Heating the beat, and beating the heat

Hot. Hot hot hot! Luke doesn't like the heat, nor does he like not having central air in his apartment. Nor the extra $50 it costs to run an air conditioner each month.

The days of a slow workday are now more evident than ever. People on vacations. People away for hours at 'meetings' and 'doctor appointments'. People coming in late. People leaving early. This is a wonderful time of the year, but I'm still relatively busy. Especially since I still have one last class tonight. After the final. Who has a class after a final? Ugh. I also just realized they had a 1/2 class last week after the final. What the hell? Talk about not paying any attention. This could be why my group was miffed with me for not spending all Memorial Day weekend on the homework. Okay okay? Can the quarter end already?

Last night I was invited over to entertain Jake for the night, as they had just returned from their holiday weekend away at Ocean City and Jake had just given so much blood to the Red Cross that he was dizzy and sick to his stomach. But we attempted to play a game called Dungeon Twister in which it took us almost an hour just setting it up and learning to play. After beating Jake at his own game we moved on to another game called Settlers of Catan which turned out to be very entertaining. Both games were only supposed to last an hour, but we were up until midnight playing. Being a newb at both games, I held my own and almost won if not for not having a better strategy. Getting into these board games has been a lot of fun. I'm not surprised people do this weekly as a routine, but I'm not sure I'd want to play with strangers.

I had the first of the last of my braces appointments yesterday. The doctor said I'm all done now and he's just closing up some spaces (which, have closed by now as evidenced by how painful my mouth is currently). So I'm happy to know these things will be out soon and I can go back to eating like a normal person. Which isn't to say fun food, but no more avoiding hard food. Not much going on. Gonna try to see Mission Impossible 3 soon. I'm just glad classes are over after tonight. Glad I'm feeling better. Glad I can go home and relax. Glad I have little to no responsibility for anything other than a couple small projects now. Thinking about a possible camping trip this summer and a trip to Europe next year. Oh, how fun that would be. :)

Tales of a secret picnic

So yeah, I was a bit miffed. On Saturday, I spent a good part of the day lounging and not in any hurry because... there wasn't much to do. I had told my family I would be heading that way sometime in the day and what did they do? Had a secret picnic. A "cookout" if you will. A birthday party cookout for my uncle? Huh? What? Why the secrecy? Why was my nuclear family not invited? Why didn't anyone pick up the phone and let me know? "It was spur of the moment!" they say. Yeah, cause potato salad makes itself in a half hour. Liars. Bah. Put me in a bad mood. Which I quickly recovered from.

To make up for their deception, my aunt decided to hold another secret picnic for dinner at her place on Sunday. Nice try. But it was nice. Even if I didn't eat. Her and I headed out to a couple electronics stores to pick up a DVD recorder to replace her ailing and dying VHS VCR decks. Now these devices are neat, and we ended up getting a $200 dual deck VHS->DVD recorder that not only records TV but also can dub from a VHS tape. Nice. Especially since we have so many friggin' home movies that we've been watching lately. But instead of heading home to try it out, we headed to the casino and I gambled away $80 over the course of 3 hours. Hard to do. But I did it. Actually, I even lost $40 in the first 30 minutes. I suck at gambling. Which never stops me.

Somehow, someway, I spent the entire day lounging around. I helped around the house.. around the yard.. I even hurt myself and my poor fingerprints putting in FIVE air conditioners.. but I still managed to waste most of the day. I tried out the new DVD recorder and even dubbed a couple home movies (watching two weddings and 3 birthdays in the process). What a nifty device. I edited them and got them ready to mass produce for all you folks that want weddings of my aunts/cousins. ;) But in a couple of them I was so stinkin' cute... so maybe I'll have to rip the DVDs to put on a video here. What ever happened to me? Oh yeah, puberty.

Prescription for quiet

I spent a good part of the day watching a couple new movies.. including Davinci Code and X:Men 3.. which both were great.. not perfect.. but entertaining. I didn't want to burn down a church and light crosses on fire after seeing Davinci (poking fun at those that got upset over the book) but I understand that free-thought is a big threat to the church.. a big theme in the movie. I'll have to do my movie review soon. Promise.

