the news sites to see if we’ve been attacked. When I hear a plane fly overhead, my ears strain to detect a change in the sound of the engine and it’s all I can do to keep myself from running outside to make sure it stays in the air.

Now, before you start to think I’m waaaaay too paranoid, I’ll let you know that I live in the Bay Area and work in San Francisco. I feel my paranoia, while a little extreme, is at least partly justified. Especially when there’s talk of another attack on “a bridge in a major urban center.” Now you see why I’m going crazy.

So yesterday, I’m driving home across the Bay Bridge. I wound up having to leave at the peak of rush hour, so traffic was bumper to bumper. As soon as I pulled onto the bridge, the little reptilian part of my brain started piping up.

“Get the hell OUT of here? Don’t you read the news? A BRIDGE might get hit on Saturday, and Saturday is damn close to Friday. Maybe they’re in a different time zone and they really mean today! Get out of the car! Walk back to work and hide under the desk!”

Luckily for the other commuters, I like my car. I turned up the radio a little louder and looked around for a little distraction.

“Hmm hmm hmmmm… Lah de dah.. not listening to the voices… blue car next to me… yellow in front… orange car in front of the blue one… in front of that, and eighteen wheeler… lah de dahh… what store is that eighteen wheeler from? Target. Fuck me.”

Yes, I was on a bridge in a major urban center three cars away from a big white truck with the word “TARGET” plastered all over it with a GIANT FUCKING BULLSEYE!!!!

Not only do I really like my car, I don’t like to walk if I can help it. Plus, I needed to work on my deep breathing anyways. All I can say is, you’ve never seen someone so glad to get off of a bridge in your life.

So here I am, safely ensconced within my house, becoming even more of a recluse than usual. Those bastard terrorists have taken my complacency, but at least they’ve given me the opportunity to work on my site a little bit, do some house cleaning and watch some movies. Yes, the glass is half full, but the Mountain Dew bottle is only 1/4 full.

In all seriousness, my thoughts and prayers go out to all of those affected by the tragedies at the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and that Pennsylvanian field.

Why is it again that I said last week I wouldn’t do any more of this all-nighter crap? Oh yeah - because of the way I feel right now. Ugh…

I’ve just come to a startling revelation - I can’t eat tacos if I have a hood on. No, I’m not a B/D freak - I’m talking sweatshirt hood here, you sickos. I’ve also discovered that if you have your eyedrops in the pocket of your pocket T and you put a hooded sweatshirt on, it’s pretty tough to get said eyedrops back out. The perils of Dry Eye Syndrome. Feel my pain.

Oh my God, it just keeps getting better and better. Why do I get the feeling that both of these pictures were taken in Sacramento in the past week?

Guess who’s on track to get NO work done tonight.

Sometimes, it is absolutely, positively astounding what you can find on the web nowadays. A good deal of it has the ability to make me chortle for hours. Ah, Starbuck. I had wondered where you went. And to think - I could go on a cruise with him! And if that little site doesn’t make you laugh (and if not, you’re a pretty humorless bastard - just read the URL for goshsakes) check out the picture for his entry in the IMDb. Be still, my lungs.

What a messed up day. Several things didn’t go right and traffic was even more idiotic on the drive home than it was on the way to work. I’m starting to see where those nutjobs up in Sacramento were coming from.

Speaking of nutjob, I had a nice little forty minute monologue from one of our glorious city’s crazy homeless. Lucky me, he caught me just as I was getting in my car where I usually park. Didn’t want to piss him off and bring down divine retribution on my car (he told me he was an angel) so I sat there an humored him. It was quite humorous for awhile, then just got tiring. Let’s see what I can remember from “The Life of a Rebel”, apparently the title of his memoirs.

First off, he was killed in a car wreck a few years back. Being the angel that he is/has become, he took the money he got from being killed (somewhere between $2000 and $36,000 depending upon which point in the story he had reached) and bought his friend’s dead mother a tombstone. Of course, thanks to “caramel” (you know, everything that goes around, comes around with a sweet candy coating) or perhaps from the spirit of his friend’s dead mother (both theories were presented) he was able to eventually buy a $17,000 Harley he wanted for $6000 cash. And boy can he ride Harleys - wheelies, standing on the seat, starting it - you name it, he does it.

So let’s see, he’s an angel, I’m an angel because I’m nodding at the right bits… oh, women are the devil. Well, not necessarily the devil, but certainly filled with the devil. He’s 50 years old and has been married at least once before. He has a 29 year old son and a father who’s either 54 or (after hurried calculation) 70. His wife cheated on him once, so he left her because “you can always tell.” Of course this was a few years after she left him at a bar and to prove a point to her, he “fucked” (his angelic terminology - I would’ve used the saintly “boinked”) three women at the same time from a Friday night through Sunday night, in which he “did everything,” which I’m sure meant some sort of religious purification ritual. Naturally, she made him do it. My thoughts exactly. Why isn’t this guy running for President?

Women have the devil in them, and as if to prove a point, God sent one past us at that point, so he could turn around and bless her with his words - “Hey baby, how you doin’?” After getting no response (other than a slightly quicker step), he confided in me that she was avoiding him because of the devil in her, personified by appointments and cellphones (I started wandering a bit here - I think it was the whiskey fumes). ‘Cause he could pick her up, take her out and wine her and dine her (he also used the word “bone” at this point, as if sent from Above) but he would just wind up dumping her because she wasn’t a nice person.

He’s a Vietnam Vet (here we go) and either teaches kids kickboxing at the YMCA (at which point he shows me a frightening looking calf. Leg muscle, not bovine) or works at Amtrak or is some kind of construction worker. I have GOT to start carrying a tape recorder with me. Upon telling him that I really needed to be getting along to the optometrist’s, he healed my vision with a prayer (oh yeah, he’s Navajo too) and said he’d know it worked when later on in the day his vision went blurry. My guess is, he must heal a lot of people’s vision.

That’s it, tomorrow I’m making an appointment with the dermatologist to get this “sucker” birthmark dermabrased off my forehead.

Oh crap. Crapcrapcrap. Craaaaaapcrapcrapcrapcrap.

So I’m doing some random surfing here and it’s finally hit me: most people’s sites suck. If most of them suck, then that means there’s an above average chance that mine does/will. Oh geez. Well, at least it’ll be purty.

