Blown Fuse

What am I, made of money?

This month's natural gas bill: $216.53. Keep in mind that that's only for heat. Every thing else is electric.

Carry on.

A series of unfortunate events.

So, it came to pass that New Chick Oops! had a little altercation with a pond a couple of nights ago while driving her vehicle.

She had went to a party and had a couple of drinks. A "couple" meaning "two"--not a "couple" meaning "Um...I lost count." I believe it was some kind of cocktail, but anyway....

She's about 5'1" and average weight (whatever that is). I, being of similar frame, can speak from experience that after two servings of hard alcohol, I feel fine. I'm walking around, talking to people, and holding all my fluids in just fine. I can get down a flight of stairs without taking a dive. I can remember my phone number and tell people witty anecdotes about my childhood. I can even remember how many times I've peed since "breaking the seal." Most of the time I can even drive home with no problems, other than my eyes getting glazed over and contact lenses threatening to fall out.

Well, New Chick Oops! lives in close enough proximity to the sticks that there's a strong probability that if she gets lost, something bizarre will happen.

To make a long story short, at around 4 a.m. on Sunday morning, the rain was creating poor visibility on the roads. Oops! turned down a gravel road to do a three-point road turn and ended up backing her Escape into a pond. I can see how even a 100% sober person could do this. The county I came from is notorious for having deep ditches with no guard rails. People would go around curves too fast and go sideways right into the holes.

She went to knock on the door of the farmhouse across the street thinking that maybe, if there was a God, they had a tractor with a hook to pull her out (it was just her back tires stuck in a little mud).

Nope. They just dialed 911 and the fire brigade, with all of its bells and whistles, went out. Along with them, some Barney Fife state trooper trailed along and queried, "So, have you had anything to drink?"

Of course she had, and she didn't lie. Basically, she passed the field sobriety test, but blew a .12 on the breathylizer, therefore and hence and hereby: DUI. If she had never backed into the pond, she'd never have gotten pulled.

So, I'll be carpooling for a while since I live closest.

Hat Guy finds this all quite amusing as he, admittedly some sort of Phish head in the past, once got taken in for DUI. He sat around the police station for at least an hour before he took the breathylizer and still blew a .14.

Scary. I'll admit that there have been a few 1 a.m.'s where I've had as much beer as not-beer when I've navigated home just fine, other than crawling along at 30 miles per hour. It could have been me pulled for DUI just as easily as her. In fact, I was pulled over one night under suspicion of drunk driving because I was swerving--I was sober, mind you. There was fog as thick as cotton balls at there was this car following me. Every time I changed lanes, they would. It was fucking freaking me out--I thought that as soon as I reached a stop light some psycho would jump out and try to stab me. It turned out to be some jackass police officer trying to make his quota. I told him straight out: "I'm swerving because it's foggy and YOU'RE ON MY ASS!"

"Okay. Drive safe."

Ass. There's just no way to tell if someone is impaired while driving. Sure, there are the obvious signs of people swerving too hard and too fast and too often and following too close, but how do you put a reasonable limit on impairment? When is it okay to make someone prove their sobriety? Only when they're pulled over under suspicion, or is it okay to piggyback on a incident of distress?

I've figured it out.

I've think I've figured out the reason why North Carolina is taxing Scott and I so fucking high. Because we're D.I.N.K.-y (double income, no kids).

We need some dependents*.

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*and by "dependent" I mean that I will claim you as a leech on my taxes, but will in no way, shape, or form ensure you benefit from our D.I.N.K.iness. This will likely fuck up your own tax filing, so proceed with caution.

Precipitation!

It's sleeting.

If you listen really carefully, it sounds like some guy peeing loud.

*twitches noticably*

I'm suffering from Netflix withdrawal. The last playable DVD we recieved was on Wednesday, I think, and that was the only one we recieved all week. Okay, that's an exaggeration. We got one yesterday and one today. They were both fucking broken.

Such a bummer.

So, about last night...

Scott and I went to Applebee's (more on that in the extended entry) and then Circuit City last night.