I got my exam back for my Monday night class. The one I was deathly ill for. The one I didn't get to study for. And I got 20 points higher than the mean! Talk about friggin' luck. Highest score was 130 and I got a 121. Not so shabby. But wait.. I find out what I get on the exam in the class that I felt was simple this week.. just my luck, I'll get 20 points below the mean. We shall see.

I headed east and south to my mother's for Saturday evening and spent a couple hours helping her in the dirt.. visiting and driving around the countryside admiring the quiet, the green and the simplicity of it all. Cooked out a couple burgers, sat in the hot tub, sat on the porch. It really is wonderfully relaxing to be where she lives. Plus, rooming with the boys (my sister's two cats) and the rotty (Katie) is always an entertaining experience.

Turns out not only did my sister come up to Rochester to spend the weekend with me (not realizing I was headed to my mother's to spend time with her) and not only is Nola getting sick (more than likely from stepping foot in my apartment before I lysoled it) but half my family has what I had. Ick. I just hope I survive and not get sick again.

The morning was more of the same, except someone convinced my mother to get me to mow her FIVE acre lawn. Damnit. But I did.. and the vibrations about knocked all sense of feeling out of my body. I got a nice sunburn on my shoulders, but hey, at least the lawn looks good. Heading out to my aunt's for the night to help her with a couple things, which may or may not include buying a DVD-recorder, gambling at the race track and going out to dinner. So far, this Memorial Day holiday is turning out to be just what I needed.

Resting on my own laurels

So here it is, Saturday morning. The first morning I haven't had the slightest trace of being ill in over a week. How wonderful that is. It's draining.. demoralizing and grounding to be so ill, but it's over and I can move on to more fun things. I was hoping I'd lose my sense of taste or my appetite during this bought with the flu, but unfortunately, both remained. Just a boring pain and coughing week. But I only worked 2 1/2 days this week, which felt like a vacation. I caught up on a lot of sleep, a lot of TV, a lot of movies. Unfortunately, I did a lot of it alone since I was contagious. So much in fact I think I gave it to my boss, since he's out ill now with the flu. At least I had it through the middle of the week. He'll deal with it over the weekend.

I finally got around to getting a haircut on Thursday afternoon. A long overdue haircut, in which the hair-stylist was so enamored with me she thanked me profusely and handed me a bag of free samples. I was there for an hour.. nobody else got free samples? Either hair people are lonely or this woman was especially interested in my job and schooling. But my exam on Thursday evening was even more odd. Since I missed last week's class while Cynthia was in town, I missed some crucial details about the exam that my homework group felt it necessary to keep from me. Not only had the room changed locations, but it was open notes and we had to bring printouts of several websites to the exam to use as reference points. I specifically asked if anything of note happened in the class. Sigh.

Additionally, we had this huge homework we've been working on for two weeks. Our group always goes on and on and on with our writing (probably as example this blog) and a 5 page double spaced assignment turned into a 22 page single spaced assignment. Being worth 20% of our overall grade encouraged us to be as thorough as possible. And being sick for the majority of the 2nd week and being busy with Cynthia last week, my responses to the assignment were delayed and slow. But I still put in 5 hours of work. However, the two girls on my team were getting rather rude through email asking the two guys (Pat and I) why we weren't helping. I didn't help the first 3 days because a) it was mother's day weekend and b) it was the first 3 days! But all worked out in the end and hopefully they don't rate me poorly on the team review.

But the homework was 22 pages of color text and images and I volunteered to print it. Plus 4 additional copies for each of us... so I get to campus a little early to find parking (which there is none) but find a spot and hurriedly place $2 in coins into the meter for an hour of parking. A parking guy pulls up, gets out and points out I'm parked in a handicapped spot in which there is a nice $100 fine for. Sigh. Where did that sign come from? So not only am I going to be late, I also have no more money for parking and there are no spots which don't risk a $25 fine. But he smiles, pulls out a couple coins from his pocket, and tells me to go park in the lot right next to where my exam in being held.