Oh, in other news, the site re-design is going rather slowly. In typical Moondoggie ADD fashion, I’ve managed to pile an almost insurMOUNTable amount of learning on my plate. I’ve gone from “I want the site to look different” to “I want the site to look different. And be easier to update. And be organized differently. Maybe a whole new theme.” So now I’m teaching myself Flash and Dreamweaver in addition to my stumbling through CSS and re-learning the JavaScript lodged in my rusty old brain. Oh, and ASP. I think that’s it though. For now.

This should be quite the experience, assuming I get this off the ground. I’ve taken the first steps though - I’ve bought books. Whoooeeeeee doggie!

In the interest of my sanity (and I’m sure this could apply to others as well), I propose that a short physics class is given in addition to the standard driving instruction around here. Wait a minute. I’m not from California originally - is there actually some kind of mandatory driving instruction here? I seem to remember fuming behind a driver’s ed car, but judging from people’s driving habits you wouldn’t think classes exist for that sort of thing.

Anyways, a good portion of the drivers around here could benefit from a basic grounding in physics. Namely problems such as “If I’m travelling at a speed of 25 mph and decide to move into a lane occupied by a car 20 yards behind me going 65 mph, how far into the next county is this car going to propel me?”

Perhaps I’m wrong. It might just be a matter of not looking in mirrors. Not looking behind them. Not thinking. Ooo! Maybe they’re all out to get me! That’s always a possibility. Or perhaps I’m driving just fast enough to send my car out of the visible spectrum. It’s not my fault that I only feel comfortable when I’m 20 mph over the speed limit.

Whaddaya know? He’s back! Sorta. Life’s been kinda crazy as of late. Looking at my blog, apparently “as of late” is approximately equal to one year. Go figure. So much has happened since the next post, I’m not even going to bother updating you - you’ll just have to figure it out for yourself.

Oh donchoo worry yore purty little haid. I’ll get around to updating everything eventually. In the meantime, my posting’ll be rather spotty as I’m trying to come up with a new design for the site. And I know I’ve said it a million times before (well okay, maybe five times, ten at the outside) - this time, there’ll be CONTENT!!

Or at the very least, some pretty pictures.

Not much time to post for the past few days - imagine that, they have me working. I finished off the bag of M&Ms a couple of days ago due to exceedingly strenuous moderation on my part, so today I hit the machine again. I’m thinking about swinging by Costco & gettin’ El Bag-o Grande de M&M’s, so stay tuned. Of course, if I do, who knows how long it’ll take me to count ‘em. In the meantime, here’s 75 cents worth for today:

7 Green
7 Yellow
5 Red
4 Brown
3 Orange
2 Blue

28 Total

Today’s batch was 17.86% cancerous, which could actually be quite higher since they all tasted rather stale for some reason.

Okay, it’s time to start ranting about soft drinks again. On our floor this morning, we have one smoothee in a can, one 7 Up and a… Fresca. Who in the hell drinks Fresca? I go downstairs to the next floor and find a bazillion Diet Cokes, 5 more smoothees in a can and (praise the caffeinated gods) a Mountain Dew. Now I’m drinking the drink choice of an extreme nation and my day can begin. Booya.

Talk about perfect timing. Burfdog is going wacko barking at nothing in particular and I’m listening to this song with the chorus of “I’m gonna kill the dog next door, ain’t gonna bark anymore…” All of us in my area are rallying around the song right now. I think my WinAmp has turned violent on me - now it’s switched to “Let There Be Guns”, also by the Worms. The scary thing is, it’s set to random play right now. I guess I’d better put on my headphones before Denis Leary kicks in…

Oh my blog, he’s back! I haven’t been in much of an “update my life” mood as of late, so everything’s fallen by the wayside. If you think this blog is bad, you should see my yard. And if you do see my yard, could you do something about it for me? It scares me.

Anyway, the reason for me to dust off my blog and do an update was yet another purchase of M&Ms (peanut, as always). This time, I sprung for a big bag from the local deli to finally do a cost/cancer comparison. I bought a 10 ounce bag and got down to counting:

10 Orange
15 Green
15 Blue
17 Red
18 Brown
33 Yellow

108 Total

My, my, my - look at all of them thar yeller ones. The big bag had a relatively small cancer index - this one was a mere 16.67% cancerous. As for the cost, it was pretty much close to the same as our unfaithful little machine here at work. If it belches out 73 M&Ms, the cost is 2.74 cents each, while the 72 M&M payout runs at 2.77 cents each. The bag weighs in at 2.77 cents each as well, so the only real difference is exercise.

In other news, the word for the day is “smurf”. Now, isn’t that just smurfy?

Well, today was rollover day for the deodorant. I screwed up last time and bought the stick kind rather than the spiffy gel kind. For those of you who read the labels and don’t get stuck with the stick, there comes a day in the stick’s life that I call rollover day. This is the day when you have just a tiny bit of the stick left. You turn the little dial to make it peek its head out, which makes the majority of the stick be above the holder. Thus, when you try to apply the deodorant, the stick part rolls over the holder part and you scream and cuss as you try to make sure it doesn’t get on your clothes during the journey to the floor.

So, today was rollover day and I feel like one of those testers in the old deodorant ads. One of my arms has had the stuff put on it, the other hasn’t. Of course, once it rolled over, I did the natural thing and tried to catch it. Have you ever tried washing that stuff off? You can’t. Well, at least I can’t. So now, not only is my hand strangely sticky, everything I eat has a refreshing minty flavor. Yum!

This is a truly sad week for the science world. A nation mourns its loss.

Why don’t I just buy a big bag of these things? Beats the hell out of me. Here’s the $2.00 rundown:

6 Blue
8 Green
8 Orange
14 Yellow
16 Red
21 Brown

73 Total

Oh man, I don’t want to start up my calculator for this one… today’s batch is a whopping 21.91% cancerous. I think I’m going to go home now. Then again, I suppose it evens out yesterday’s total.

We’re back to being Coke-less today. Ugh.