I wanted to look at some HP computers and see how the off-the-shelf models compared in terms of price. I wasn't impressed. The rebates they were offering were about the same as what HP is offering right now, and at least you get to customize your PC if you order it from HP directly...so I'll be doing that. I may go back to Circuit City for a few accessories (read: mousepad), though.

While were there we found ourselves somehow strangely gravitating towards the big-screen televisions. Okay, well, I'm a chick, so booming electronics aren't really my deal, but damn. I want a big-screen television--specifically one of those flat screen HD models.

Have you ever seen what high definition television looks like? You don't think there's that much difference until you see an HDTV and regular projection t.v. side-to-side. Now that I've seen those I feel a deep sensation of covet-tation.

While $5000 seems like a helluva lot of money to spend on a television, I consider it an investment in our future. You see, I'm so fucking nearsighted that I have to put the alarm clock two inches away from my retinas to read it. A large screen television will not only allow me to back the hell away from the screen, but it will also give our home an overall feeling of we have a bigger t.v. than youness.

Oh, and about Applebee's: I wanted to go there last night because they're having that special where you can pick an appetizer/main course and dessert for $12.99.

I'll briefly comment that the steak in the Cowboy Combo was so tender and tasty that I almost ate the whole thing.

I'll also briefly comment that if you get the raspberry cheesecake as your dessert, request that they hold the red-tinted sugar water raspberry syrup and give you actual cheesecake instead. I swear, it tasted just like one of those no-bake mixes that you get at the grocery store... .. . ... not that I've ever had one of those, ahem.

Worst...parents...ever

Have you ever seen "The Virgin Suicides"? It came on Lifetime (T.V. for women, heh) and I watched it so that I could yank it off my Netflix queue.

That movie is fucking disturbing. I don't know what I was more put off by, the 13-year-old flinging herself out the window to impale herself on the wrought-iron fence or the fact that the parents thought that putting the other four on lockdown and preventing them from leaving the house was "love."

*shudders*

I don't recommend watching this movie prior to bedtime. Seeing as how those kids weren't really allowed to have a childhood, I can see why Wacko Jacko turned out the way he did :-).

*kicks the Department of Revenue*

I'm all done with my federal income tax paperwork. I'll be expecting that direct deposit in 8-16 days, thankyouverymuch.

I just did a preliminary jotting of my state taxes and see that once again we're in the red.

What the fuck? Every year we pay out the ass in taxes and come filing time we've never paid enough in state taxes. Scott was being deducted at the higher single rate for most of the year, so I don't understand where we're being gouged.

Am I a complete and total idiot, or does the state of North Carolina make it impossible to pay enough in tax?

Defeating the purpose?

How long should you wait after exercising to have a beer and Reese's Peanut Butter...oops. Too late.

Time to Make the Doughnuts

Hat tip to Alton Brown. The sugar glazed ones are particuarly good.

"Maria Full of Grace"

"Maria Full of Grace" arrived yesterday from my Netflix queue. It's in Spanish with English subtitles, but I'll make the disclaimer that there was never a point in the movie where the dialogue was so fast that you were confused or couldn't keep up with the captioning. Even if you didn't have the subtitles, there wasn't so much dialogue that you wouldn't understand what was going on...well, I have a moderate comprehension of spoken Spanish so I may be overstating that.

Nothing seemed to be contrived or false. The pace of the storyline was natural--nothing was forced or put in just for effect.

The story follows Maria, a Columbian girl who agrees to act as a drug mule to make some money quickly. What happens between the moments of her swallowing a kilo of heroin and returning to the airport in New York to return to Columbia are what puts you on the edge of your seat hoping that she doesn't just do what it expected.

I liked Catalina Sandino Moreno's quiet style of acting and hope to see her in other movies in the future.

Put it in your queue.

Want to join my Netflix friends list so you can share your recommendations with me? Email me (<-- you know what to remove) and I'll send you one of those invitiation thingies.

HP Opinions

I've narrowed down the field of contenders and have decided that my next computer purchase will be an HP. While I was researching them on Friday I started by letting the site recommend a computer for me. My minimum requirements were 533 Bus, 512 MB RAM, 160 GB hard drive space, 128 MB video ram, and a DVD+ROM drive. Anything above and beyond that were just icing.