So now I have my 6,000 printed pages and head off to learn that my exam isn't in the same room and there are no signs or indication of where it is supposed to me. Wander aimlessly for 5 minutes, call group members whom are starting their exam, and finally head to the computer lab to see if there is any mention of the room location anywhere on the website. Success! A small mention! I get in, hand in our book of an assignment (much larger than anyone else's and ours is single spaced.. ugh) and take an exam which is a solid TWO HOURS of essay writing. How in the world is this guy going to grade 15 books and an addition 45 exams before the end of the quarter? So.. the exam is over... I'm no longer sick.. I have this fun weekend ahead of me... and I think the new printer is broken at work. (Hopefully not from me!) We shall.. but for now... I think I'm gonna go take a nap. ;)

Skipping through the pain of life

Okay, no, I don't feel better. I went home ill early on Monday and called in sick on Tuesday but I woke up today feeling just slightly better than either of the last two days. Day five of being ill.. woohoo. While I can still function, as evident by being productive at home yesterday, I am contagious as I caught this over the weekend from a family member... and it is out of concern for others that I avoided contact with the outside world.

But my exam for my Supply Chain class was Monday night... (why is it I always get sick during exams?) and while I of course will not be the curve breaker.. I did not do as horribly as I was worried about. The practice exams consisted of about 80% math.. and not just any math.. but

and it only got worse. But the final had very little math on it.. as if almost to say "I tortured you, Luke, on the homework.. I will make the final all essay questions." Which I can BS my way through well enough. So one exam down.. just one more tomorrow night.

One nice thing about being sick is catching up on tv and movies you haven't watched in awhile. Which I did. Not much else you can do, so why not watch 5 hours of Lost or 3 hours of Law & Order? Also got to watch Ice Age 2 (not very good) and started to watch "The New World" before I fell asleep from the dreary monotone of the voiceovers. Ugh. Who thought that was a good idea?

This weekend should be enjoyable.. seeing how its a 3-day holiday weekend.. and a couple great movies to see... "The DaVinci Code" and "X:Men 3" Sounds good to me. Even if I sound horrible.

Shooting the dead horse

Well, there went all my plans at a productive weekend of studying. I got sick and I feel absolutely miserable at the moment. But I have a final exam tonight and god forbid I miss a day of work. Oh jeeze, I just answered the phone and I sound like a dying horse.. whatever that would sound like. Well, me at the moment. I hate it when you don't realize how bad you sound because... you don't talk outloud in the morning before work. Or at least I don't. Stop calling me.

So after being exhausted by watching an hour of home movies and collapsing into bed around 1am, I had to get up at 6am to make it to campus to help out with commencement. It was pouring... raining and so cold that you just wondered why they didn't cancel the whole event. But our task? To wipe off the seats of the 1,000 graduates and also the 3,000 guests before they arrived. Plus to stuff programs and help direct visitors to bathrooms/seats/viewing areas/etc. Fun! Well, it would have been if it wasn't 40 degrees and raining still! We finally got a break around 8:45a and a couple of us wiped off the graduates' seats again and tried our best to try the programs. The ceremony was still nice.. but no matter how much we tried.. nothing is perfect.

I met up with David and his family for brunch and enjoyed one last hurrah with him before he moves to Connecticut. All morning my throat was on fire and I could feel myself getting more and more sick. After lunch, I headed off to meet my family at Watkins Glen and then off to Taughannock Falls for a couple hours of hiking, sight seeing and picture taking. Such a beautiful park.. and Seneca & Cayuga Lake are stunning in the Spring. I've uploaded a bunch of the pictures, and you'll see them over the next couple of posts. Or if you're Missy, you've cheated and seen them already. ;)

It was great hanging out with Jered and his wife the last couple of days. It really was. I said this before... but while it's nice to be kids... I think being adults really closes the bonds between family members.. be it siblings or cousins. You appreciate each other so much more and not let distance keep you apart.

Which led to another meal at my mother's place. My last meal with them, even though the family is getting together again tonight. Sucks.. having classes and finals getting in the way. It's times like these I wish I weren't in school. But I know it isn't for naught. Laughing.. joking... reviewing all the pictures. The family getting drunk on the 4 bottles of wine floating around. Had a good time... all the while getting more and more sick. My mother.. being the mother she is.. picked up on my dizziness and labored breathing and brought me pink and blue pills (the Matrix?) and called me about 4 times on my drive home to Rochester. I felt like I was going to fall asleep about 10 times.. and barely made it in the door before collapsing into bed with my clothes still on.