Another day, another $2.00 of M&Ms…

5 Red
6 Orange
11 Green
13 Blue
17.25 Yellow (frickin’ machine)
20 Brown

72.25 Total

Today’s batch is only 6.92% cancerous! The only bad thing is, it kicked my calculator into that exponential mode, so I had to figure out what something times ten to the negative two was. Ugh. I’d rather have more cancer than be forced to think about math in the morning.

In other news, there are like, fifty Cokes in the refrigerator this morning! Well, probably just five or six, but considering the usual early morning paucity of Coke, five seems a whole lot like fifty. All of those beautiful red cans…. If you happened to be around when when I opened the refrigerator this morning, you would have heard me making much the same noises as the Cookie Monster when he’s chowing down.

$2.00 M&M Rundown for the day:

4 Orange
8 Green
11 Red
11 Blue
17 Brown
21 Yellow

72 Total

Today’s batch was only 15.27% cancerous. I’m on a health kick!

What can I say about today? At least it’s not Monday, right? I’ve been debating on a site overhaul and scribbling on anything I can get my hands on, so there hasn’t been much time or energy to post away here. Once this place looks different, you’ll probably see me back up to my verbose levels. Or not. We Geminis are quite mercurial that way.

Well, today is a post-food poisoning day of relaxation. Thanks to a friend-who-will-remain-nameless (don’t want my rabid blog fans going after her), I got it in my mind that Burger King would be a pretty good meal last night. How wrong I was.

It was just a mild case, fortunately - I spent the usual five minutes afraid that I was going to die, but only had ten minutes of hoping I would die. Last year I had a bout that was more lopsided - 5 minutes of thinking and an hour of hoping. Add to that the fact that I was at a bowling alley at the time and you can imagine the misery.

Luckily I was safe at home this time, recognized the symptoms and had time to prepare properly. Is it strange to be proud that you’re prepared for food poisoning?

It went away about as quick as it hit me, so I was able to crawl back into the living room and finish watching Hudson Hawk. Wait a minute. I forgot I was watching that movie. Maybe it wasn’t Burger King’s fault after all….

“Hey Helmut. Who’s that guy dragging himself into the bar?”

“Oh, that’s just Crazy Ernst.”

I know I do everything in my power to not use the word, but… I NEVER want to take BART again. Originally I was going to make that something about never sleeping through my alarm, but we all know that’s not going to happen.

So I wake up on my own about three hours after I normally do. D’OH! Near as I can figure, I woke up at my regular time just long enough to get out of bed, walk over to the alarm (placed far from the bed so I don’t do this), turn it off and go back to bed. Naturally, I recall none of this - only the certainty that I turned my alarm on last night.

So, since I can’t drive in and have to take BART, I took my time getting everything ready, knowing that I’ll just work really late today to make up for it. I get to BART slightly early, hop on the train and get that oh-so-desirable little standing nook in the front of the car. Everything’s going good ’til somewhere in the Oakland tunnels area. The train stops. The air stops. The lights go out. By the time I get my music turned off, the operator has already given her report and decided she’s not going to talk to us for the next 5 minutes we’re in the dark or the next ten that we’re paused in the light.

I go back to reading, tuning out my co-passengers as usual. Especially hard to do since there’s a guy who’s been in SF for 2 weeks (probably from Nebraska or something) and today is his third day on the job. He’s taking polls of the surrounding passengers. “How long do you think this will be? How long does it usually take? Will my boss believe this is BART’s fault (ever hear twenty people snort in derision at the same time?)?”

So I’m finally tuning him out until I hear someone say “…like rats in a cage.” Knowing full well what rats in a cage act like, I decide this isn’t a good thing and start tuning the world again.

“Here you sit down.” “I’m not going to sit down - you sit back down.” “Look, just take the seat.” “I don’t WANT the seat! Just sit down and shut up.” “FINE! No one will sit in the seat!”

This is the mature exchange between two men, one probably in his thirties (I’m horrible with ages) and the other, say, in his sixties or so. In fact, this is the exchange that occurs before the shoving match starts, the young guy throws a punch and the mass of bodies seethes and writhes in front of me as everyone decides to be a hero at the same time. One lady pushes past everyone to hit the “Call Operator for Assistance” button repeatedly, telling everyone around that “something must be done” because “people can’t just go around hitting one another.”

Hasn’t she ever seen Fight Club?

The operator ignores the button pushing, the guys are broken up and we eventually got underway. Surprisingly enough, the rest of the trip was rather uneventful.

The first rule of the BART system? You cannot talk about the BART system.

Okay, now I’m worried.

As my loyal readership (both of you) knows, I sit right outside the women’s bathroom here at work. Not out of any perverse longing to keep tabs on the womenfolk or anything, it’s just where I was placed.

They’ve been doing some kind of construction up on the roof today - quite annoying. They had finally taken a break and it was nice and quiet. Two women just went into the bathroom at the same time and after a very short period, the drilling on the roof recommenced, which sounds like it’s coming right from the bathroom.

It’s a very VERY loud buzzing sound.

Oh, the rumors I could start!

“Woman A? I don’t know where she is. I saw her and Woman B go into the bathroom with some strange contraption hooked up to a car battery. Why do you ask?”

At this time, both of them have left the bathroom and the noise is still going. Either it really is the drill on the roof or they left their little “friend” on the bathroom counter. It’s probably beating the bejeezus out of the porcelain sink in there as we speak.

Alright! The Learning Kingdom’s Word of the Day today is terpsichorean. I’m going to be positively insufferable today. Here’s what they say about it:

“The namesake of the adjective terpsichorean is the Greek muse
Terpsichore. Terpsichore was one of the nine muses of Greek
mythology. Often shown dancing and holding a lyre, she presided over
the arts and sciences. Terpsichore was said to have inspired those
who excelled at dancing.

Not surprisingly, the adjective terpsichorean describes something
that relates to dance. Example: “Amy’s terpsichorean activities had
given her an enviable grace and agility.”

The adjective has been in use in English since the 1800s.”

If you want to get their emails and sound like a real egghead too, go to their website and sign up. As of today’s email, there are 492,876 of us out there confusing people with our erudite language.

Oh great. Just WONDERFUL. Next thing you know, They are going to have us drinking cokes outside during our little “Coke Breaks”.