The midrange CPUs that I found, the Pavilion a815n and a820n were the frontrunners until I did some investigation and found that if I were willing to take a step back in the model to the a810e, I could save several hundred dollars and get the monitor thrown into the package. They're running rebates on last year's early models, it seems.

Considering the fact that the dinosaur I'm typing on right now will be six years old come April, that little step-back was negligible to me. It's not like I need a super-industrial computer that will be used to hack into Blockbuster Video's customer database or anything....just something stable that isn't going to eat all of my fiction writing if I do some accidental weird key command. And yes, I do want to be able to play bigass games without hearing whirring, crashing, and resoundant thuds.

So. I'm going to customize an a810e and get the most of whatever I can within the $1200 smackeroonies range. It appears that I can get 1 GB ram for an additional $40, or so.

Good thing I'm not interested in the lastest fashions.

So...has anyone heard any bad shit about the a810e line? Basically I'm going to close my eyes and respond with, "Gee, thanks for letting me know," no matter what you say. If they haven't exploded or tried to suck blood, I don't want to hear it.

*Breathes a sigh of relief*

The minor ear infection that presented itself on Friday has not aggravated to the point of an all-head-infection. By now I expected there to be so much fluid built up in my head that when I shake in either direction you can hear waves.

I know the infection is trying to find a way out because I have huge zits on my face for no reason other than to act as hot springs for my waning fever. (Back in college when I had my first ear infection ever a doc told me that you often break out when you have an infection that can't find another way out).

Anyhoo. Back to work tomorrow I guess (seeing as how there's no snow to impede that).

Greenpeace would be shocked.

It's official. We now have five (four completely different) phone books. Four of them arrived before we even had a landline phone. Obviously they give you a phone book whether you have their service or not. I guess that the only way those people who buy yellowpages ads ever recoup their money.

Yes, I am paranoid that if I throw one out it'll be the one that I needed to find whoever.

*Rubs eyes*

Stayed home from work today. I seem to have a minor inner ear infection compounded with something else that I can't quite put my finger on. I'm periodically nauseated and am drowsier than Sleepy Smurf...oh, and since I just woke up, my face is bloated.

Oh, joy.

I do realize that if I'd still been a smoker, this bug would have mutated into a whole head infection (sinuses, eyeballs and all) before I even knew I had it.

Should have stayed home.

A public service annoucement about Nighttime Sudafed:

jaljkdfj jfkkaeicvbnbow. Ajdjboiuhnd!!!

I'm swooning. I took one capsule last night at 8:30. Was nauseous and drowsy at 11. Woke up at 6:37 a.m. (still nauseous).

I'm swooning and my fingers are numb. Is this normal?

I came in today because I have to call in the payroll, have a training module scheduled, and blah blah. I think I'm going to leave here at around 3. It's supposed to snow again this afternoon and I don't want to get caught in that deadlock again.

Longest Commute Ever

Left work at 4:15 p.m.
Arrived home at 5:33 p.m.
Distance between work and home: 12 miles.

I just spent an hour driving at a slow crawl through RTP (four miles) become some bumfucks don't know how to act when there's an inch of snow on the roads. Once I turned off Alexander Drive the drive became much more sedate and I was able to drive the last half of my commute in about ten minutes.

If there's snow on the road, people should automatically assume that there's ice beneath it instead of driving like idiots, swerving into other peoples' cars, and tying up traffic for hours.

When I crept over the I-40 overpass, I saw that traffic was at a standstill. I think at that point the road is at least six lanes, so that's really accomplishing something. I heard on the news that the interstate was bumper-to-bumper.

Considering the fact that North Carolina has no real mass transit system other than those hoopty buses that get shot up in the ghettoer parts of Durham, this congestion gets to be a real problem.

I'm happy, really I am.

"Senate Panel Gives Rice Confirmation Nod"

Condoleeza Rice couldn't answer a question directly if her life counted on it, but I think she has enough gumption to do the job well...and she's certainly smart enough. My only concern is that she'll not be vocal enough in expressing the need for the administration to become more focused on domestic policies.