Not a good day today. My boss just ordered me to go home.. but I can't... I have a final exam tonight and I need to study. If I go home.. I'll just sleep. Sigh. Hope for the best. This class is the one I'm not too thrilled with.

When's our next meal?

Anyway... it was a very nice weekend.... very. Cousins are still in town but I cannot spend today or tomorrow with them, and they leave tomorrow. Friday, though, Cindy and I headed out to lunch at the Dinosaur BBQ, this was after I sat at work beyond when I wanted to leave just to finish up my tasks. Food was fantastic.. of course.. and remind me to pay Cynthia back the $25 I borrowed from her this weekend. It's hard to think at the moment. After lunch we visited High Falls and enjoyed the waterfall in downtown and walked around a couple shops and bought some souvenirs. We got back to my place in time for me to make another quick apple pie before I dropped her off at the airport. See, now, the pies were for the family dinner that night.. which I raced to as soon as my 2nd pie was done.

It's funny how all my family does is eat when out-of-state family is in town. They might get the idea in their heads that we constantly eat 5-course feasts. But I stayed the night and thus was infected with whatever cold/flu/thing my aunt had as I slept on her couch in the frigid cold. So we moved on to our next meal/feast and then my grandmother and I visited several yard sales in which people placed inexpensive unsellable crap on their lawns and expected us to buy it. Okay, I bought 1 baking pyrex dish.. just because I totally dropped one of mine a month ago.

And thus the shopping bug hit me and I spent the next four hours finding great deals and buying new clothes at the outlet retail mall infamous for its name brands at rock bottom prices. Do I sound like their spokesperson yet? But I've wanted to replace my blue coat for like 10 years now.. and I finally did.. with two jackets. I'm very pleased.. not only with that but with the new pair of jeans I found that exactly match my old pair that I ruined a couple months ago. And for $10. You can't beat that. So yeah.. my trunk, backseat and front seat are filled with shopping bags and barely enough room for me.

Which led to the next feast/meal thing at another aunt's home in which we watched old movies from when the cousins/siblings were all around 9-12 and I was in my "don't film me" stage. My other aunt wants me to convert about 60 hours of tape to DVD for her. Yeah... I'll get right on that.

Fun with Dick & Cindy (wait, no, that's not right)

Tuesday came and so did Cynthia. She flew in at 11am and I used my ingenuity to park illegally at work for the day so I could pick her up, wisk her off to lunch and then wisk myself back to work since I have to work EACH day this week. Cindy and I have been hanging out, she's been sleeping mostly and I've been working and being crazy-like. Tuesday evening Jake, Rachael, Cindy and I headed out to Mexican food at San Jose and then returned to play 5 hours of board games until the wee hours of the morning. Rachael, whom was seriously uninterested in playing with us.. kicked all our butts and left us wondering. If she hadn't won, I would have my next turn. Arrggh! You'd think I'd learn by now.

Wednesday felt like a hurricane. Fast.. furious and exhausting. I spent the day scouring through paperwork at working trying to get done so I could go home early. There was a huge picnic at work with hundreds of people and Cynthia joined me on campus for lunch. I snuck out a heaping dish of food for her, even though she just picked at it and mainly stuck to the cheese cubes. But with chicken, burgers, dogs, mac salad, chips, fruits, cheese, ice cream and such.. there was no end to the options. I dutifully got her everything. We headed off to the Lilac Festival which is a lively and beautiful event each year.. even if its rained EVERY DAY this year for it. It was cold, but still very sunny and nice for our 2 hour walk through the park. I took a million pictures (now on display for you over the next few days) and I made Cindy try the Rochester Garbage Plate which of course looks gross and is prolly a million fatty calories.. but tastes oh so good.

A vender tried to sell me some Adirondack chairs for my patio, which I almost did, and we waited in line for fresh kettlecorn for over 35 minutes to walk out of Highland Park with a bag the size of a 12 year old. It's so great to live within walking distance of the festival, but unfortunately, hardly any venders are there during the week. I have vowed to return this weekend to get Cynthia some souveniers... that is.. if I can pull myself away from studying for my final on Monday. After the park, we headed off to the mega-Barnes&Noble in Pittsford for a couple hours and capped it off with some Coldstone ice cream. Man oh man. Eating, eating eating is the tune of the week.