Oh

My

God

So yesterday I watch Enemy of the State and start getting all paranoid about Them watching me all the time. Just when I had calmed myself down and convinced myself that it’s just a movie, I discover the horrid truth. They’re really watching me and They already have a video of me!!! That’s the last time I stay at a Ramada Inn, let me tell you. And yes, “video” means you need to grab Quicktime before you go look.

Sometimes I worry myself. I was looking through some old pieces of scratch paper and found two phrases next to each other:

“Scones of Evil”
“Do not question the chicken.”

God, I hope that was from something I was reading at the time.

Quite a day yesterday. What did I do? Sleep. I’ve discovered that about 17 hours of sleep does wonders for curing sinus problems. Does hell for your sleep once you’re feeling better, though. Maybe I’ll write a book. How to Get Well in Seventeen Hours. I’ll follow it up with an exact copy entitled How to Get Hopeless Insomnia in Seventeen Hours.

Had weird nightmares this morning that kept me opening my eyes and turning on the lights. Then I had some weird dream involving Frankie Muniz trying desperately to not get his head stomped flat by a herd of elephants with their tails tied together in the middle of a tornado.

You know, some lucky psychiatrist is gonna make a lot of money off of me one of these days.

WOO HOO!! I got my first online compliment! Well, at least I think it’s my first online compliment. Maybe there’re people out there who just love me to death, but I haven’t seen their pages. Or they’re wishing they had a site so they could tell the world how wonderful I am!

Okay, I think somebody put something in the pizza I had for lunch. Maybe you shouldn’t combine sinus meds with tomato sauce. Where’s that box at with the instructions…

Hmmm… I’ve just noticed that the link doesn’t take you right to the part about me (me! me! me! me! Yeah, I’m an only child - why do you ask?). Take a look at Monday August 7th at 9:25.

Well, the game went rather well last night - a 3-1 victory by us. We have a nice little two game winning streak going on now, which is kinda funny, seeing as how they’re our only two wins of the season. So far, anyways.

Interesting thing - when I was playing, I felt no effects from the sinus infection & its requisite badness (i.e. eating one meal in three days and being overly dehydrated). Either hockey has pain-relieving qualities for me (not) or these Tylenol sinus pills ROCK!

Maybe I should read Fight Club again before tonight’s game…

Wow.

Wow.

I finally went and picked up Fight Club from the library. You know the old axiom about the book always being better than the movie. Who could’ve guessed it would still hold true? The book is everything the movie was and more. Wow. I came home from the library, plopped down on my bed and started reading. Two hours and 208 pages later I close the finished book and drop it beside my bed.

I am Joe’s expanded consciousness.

You could almost hear my brain making chewing noises as I tore through the book. Definitely one on my “must buy” list. Looks like I’m going to be getting all three of his books rather soon.

In the meantime, it’s off for my own personal fight club - hockey. Too bad my opponents can’t understand that I’m liberating them each time I knock them to the ice. Perhaps tonight the refs will understand. Or the player will understand and knock me down just as hard, returning the favor.

Maybe I should just sit on the bench tonight….

Since I’m sick, this is a good enough time to bitch about it as any. Now, I’m all for multi-tasking and against jumping on bandwagons, but most people just aren’t smart enough to talk on a cell phone while they’re driving. I’m not sure what exactly throws the “stupid” switch in their head, ’cause you’d think that talking on a cell phone would be equivalent to talking to your passenger. I guess when some people have a disembodied voice in their ear, they have to really concentrate to keep it focused. They need to learn to be like me - after awhile you get used to the disembodied voices. then again, maybe it works for me ’cause I don’t own a cell phone.

Regardless, at least the beloved Max Cannon has a solution for us.

Okay, I started off the morning sick, now I’m just depressed. Maybe I should just go home now.

Can I die now? I think if one more drop of snot congeals in my sinuses, my head’s going to EXPLODE.

Now how’s that for a lovely picture?

I went and saw the Hollow Man yesterday, but forgot to mention it. Shows you how good it was. The effects were spectacular, but the plotline deviated to the standard slasher pic fare. You know the type - “We only have an hour’s worth of semi-believable plot, so let’s have everyone lose their common sense in the second act so we can drag it out for another hour.” I won’t give away any of the… uhhh… plot, but let’s just say that if you’re being threatened by a psycho and you have a crowbar, don’t just hit him once. Smack him like a piñata until you can’t smack him any more. I wound up leaving the movie angry, but at least I got to “Oooo” and “ahhhh” over the effects for awhile. I’d say it’s definitely a rental/matinee movie.

One little thing that made me chuckle - we occasionally get these first-person shots in the film where we’re looking through Kevin Bacon’s eyes. He’s invisible to everyone, yet he’s still hiding behind things when people hear a noise and look his way. I guess old habits really do die hard.

You know, I shouldn’t be allowed near a computer when I’m having sinus problems. Otherwise, weird things happen. I think I’m going to bed.

Dig me - I finally ditched the frames and made the page look like I wanted. I rock! Now I just have to go and fix a bajillion links. Oh, and I think I have my bi-annual sinus infection starting up. Ugh.

Thank God the gang at the Onion is keeping an eye out for us in these blistering times.

Can I get an “Amen!” brother?

So what’s more annoying than a BurfDog? How about a really big barking dog? At least really big in proportion to the BurfDog munchlet. Not only is BigDog constant and annoying, his barking has the effect of causing the requisite burfing from BurfDog. My world is a happy and quiet place.

Barking dogs bring to mind parenting skills. Well, some barking dogs do. At least the ones who bark “But MOOOM!!! I WANT A CANDYBAR!!!!” Oh wait - that would be the kids. What’s happening to parenting common sense anyways? Has it been overrun by the PC militia (is it PC to call PC people a militia? Are they going to start walking around in teal or chartreuse overcoats? Maybe seafoam green.)? Is this just a sign of the eventual downfall of civilization? No wait, that would be the resurgence of Pro Wrestling’s popularity. What’s next around here - vomitoriums?

I was in line at a post office a couple of weeks ago (in line at a post office? Surely you jest! Post offices are quick and efficient!) and there was a little family ahead of me - Mom, Dad, Son and Daughter. Four people isn’t really a “little” family, but they were all pretty short.