I have a political wishlist the length of my arm that I want to send to her with a "Hey, woman power! Solidarity, my sister!" post-it stuck to. But I'm a realist.

Snow?

Okay, so last week we were in the 70-degree range and my male coworkers were walking around our sweltering office in their undershirts...now it's snowing. It's been snowing for about an hour and a half.

As this is N.C. snow, we'll probably get an inch today which will get rained away tomorrow. Then again, us North Carolinians are pretty snow-phobic so this might prove to be a great excuse to go home early--you know, to get out of this "mess."

Ahem.

Ammunition

Here's a discovery I made this week about loud, cocky people: they have Achille's Heels.

Once you figure out what that is, you can cut them down real fast. They'll keep their mouth shut for days. Rule of thumb: whatever they gloat most about is probably what they're most sensitive about.

Just thought I'd arm you with that. Carry on.

Elves are stealing my winter apparel.

Okay, on mornings when it's 14 degrees outside, it's a good idea to wear a scarf and gloves. Well, I've been wearing a scarf all week, but it seems to have disappeared between yesterday's arrival at home and this morning.

When I went into the coat closet this morning to pull out last year's gloves, I found that one of them had been eaten up by something. I'm assuming/hoping/praying it was moths, but I'm suspicious. When I pulled them down from the top shelf I heard little items falling to the floor (I immediately thought, "That better not be hardened mouse poop"). There's no overhead light in that room so I couldn't fully investigate. All I know is that there'd better not be mice in my coat closet and that my hands were cold during the 15 minutes it took my heat to kick in in the car.

I guess this calls for me getting my "stand-by" gloves out of my winter sock cache: you know, those "stretch - one-size-fits-all" dealies that suck in snowball fights?

Domo arigato, Mrs. Computo

Due to situations under my control - specifically my fabulosness - I will be able to afford a new paperweight computer.

*cracks knuckles*

I've decided on a PC. As Mac-friendly as my home is, I'll pass this time around. What are all the good consumer reports-type sites for Windows PCs?

I'm looking for a desktop unit with a fast processor, ability to render video at the correct speed (as opposed to certain computers I know...), and with a shitload of ram.

If I had the balls...

So, American Idol begins yet another vicious cycle tonight. I think that the three or four shows that air first are the most amusing - all the outtakes of all the talentless people who argue that (though they may be astoundingly tonedeaf) they can sing...all the people who think dancing like dervishes will make them better "performers"...

I can't wait. :-)

CHOCOLATE!

Does putting chocolate chips in homemade fudge seem like overkill to anyone?

...

I didn't think so either. Excuse me while I taste-test.

Please, stop teasing me.

As I feared/suspected, the unseasonably warm weather here in the south have caused some of my early spring bulbs to bloom. I figured that the one that bloomed last weekend was a fluke...but here they all are.

If this will be at all similar to last year's blooming cycle, lily greenery will be popping up in a few weeks if we don't get a good freeze. In the meantime, the daffodils have decided to join in the fun.

Ass.

It'll be just my luck that we'll get a hard freeze and they'll die before they bloom.

By George, I think I've got it.

I think I've located the mysterious Dr Pepper thief.

When I rode to Wendy's with Mr. 9.9 yesterday, there was a half-empty can in his car, which he poured the rest of which out in the parking lot.

Sad. Stole my drink and didn't even have the courtesy to finish it. Tsk.

Spiffy

The much-talked-about Netflix now allows members to create separate profiles for each person in the house (that uses the computer, I presume).

I'm the person billed for the service, so my name is the main one on the account. I gave Scott my password so that he could go in and add stuff to the queue. I hate how he moves all his blood and gut movies up to the top...anyway. Now, you can delegate how many movies each profile can have out at a time and not have to worry about fighting over the queue order.

The only problem I can forsee is that since we're on an "odd" plan (three out at a time) one of us will always have more movies out than the other. I guess we can set up a "neutral" queue with movies that we both actually want to see.

When I logged in, I saw that on Scott's recommendation page, there are movies like "I, Robot" and "Troy."