Thursday I only worked a 1/2 day (as I will today as well) and we headed off to dim sum at Golden Port in downtown to satisfy one of the many cravings Cindy has had this week. (We added Dinosaur BBQ as the next craving to satisfy on Friday.) We headed off to the Jell-O Museum down in LeRoy, NY. Who knew Jell-O was created here? And where did the O come from? Oddly enough, it was to mimic other popular brands at the time... Coffee-O and Sugar-O. Heh.

Last night was filled to the brink with family stuff. Cindy and I headed off to gather with my family to visit with out-of-state cousins that were in town, up from Memphis. After about 5 hours, we finally made it back to Rochester to end the night with an apple pie I had made (per request) and Fun with Dick and Jane which was actually really funny. So yeah, I'm exhausted but I'm still kicking. Cindy leaves today at 4ish and while I'm going to miss her.. I have so much work to do this weekend for my upcoming final exams... plus more family stuff. Eeek.

Week of the Cindy

Having a ton of fun with Cindy. Too busy to blog! Be back soon, promise!

Party party party

I was able to cut out of work a little early on Friday after an all day meeting ended abruptly. Jake bought this new game called Nexus Ops which he's been trying to get me to play for the last several weeks. Well, he kicked my butt pretty hard.. more than likely because it was stacked pretty hard against me. After losing and vowing to never play another board game again in my life, we headed down to Rochester's Bohemia, a.k.a. South Goodman Street to a giant building filled to the brim with artists' studios of all sorts. They were having an open house studio event.

For the next 3 hours, we visited with and looked at artists and their art in all shapes, sizes and sorts. Rachael has her studio up on the 2nd floor in this tiny sandbox of a room she shares with two of her artist friends. There were performers, music, paintings, sculptures, multimedia pieces, clothing and photos spread through 4 floors and probably 25 studios. For every piece I enjoyed the reaction was "of course, that's what you try to do" and for every piece I didn't like, it was "well, you're just wrong." Hmp. But it was enjoyable and refreshing. I got cornered by this older woman that wanted to chat politics and terrorism while I was looking at her clay pots and sculptures. I snuck out as soon as someone else walked in.

Saturday bright and early I headed east to meet up with my mother and grandmother for a pre-Mother's day event at the fairgrounds. There was a local plant exchange which my grandmother always gets so hyped up about. We brought some 30 plants and left with about the same. The folks from the ARC showed up and took all the good plants, but I ended up leaving a couple new items for my cat to chew up. I took them out for breakfast, gave my mother this huge dark cherry jewelry box and headed off to the party at Deb's place. I always enjoy partying with Deb because all her friends look forward to seeing me. It's only right that all my friends love Deb. Hours and hours later, I left for home with a full belly and a car full of green growy things.

Next party... started at 7. Had a quick nap in between.. thank god.. but this one was a bit more spiffy.. dressed up... the theme was silver and black. For the next 6 hours.. a lot of dancing.. a lot of eating.. a lot of jokes. Was a wonderful time.. even if I was introduced as "friend of the husband". That's what I get.

Cue me sleeping for the next TWELVE HOURS and waking up too late to do much of any homework before finding out my group wasn't meeting at all... and they had sent the notice.. including requests for homework submission to my work email the day before. Such a slacker... ugh. I need to get on the ball. I have final exams coming up next week (conveniently 3 weeks before the end of the terms??) and I'm getting nervous about my Supply Chain Management course. I ended up quickly BSing a couple pages before collapsing and watching several movies I had grabbed: Underworld Evolution, Brokeback Mountain and The Family Stone. Not exactly blockbusters, but they passed the time until the next party at 7.

Which I arrived late for. Which ended up being almost an hour before everyone else got there. But wow! This apartment was amazing... I'd so consider staying in Rochester a couple more years if I could live in a place like that. Comparably.. my apartment is a little hole in the wall. But the party.. food.. people.. conversation and music was awesome and stayed until about midnight before heading home.

A busy busy weekend. This week is going to be horribly busy and annoying.. but we shall survive.. and Cynthia is flying up to see me in a day or so. She'll cheer me up.. and so will my out-of-state relatives flying in on Thursday...