Anyways, this post office has one of those “please take a number” creatures whose tongue you pull out and rip a little piece off of to find your status in the post office hierarchy. “Now serving 43″ proclaims the flashing digital (Oooo! Digital!) screen above the lackadaisical postal employees. My flat piece of tongue says I’m 56, but I don’t feel a day over 50. I’m standing there nonchalantly, cunningly peering at my fellow patrons with the benefit of my way cool Matrix shades and making up little stories about them. Picture a guy with shifty eyes in dark glasses standing by two large boxes and giggling occasionally. It’s a wonder that I wasn’t strip-searched by postal security.

So I’m standing there taking in the human condition and I slowly start to focus in on this family. Mostly because the little boy (3? 5? 37? I’m bad at guessing ages.) had walked up to me to try to peer into my soul and learn my dastardly secrets. The shades foiled his evil plot. Not to mention the whiny voice of Mom “It’s not nice to stare, dear.” His evil plot foiled, he decides to torment our ticket creature by ripping out a couple of pieces of its tongue. Dad scolds him (”It’s not nice to do that.”) and tells him to drop the tickets.

The child (eventually) obeys after a very dog-ownerish round of “Drop it! Drooooooop it! Drop it!”. I kept waiting for Dad to pull out a Scooby Snack or some Snausages. He doesn’t. I wait for Dad to tell the kid to pick up the dropped tickets. He doesn’t. I wait for Dad to pick them up himself. He doesn’t!
Did you know that people stare at you when you growl?

Eventually Dad did pick up the forgotten ticket. Someone else had taken a ticket from the creature, after which Dad wandered over, picked up the ticket and handed it to that person with a shrug and a mumbled “My son took this one.” And then the post office counter blew up.

Okay, so it didn’t blow up, but I realized the ending was pretty boring and decided to spice it up a little. Creative license, you know.

Hmmm… feeling quirky, so I’ve changed the name of the blog in the blogger.com world. Wonder what that’ll do to my stats for the day? Interesting.

Okay, so Yahoo! weather claims it’s going to be cooler in the city today, so I wear my beloved hooded pullover (no, not that Old Navy crap). I get to work and it’s like a THOUSAND degrees in here. Ugh. Yeah, this is gonna make me productive today. And to think, we didn’t even blow up the transformer outside like the last time we had to endure this mugginess.

Wonder if they call weather “muggy” because it feels like you’ve been hit it the head and robbed of all your energy? This is a lie-in-the-hammock day if I’ve ever seen one. Hmmmmm… there’s a thought. Maybe I’ll bring my hammock in to work. I’ll just request a laptop and I’m set. The ergo guys would freak.

Is there really anything as inspiring as the singing of William Shatner? I think not.

Then again, Lou Monte is starting to gain on him with that Christmas Donkey. Jingety jing!

Whew. I can finally take the “Free Downey!” bumpersticker off my car. Gives me a place to put my shiny new “Free Range Chicken!” bumpersticker.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, how much is a picture with words in it worth?

Off for home I go, where my new Clerks DVD awaits my return. And then… sleep… wonderful sleep. I’m so tired at this point that I feel like I’m going to meet Tyler Durden at any second. My goal tonight? The computer is staying OFF. We’ll see how I do.

I’m in sort of a funk today, so I haven’t been posting much. I took a look at the power bloggers list and it looks like I’m not the only one. Wonder what’s going on in the world today?

I just love it when I find exceedingly useful information out here…

You know, some days I just love reading my horoscope:

“You’re having a particularly hard time communicating with almost everyone around you. Now may be the time to escape a little; perhaps check out some new QuickTime videos or tune out to RealAudio sounds.”

WOO HOO!! I finally have an excuse! It’s in the stars! Don’t believe me?

Yes boys and girls, it’s migraine time. It’s feeling like someone’s been trying to scrape my brain out of my skull with a melonballer. Make that a dull melonballer. Luckily I haven’t hit the puking-and-hate-the-world phase. I’m still in the plain ol’ hate-the-world part. It’s not too bad if I don’t do any strenuous activity like, oh say BREATHING. Ow - those capitals hurt.

On the brighter side, my ice hockey team had its first victory last night - a 7-1 win. What can I say? When we decide to win, we decide to win. Winning is good.

I’ve just noticed something unusual and felt that I should tell you people, just in case I’m never heard from again. There is a tape dispenser sneaking up on me. Somehow, it’s crawled up to the top of the cubicle and seems to be rather close to me. In fact… I think it’s a little closer than it was a few minutes ago. This is rather worrisome, since I’ve only had three Cokes so far today. I think I’ll need a couple more before I can reach my prime escape speed.

If you don’t hear from me soon, look for a fat tape dispenser with an evil look about it.

Ahhhhhh… Productivity, thy name is Caffeine. for some reason we have a TON of Coke in the fridge here and I’m a happy little camper. Not to mention there was a piece of cake in the breakroom to swipe some frosting from. I made sure and took it from the back so they couldn’t tell. BWAH HA HA HAAAA.

Errr… that was diabolical laughter, by the way. Uhhh… yeah.

?It?s a little disappointing that the media is glomming on to a minor softening.?

Who needs porn when you have Nintendo execs who don’t think before they speak? Too bad we won’t get to hear people say “Jigglypuff” with relatively straight faces anymore.

Down with boy bands! Here’s something fun to do while Napster still exists - hunt up a nice cheesy novelty song (Christmas ones are my favorite) on beloved Napster. Find a boy band song out there that’s relatively close in size and rename your novelty song to this one. If the sizes are off a little bit, give it a DJ mix name. Having a novelty song bigger than the boy band song is ideal. this makes it look like they’ll have more to listen to. The teeny-bopper downloads the file (56K users make me giggle), excitedly double-clicks the file and hears:

“Jingety jing!
HEE HAW HEE HAW
It’s Dominic the donkey!
Jingety jing!
The Italian Christmas donkey!”

Guaranteed minutes of entertainment! Be careful though - Dominic the Donkey is now my favorite song on my playlist…

Ego nolo online esse. Web est fabula.

Sitting here, bored out of my skull and tired as hell, but I can’t go to bed yet ’cause I’m drying some clothes I idiotically washed a little while ago and there are some I have to take out in a little while. So, with that mindset in place, I’ve been playing around at Classmates.com You know, it’s that place where you can go and feed in all of your personal information so the people who beat you up and took your lunch money now know where to beat you up and take your stock options.