On mine, there's "Home on the Range" and "Family Guy." Whatever are they thinking...thinking that I like cartoons like that...

ahem.

What, you don't get overtime?

Ever notice that government workers, specifically those in mail trucks and police vehicles, are the most reckless drivers when it gets close to 5 p.m.?

Humble Request from the Fusemistress

I don't do a whole lot of blog commenting since I've started my fucking job gainful employment, but I still do enjoy reading everyone's new entries through Bloglines when I get a spare few minutes. Shy of having everyone's new posts e-mailed to me, which would be entirely too burdensome, it's the best way I can enjoy the daily goingsons.

Now, I'll make my point quickly so I can go drink beer drink beer: if you don't have an xml feed, get one. I love you honestly and truly, but if you don't have a feed, you'll be shunned until I find the energy to Google you to try to retrace my steps to figuring out what your exact URL is.

That's all.

My day is a balancing scale.

Good thing: Shiner on sale.
Bad thing: Getting an invoice due January 7...on the 10th.

Good thing: power naps in your car during lunch time.
Bad thing: answering the phone during lunch time and getting roped into an "important" task.

Good thing: Bossman going away for two days to a conference.
Bad thing: remembering that noone else has a key and I'll probably have to stay late to accomodate them.

Good thing: strong coffee.
Bad thing: realizing the creamer is empty after you've already poured your cup of strong coffee.

Good thing: days when you have money to buy lunch at a restaurant.
Bad thing: when those restaurants (*coughcoughSubwaycough*) have stale bread.

"Teen Shemales!" "Mature Sluts!"

I'm just wondering...but, isn't tranny porn easy enough to find on the internet without having to advertise in blog comments?

I'm just saying...

D'oh!

Today, I made the mistake of checking my bank balance online.

When I saw that there was a sum in there that is far too high for it to be the 12th, I immediately panicked and wondered why my student loan funds didn't get sucked out.

Upon closer inspection I saw that they had indeed tried to zap the funds, but because I had balanced my check register 28 cents in the wrong direction, instead of my lender getting their money, my bank got $30.

Interesting how that is. They couldn't be sure that I was good for 28 fucking cents?

I called my lender to see if they were going to try to draft it again and to express that if they did it would merely get bounced again because of that whole 28 cent issue.

Oh well, I'll just pretend this is a blessing in disguise. I'll send my lender a slightly smaller check and have gas money until my next payday.

Nothing is sacred.

They're at it again. 300 comment spams. And this is after I tweaked my comments to do forced preview.

*Sigh*

This is getting less fun.

Cranky.

Why do the people who drive the bare minimum speed know all the shortcuts?

Makes me feel less guilty.

I have piles and piles of strange and wonderful books that my uncle deemed that I should have after he passed away. For a while, I felt it was my family duty to keep the books in my home and allow them to accumulate a significant amount of dust.

Now that Scott and I are getting closer to a point where we can spend significant time and money fixing up this house, I'm in purge mode--if I don't love it, it's getting thrown out.

I sold many of these books on half.com and Amazon last year, but after I became gainfully employed, didn't have time to make daily trips to the post office to ship things. Some of the books were so rare that no one had heard of them, and certainly didn't want to buy them.

I felt guilty that I wasn't keeping the books that he wanted me to have, but after a while I figured that if he wanted me to have them, it's because I would know what to do with them. That doesn't necessarily merit reading them. I know how much he paid for them, and I know how many years it took him to collect them. I also remember how he used to drive down from New York every 2 weeks to cut my grandma's grass (don't ask) and whenever he came, he'd have a crate of books to hoard in the guest room like a squirrel with oh-so-many nuts.

I've decided that any remaining books will get donated to UNC Libraries in his honor. I'm sure many of them don't exist in their collections, and anything else they can sell during their annual sale; at least they'll go to collectors or people who are interested in the subject matter.

I think he'd like to see his books in a research library. He never went to college, but I think he felt like buying all those books made him equal to those who did.