Two thoughts occurred to me while wandering aimlessly through the site:

1) There are a lot of my classmates in here! I wonder if they just signed in as themselves to see who else was in there. Too bad for them they’re not as paranoid as yours truly, who wasn’t about to sign his real name in there.

2) I wonder if any of my former classmates are going to be pulling out their dusty old yearbooks to see if they really graduated with a “Myah Butreeks” or what exactly “Richard Hertz” looked like. I tried to limit myself to two new classmates, ’cause I was giggling too much when I’d see their names pop up on the list. I think the neighbors are starting to wonder about me. Maybe tomorrow I’ll sign up as “I’m a stupid moron with an ugly face and big butt and my butt smells and I like to kiss my own butt”.

Come on people! The Simpsons! Get with it! Geez. I guess I’ll just have to be Amanda Huggenkiss.

Maybe today is turning into a Spinal Tap day instead.

“Samba? you can’t say Samba anymore!”

“No, that’s ‘Sambo’.”

- from Spinal Tap’s secret Tapster interview

Okay, today has officially become a found photos day. If I had a carton of milk, it would be shooting out of my nose right now. Well, the milk would, anyways.

I have no idea what I was originally looking for, but I stumbled across this cool page with lots of found photos. Lots of laughs, especially when you come across this poor, pitiful thing.

Just grabbed $2.00 worth of M&M’s from the little machine, so here’s The M&M Rundown for Monday:

4 orange
8 green
12 blue
16 red
16 yellow
19 brown

75 total

Today’s cup o’ M&M’s is a whopping 21.3% cancerous. Eeeyikes.

First off, no, not those Hansons - we’re talking hockey here. go watch Slap Shot, you little teenaged freak!

Okay, so Marq over at girlstar is currently singing the Smurfs song using only the word “blog”. For the life of me, I can’t remember how that went - the “Fraggle Rock” theme is as close as I can get. Of course NOW I’m sitting here with the Fraggle Rock song stuck in my head, sung using only the word “blog”. Gee, thanks Marq.

In other news, I was checking out a horoscope for tomorrow - looks like I’m in for a fun weekend:

“Your emotions will be unstable and your mate will be questioning what he or she has done to upset you. Your nervousness will cause suspicions. Don’t be fickle; be honest and discuss the problem.”

Ahhh…. 30 more minutes until the weekend begins. Hockey tonight, more movies waiting in the mail for me, a birthday party tomorrow (the Bossman’s), and absolutely, positively, without a doubt nothing at all planned for Sunday. Just the way it should be.

My God! That clock’s hands have started moving soooooo sloooooowly…

I’ve noticed an interesting trend in the blogs lately. People are wondering what the big deal is with Napster’s legal problems. Several I’ve run across have pointed out that you can still get mp3s everywhere and that people who use Napster are just lazy. Interesting that they put this on their easy-to-use blog from blogger.

Me? I’m all for ease of use. Never went for those velcro shoes though - I couldn’t get back up if I was sitting Native American-style on shag carpeting.

I know I’ve mentioned this before, but my horoscope often tends to be eerily accurate:

“You’re more stubborn today than usual, inclined to whine if things don’t go your way. Instead of dwelling on what you can’t change, focus on getting something accomplished that you’ve been putting off — it’ll help your mood if you feel like you’ve achieved something today.”

GET… OUT… OF… MY… BRAAAAAAIIIIINNNN!!!

Okay, so I use Yahoo! for my most checked email (which is conveniently accessible through that “contact” link over there, hint hint) and it’s has been Poh KEY today. The best thing was just a second ago, however. I had just sent an email and was trying to go back to view my folders. It hung again, trying to connect. As my mind does, my eyes started to wander from boredom. What do they land on but the banner ad at the top of the page. One of those spiffy animated banners (frozen, of course) that pretends like it’s filling in the blanks to an answer. “Yahoo! Mail is F A S _ ”

Is it any wonder people are always wondering why I’m laughing?

Memo to myself: Do the dumb things I gotta do - touch the Puppet Head.

You know, I’m starting to grow accustomed to these sticky little things on top of my bagel. I’m still not sure if that’s a good thing or not.

Don’t know what’s up with me today - I’m in a blah mood. Sort of like there’s a tinge of beige to the world. It’s not like there’s anything wrong with me that I could point to as the cause of my crappy feeling of the day. I’d call it a general overall malaise, just ’cause I’ve been looking for an excuse to say “malaise” for the past couple of weeks.

But my day’s already gotten better - Marketing Wank just came in and turned on ALL of the lights (hey buddy, think there’s a reason the only person here is sitting with only half the fluorescents on?) and the Pug has arrived, snorting and snuffling its way past my desk. And to top it all off, I took the “What Breed of Dog Are You?” test over at EMode and discovered that yes, I’m a Pug. If a giant anvil would just fall on me right now, it would make my day perfect.

Learned something important at lunch. Yes, that frightening little creature behind me is a Pug. Yes, everyone else think it’s creepy. Yes, that’s where “pug ugly” came from. Now if I knew what kind of animal the Burfer was, I could die happy.

I just love what Yahoo says about it: “A lean, leggy Pug and a dog with short legs and a long body are equally objectionable.” I would add that a pug falling between these criteria is objectionable too.

I come back from making copies (The A-meister! The A-Man! Makin’ copies! Copy-rama! Copy-licious!) and the marketing wank is using his hand to make an imaginary bar chart on the side of my cubicle to prove some obscure point. You know, one of those ratings kinds of bar charts:

“See, dolphins are this smart, humans are right about here, slugs are down here and this is about where you are, Marketing Wank.”

Of course, his bar chart has something to do with sales or marketing crap, but I tune that kind of talk out with either headphone music or loud, off-key humming. Talk about making people nervous.