*Kicks them*

I've been using the same tax preparation software for four years and have never really had any negative issues with them. When I went to download the update for this year, I decided that I would spend the extra $12.95 for the "Deluxe" edition which would automatically file our return, compare this year's return to last year's return, find any errors, find us additional loopholes refund opportunities, and so on. The program actually does what it says it does, but something happened this year that pissed me off.

Their 2004 edition is still in preview, so basically you download the software and can go ahead and type in most of your information and save it. When the final version is released, you can scour your return for additional "hints" for the next year and transmit your return electronically with direct deposit information.

Now I'll steer offtrack from my praises of this software and say that I want to kick them real hard in the fucking head.

They weren't supposed to charge my card until the final version was released and my software able to be updated. They charged my card the same fucking day of the order......at least six days early.

While that by no means will prevent me from using this software next year, I just think that people should do what they say they're going to do.

Beer Blogging

Last year I asked my readers some advice on good beer, and I've been heeding it, believe you me. I've made Shiner my beer of choice and have encountered at least one restaurant that serves it on tap.

The unfortunate thing about being a Shiner drunk is that if a store has it, they only have a few cases. I'm probably one of three people in the state that drinks Shiner, so this means a couple of things: 1) I'm the only person that buys it from my local Harris Teeter and they only reorder it when I buy their last case, or 2) they don't carry it at all because they only carry cheap-ass flat beers made by corporations with names that start with "A" or "C."

Now then, today my local Harris Teeter was all out of regular shiner, and I wasn't about to experiment with the "winter brew" deal that they had on sale, so I picked up some Yuengling. I'm not digging this aftertaste. Blah.

So, I'm asking again. What's a good beer? Keep in mind that I don't do low-carb and I don't like girlie beer...oh, and I'm in North Carolina. That pretty much eliminates most microbrews.

Stay down there!

Crocuses are coming up. This isn't good...normally I'd expect to see them in March. The unseasonably warm weather may throw off my gardening schemes. Last year they didn't come up until after we had some snow. We haven't had any yet this season, and for some reason I expect that February and March are going to be icy killers.

As long as my irises come up, I'll be smugly satisfied.

"Kick it under a shelf. Don't let anybody see it!"

I'll add this incident to my arsenal to use the next time my sister nags about how long it's taking me to plan kids.

"Mommy! I pooped!"

My half-brother once did something similar to what li'l Burger did...except we were in a hotel room and the victim was a potted plant in the corner.

Not an original thought to spare...

My mother rarely checks her e-mail. Mail clients like Outlook boggle her mind, and she just doesn't "get" webmail. However, she'll occassionally log in to her mail and forward to me every goddamned trash piece in her inbox. Here's a good one:

SUBJECT: FW: Fwd: This is cute! We all should think like this.

Today is no special day and I have no particular reason for writing toyou...I Have no news to tell you....Nor any problems to discuss with you....or gossip to tell you...It's only one of those happy moments...when I thought of you...and I would like to share these thoughts with you...

MANY SMILES BEGIN BECAUSE OF ANOTHER SMILE...

Always have good self esteem...

Take care of your friends, especially those dearest to you...

Take care of your body...

But most of all find time to relax...

A Big Hug from your friend...

Pass this on to all of your FRIENDS.. And if you receive this e-mail many times from many different people, it only means that you have many FRIENDS. And if you only get it but once, do not be discouraged for you will know that you have AT LEAST ONE GOOD FRIEND

ME

Yeah, she's right! That is SO CUTE! And we should ALL THINK LIKE THAT! If I forwarded stuff like this to every friend and cowoker in my address book they'd stone me to death. We need to put them in the stocks and let them be stared at by the townspeople...or perhaps make them wear scarlet "F"s for "forwarder."

I should change my shirt now.

Hi. I'm awake now. I came home and went to bed with my work clothes on again.

The headache is gone, but now I feel gross from sleeping in my clothes and on top of the wet hair I didn't bother to dry this morning. Now that I move my eyes about a bit, I can feel just a teensy bit of pressure behind my eye socket. I need to go medicate some more. If I take sinus meds, see you tomorrow. Those "Daytime Allergy Relief" things knock me out as if I've had oh-so-many mai tais.