Is it a bad thing to be eating dusty M&M’s? I’m of the mindset that any kind of M&M is a good M&M. Well, except for those crispy ones - they just suck. I wonder if there’s an alternate to the five second rule that covers food which hasn’t fallen but has instead just been sitting in one place for a long time. At least food that doesn’t do obvious things like change color, change smell, change shape or just crawl away. Maybe there’s a five day rule. If so, I just made it! Then again, I still think today’s Tuesday…

Isn’t it interesting how you lose all perception of time after not going to sleep for one night? I had the bright idea of staying up Monday night, since my hockey games were over at 12:30 and I wasn’t home until 1:30. Hey - only three hours until I usually wake up. Why not just stay up?

I learned why yesterday at about 6 AM. Oh man. I can’t believe I used to do this on a regular basis! then again, that was college and all you had to do was go to class. Wait a minute - I had to sit through lectures like this. How the hell did I pull that off? Must be one of those rose colored glances at the past going on here.

Today I feel much better after about 12 hours of sleep. Niiiiice. I woke up once at 9:00 last night, spent about ten minutes trying to figure out who/where I was, then back to blissful sleep. I’ve just been spending the day trying to figure out what day it is. It’s almost like my Tuesday didn’t even exist. Interesting. Just what I always wanted - 48 hours of Monday.

Okay, that’s probably all of the typing for today (I’ve heard that one before). I sliced open the back of my hand on Monday night trying to do a quick drive swap on the computer and it’s been giving me no end of trouble. Ah well - c’est ma vie.

Okay, I vote we take all of the sales and marketing people of the world, toss them onto a rocket and shoot them into the sun. Now by “sales and marketing people”, I don’t necessarily mean that anyone in this field gets an automatic one-way ticket. This also doesn’t mean it will only be people from this field - it’s all a mindset/personality sort of thing.

I should probably add heavily perfumed people to this list now, ’cause that flowery smelling guy just walked past. Creepy.

Anyhoo, we’re talking about that sales/marketing mindset/attitude. You know the people - glossy on the outside, empty on the inside. I tend to call these people sales/marketing ’cause they always seem to end up in this sort of job. Always handy with the insincere queries into your health, your well-being and your weekend. Ick. That smile with way too many teeth. Do people really buy into the false goodwill these people project? I would assume so, since things really are being sold out there. Quite a scary thought.

Geez - I did it again. I always thought lumbago was some kind of tropical disease. I blame Bugs Bunny for my misinformation. At least he got beri beri right. That’s what I get for trusting a rabbit in drag, I suppose.

I was quite disappointed, no - angered, by the fact that the caffeine content of our fridge was zero. That’s not including Diet Coke, ’cause that’s just wrong. Then this guy comes in the breakroom and starts griping that there was no decaffeinated tea. Nerds make us geeks nervous.

Then a thought occurred to me. I have two hot cans of Coke on my desk. This fridge has ice cubes in it. I did the math in my head. Hot Cokes + ice cubes + McDonald’s Monopoly Game souvenir cheapo plastic cup = happy Astro.

Things are slowly moving back to the blue end of the light spectrum now. At the moment, I’m enjoying that purple haze lying between the two. Ahhhhhhhhh…..

Man, I’m in a total do-nothing mode today. Not that I don’t have things to do - I have a ton, thank you very much. I just don’t want to do any of them. this is not a good thing, I wouldn’t think. Especially since I’m sure my boss is wondering what this weird web page screen is on my monitor every time he walks past. D’OH!

Maybe there’s some Coke in the fridge now. I swear, these drink people are trying their best to wean me off the caffeine. Annoying Little Burfing Dog is doing its best to make me switch to alcohol. Can’t these headphones get any louder?

I never much believed in reincarnation
Thought it was only people’s imagination
But now I’m forced into some reconsideration
Something’s happened to my cat that deserves some explanantion

William Shakespeare’s in my cat, my kitty is the bard
He used to be a playwright now he’s digging up the yard
He’s still a cat in most respects he likes to meow and purr
But now I introduce him as the cat who wrote Richard the Third

I took him to see Phantom, he said it was quite nice
But he can’t go see Miss Saigon until he kills some mice.

William Shakespeare’s in my cat it sometimes seems so deep,
The guy who wrote Twelfth Night chews on my socks while I’m asleep
I’m really quite impressed I own the cat who wrote MacBeth
But if something’s rotten in this state it’s just his fishy breath

‘Cause he wrote Romeo and Juliet
But his greatest story yet
Is coming back as someone’s pet
And gettin’ neutered by the vet
Got his paws caught in a net
Then he said to be or not to meeeeeow!

William Shakespeare’s in my cat he rarely ever talks
He makes his loudest statement standing in the litterbox
He sleeps on all my shelves and throws my books about the house
It doesn’t sound like prose when he bats his squeaky mouse

Same Beckett’s plays were witty, same thing for Bernard Shaw
Oscar Wilde is pretty, but none of them have paws

William Shakespeare’s in my cat he chases bits of fluff
John Milton’s in my goldfissh but I never liked his stuff
I’m thinking that Franz Kafka really came back as a bug
And I hope Andrew Lloyd Webber will stay underneath my rug

‘Cause he wrote Romeo and Juliet
But his greatest story yet
Is coming back as someone’s pet
And gettin’ neutered by the vet
Got his paws caught in a net
Then he said to be or not to meeeeeow!

Bagels make me happy. Even if they have strange little sticky things on the top of them.

Mmmmmmm…. strange little sticky things….. Wait. That sounds odd.

You know, the Annoying Little Burfing Dog may be annoying, but at least it’s cute in a goofy sort of way. The person in the next row towards me from ALBD has an UGLY ass dog at his desk. On of those dogs with its face smooshed in. Pug? Probably, ’cause the phrase “pug ugly” sure fits for this dog. Yeeks.

I just remembered something I was going to put up here after thinking about my beloved Chasing Amy DVD. I’m a creature of impulses and that movie is one reason why. Well, not the movie itself, but the thought of the movie. Or something.

Look. I put off getting this (and the Fifth Element) for awhile, ’cause I told myself that I should wait, stay within my strict (right) DVD budget, find the best deal for it, etc. Then I go crazy, splurge and get it. I watch it and it brings me great joy and happiness. Which brings me to two unsafe-to-the-pocketbook conclusions:

1) If I want to get something, I might as well get it right then, ’cause I’m eventually going to find a way to rationalize getting it (I believe with the aforementioned movies it was “You know, I brought my lunch four of the five days last week, so that’s like $24 right there.” Of course, I was doing that ’cause I needed the $24 for some other purpose, but I’ve quickly managed to forget what that was. More on that later.)