I guess I could find something productive and work-related to do, like sketching out a redesign for my company's website....poo. I think I'll go nurse a Dr Pepper and see what kind of television programming I miss by working during the day.

"Let me sit on your head."

I have a throbbing, pulsing, stabbing, shooting pain behind my right eye. I went to bed last night with some twinges of pressure and woke up with full-blown headache. It's probably stress-induced, but what am I going to do, take the day off? I wish. I can feel pressure building up behind my eardrum now and on the right side of my nose, too. I hope this isn't a sinus infection. I can't afford a medical copay this month.

I would just go home if it weren't for the fact that we have people coming into the office today to user our teleconferencing system...and I've been trying to schedule an interview for a Georgia candidate since last Thursday and am waiting for some chips to fall before my boss pops a vein (he really should have let me find a location to host her before scheduling a date and time)....

No, I'm going home.

Just as soon as I run a test on this conference system I'm going home. There are too many sickies in the office as it is...passing on their nasty nicotine-infused germs to me.

Three? Four, perhaps?

How many Advil can you take before you start foaming at the mouth?

I'm just wondering because I'm usually an Aleve user, and since the recent drug scare, I'm been sort of wary.

Although Advil is quite tasty indeed, it takes longer to kick in. And it wears off sooner.

I think I need to take another one.

Oy.

I left work at around 12:30 yesterday.

Interesting how you can come in and find even more paper stacked on your desk. I mean, do they not know there's a trash can beside every fucking table in the office?

The Six-Month Project

Okay, don't be afraid--everythings all copasetic now. I'll get around to deleting the other 300 or so comment farts as soon as I'm patient enough to sit down and find them. They were much easier to find when they were listed on my start page as one of the last five comments. Since there have been real comments after those, they've disappeared into the darkness of my archives.

Now then, I've disabled the "post" feature in the comment pop-up window. You'll have to hit "preview" and then click post from that screen. Next I'll go about setting up the heavy artillery for the more robust spambots.

Now then, today I've been up to my nose in paint and paint stripper fumes. Scott has been working on the hallway, and I've been working on the piano.

I posted extensively about my work in the hallway back when I was unemployed between gigs. Well, the troublesome hallway in which I stripped all that paint from the mouldings is done. Except for the floor. Scott is touching up the paint around the door frames as I type.

The piano....well. That's another issue. I'm using a spray-on stripper which is a lot faster of a job than the paint-on variety, but even so the piano is the size of an elephant. Since it's been in the garage for a year, the turning (what was left of it) is completely shot--some keys won't even hammer.

At some point it had a really rich cherry stain on it. I don't know what happened that provoked someone to paint it white. Blech.

If the weather remains mild this week, I hope to at least get all the paint off. Then the cycle of blackmailing negotiating with all my male acquaintances to help get it into the house begins.

Holy. Shit.

900 instances of comment spam.

That's what I get for not turning on my computer until 5 o'clock, eh?

I'm very close to saying "fuck this" and giving up this blogging thing. If I have to keep moving like a witness protection participant, it's not worth it.

Geek.

I merged my hard drive partions last night and am in the process of purging files to make even more space.

My computer is a Pentium to with about 6 GB of space. That's not funny. It's a laptop, and apparently back in 1999 this was all the rage.

Anyhow, I bought The Sims 2 yesterday. I've been holding my breath since September when it came out and didn't want to fork over the money for it until now. Imagine the bitter taste in my mouth when I found out how much hard drive space I needed to run it. *sigh*

Even if my D: drive was entirely empty, there still wouldn't be enough continuous space to store it. So, I did want any irrational person would do and got rid of my drive partions. I crossed my fingers and thought to myself that if something fucked up--so be it. I'm planning for a new PC soon, anyway.

Right now I'm uploading all of my image files onto my web space to clear off a little more room for the installation.

Happy New Year!

It's beautiful and mild in North Carolina, so I'll be spending the day out in the garage...finally stripping that damned piano.

You remember the piano, don't you? The one we piggybacked up here in a pick-up truck?

Yeah, well...one year later...