2) Chances are, whatever I want is going to bring great joy and pleasure into my life and I’m all about joy and pleasure. Why put it off? Get it now!

You know, Napster is just not behaving today. It’s taking forever to log in to downl… uhhh… to see what kind of law breakers there are out there, since I would never use such a horrid and freedom limiting program for my own personal gains! Just doing my part as Mr. John Q. Citizen, all of you .gov visitors! And neither would my wife… Morgan Fairchild. Yeah, that’s the ticket!

Annoying Little Burfing Dog has arrived and, naturally, is already burfing up a storm. Not to mention that guy who sits near the ABLD’s desk is going into total puppy-talk mode. Ick.
EXCERPT:
Elvis Presley - Fever

It is waaaaay too early in the morning to be putting up with stupid rhetorical questions. Since I come in to work blazingly early, I crank the WinAmp & jive along headphone-less until people start arriving. So one of our brilliant marketing/sales types walks past my desk.

“Morning! Got some tunes going on there?”
“Uhhhh… no. You must be hearing things. Does it sound like acid jazz? ‘Cause I’ve heard that people who hear acid jazz when there’s no music playing really need to never come to work and ask stupid questions again!”

At least I think that’s what my glare said to him.

My my, how appropriate.

Well, I made it through the migraine yesterday in time to make the game. Of course, immediately after the game, it came back. Luckily it’s only a mild one this morning, so I’m happily back at work. Of course, I mean “happily” in the same way those kooky kids use “bad” to mean “good”.

In other word news, I love yesterday’s Learning Kingdom “Cool Word of the Day” that I missed:

imbroglio [n. im-BROL-yo]

Imbroglio can also mean a confused heap or tangle.

Pretty much describes my personal life.

Well, this’ll probably be my only post for the day - not only did I get no sleep last night, but I woke up with a tremendous migraine. I’m hoping I’ll be rid of it by gametime tonight, ’cause I can’t miss the first big game. Actually, I can’t miss any of them if I want to be in the playoffs. So it’s back to bed to hide under the covers with the sweet sounds of Ella’s voice healing me.

This is so weird. I’ve been grousing and griping about being all alone out here and how none of my friends were emailing or IM’ing me. I get home and check my mail - emails from two of my friends. Alright! As I’m reading them, kablamm - another friend IM’s me. And another. And another. So now I’m holding three IM conversations and two email threads together. When it rains, it pours! This is the kind of pouring I like, though…

I can’t believe I deprived myself of owning Chasing Amy for so long! What a GREAT movie! Like an idiot, I heated up my pizza and thought “I know - I’ll just watch the good scenes from Chasing Amy.” Well DUH! They’re ALL good scenes. Sometimes I’m such an idiot! So now here I sit, wide awake at 1:00 AM, waiting for the alarm to go off in the other room in three hours. Wonderful. That’s going to make my first ice game tonight quite interesting…

Well, I’ve just started on my first photo album. Like, a real photo album (as opposed to those I just think are there). My best friend Kathy is helping me get all of my motocross pictures together so they’re nice and safe. Something to show the kids just how crazy Grandpa used to be.

Now it’s time to go eat some re-heated pizza & watch a little Fifth Element. YEE!!!

Someone has to stop me. I had a $10 Best Buy gift card burning a hole in my pocket (prize for buying the DVD player from them), so I stopped by there to see about getting Chasing Amy with it. Naturally, they didn’t have it, so I lunged for The Fifth Element. I took my purchase happily up to the counter and waited for the clerk to figure out how to ring up the gift card. I felt like a big log in a river, suddenly coming up against a narrow point as I watched the line back up behind me.

So once that unpleasantness was over, a little voice in the back of my brain says “Why don’t we stop by Circuit City over there and see if they have Chasing Amy?”
“Because we don’t have a gift card for Circuit City.”
“But it’s not like they’ll actually have it.”
“What if they do?”
“What if they don’t? Come on! It’s only a few blocks away!”

So I go there and, you guessed it - they had a copy of Chasing Amy. Note: A copy of Chasing Amy.
“I don’t have a gift card, put it back on the shelf.”
“Oh come ON! They only have one copy here!”
“And I don’t have a gift card - I’ll have to pay full price.”
“Remember? We did the figuring last week. This is about the same price you’d pay getting it online and it’s right here!!!!”
“Right here, huh?”
“Right here!!!”
“Same price?”
“Same price!!”

So now I have Chasing Amy in my collection. I give in to my inner child way too much.

Me not like pro basketball
‘Cause me short and they all tall
Basball slow like Forrest Gump
‘Cept when Robbie spits on ump
Wrestlemania not so great
Me like to see Hulk Hogan skate!
TV soccer not that hot
You play bad then you get shot
ME LIKE HOCKEY!!

And so ends another work day…

Don’t you just hate it when you suddenly notice food on your shirt and realize that it’s been quite some time since you’ve eaten? Luckily I don’t think I’ve walked around much since lunch, so I might’ve gotten away scot free.

Hey! Just a half hour ’til I’m out of here. How cool is that?

Hey, check it out! I can use my blog to help provide links for worthwhile community services. I feel better about myself already.

While you’re at it, be sure to check out the latest happenings on Big Brother. Poor Heather - flushed away so soon…

I’ve discovered one of the many annoying facets of having a desk right outside a conference room. Not only is everyone walking by your desk staring at your monitor, but large groups of people tend to congregate outside the door after a meeting and discuss “action items.” Add to that the various accoutrements my desk has, and there’s usually quite a gathering around at any given time. If it weren’t for my headphones, I’d turn into quite the little postal worker.

I was just looking at one of those useless facts pages, where I came up with a startling conclusion. The facts I found were:

1) Right-handed people live, on average, nine years longer than left-handed people.
2) Polar bears are left-handed.

So I’m only going to live nine years longer than a polar bear? Crap! I’d better see how long they live. I hope it’s to one of those sea turtle ages…

WOO HOO!!! My Princess Bride DVD just arrived! Now I have something to watch when I get home. “I love it when a plan comes together.” - Colonel John ‘Hannibal” Smith

Now, it’s off for lunch!