Living it up with J, N, D, K & R

No, not a weird acronym meaning "Just Never Drink, Karate & Run", but been very busy with those people. It's getting down to the wire for my office, counting down the days and ushering out the old in favor of the new. People are stressing, the moodiness alert level regularly goes up to "High" but luckily, it has not hit "Severe" yet. I even had to raise it when the creator of the chart barked at someone on the phone. Hey, you're not immune either.

Class last night was fascinating, and plus, I only attended half, so it was that much better. We had a guest speaker from a local company that does business with a host of companies all over the country for marketing through email. Not so much spamming, but targeted marketing campaigns. I've actually been trying to write a piece of software that does a lot of what these guys do. They charge several hundred dollars plus a bandwidth fee... aka.. they rake in the money for little to no interaction with their clients. Since I'm majoring in internet commerce and marketed for entrepreneurship.. all this stuff is right down my alley. It's all very cool.

Last night David, Nirmala and I went out for a goodbye hurrah dinner at the Distillery and spent a good couple of hours there laughing, chatting and reminiscing about the past 6 months. Like when David and I went off in search of free food on campus and landed ourselves at an Archimedes birthday party, or when we thought he locked his keys in his car and we had to have security come open the doors only to find out (even after asking him to triple check) they were in his pocket, or the 2 hour day-of-exam study sessions in my office.
We still don't know if David is going to graduate... but if so, he's gone in about a week. He promises not to write, but to keep in touch. We're going to just add him to our homework group emails just to include him. He never replied to them anyway.

Got home to a very angry kitty, whom promptly jumped in my partially unzipped bag and proceeded to judge me from afar. My soreness has finally worn away and today looks to be a fantastic day... With the weekend only a couple hours away... how can you not be in a good mood?

Movies tonight, Mother's Day breakfast tomorrow, party tomorrow @ noon, brithday party tomorrow @ 7p, homework on Sunday @ 1p, another birthday party Sunday at 7pm. Do I even get a weekend of downtime? Who cares!

Where's the cache? There's the cache!

I am so sore. After being begged into spending time with Jake, which didn't require too much begging, but that email helped, he and I spent all of Tuesday evening together, trouncing through the woods of western Rochester, looking for tiny caches in the middle of swamps, thickets, prickers and canal paths. I stupidly, as always, wore shorts and sandals, and by the end of the night (10p) I was bleeding, limping, itching and cold. But we found several locations and had a good ol' time. A lot of neat little areas in the middle of nowhere. We found a stone wall that was several miles long in the middle of these woods, and we repeatedly had to cross it and jump over rivers and streams and hop through mudpits and crawl through pricker thickets. Fun stuff.

All the while I didn't do my homework, which my group was expecting from me by Monday night. Oops? Carrie just emails me with a weekly "Hey slacker, where's the homework?" Hey.. I always do it.. I just wait til the last minute. Speaking of waiting until the last possible second, David, my homework partner I had so much fun with last quarter, visited my office today and caught me up on everything going on. Apparently he's required to graduate with a 3.0 B average, and he has a 2.97 due to a Simon School class he took with me. The professor LOST his midterm and penalized him for it. Poor guy. He's going to petition everything and see if he can still graduate.. since he has a job offer and would start there in 3 weeks. Yikes. That last ended like 2 months ago.. and he waited until now. Ugh.

But him, Nirmala and I are headed out to dinner tomorrow to celebrate one way or another, try to enjoy one last outing together and laugh it up. We're gonna miss David. Gonna try to get a group shot of the 3 of us together tomorrow. (Which also means I'm skipping class again.. heh.)

Bought a really nice large jewelry box thing for my mother for Mother's Day this weekend. Got a lot of neat plans for the weekend, which include a get-together at Deb's at noon on Saturday and a family dinner taking my mom out somewhere. Sunday night a party and catching up with Rachael for some more planting. She apparently purchased $60 more of plants at the public market this weekend and has taken the whole "gardening" thing to heart. So I wanna help her finish up, cause really.. it's time for it all to be in the ground.

Work is a lot of fun lately.. a lot of goofing around, being jolly, laughing it up and teasing. It's a joy to go in each day, and I'm busy enough that each day ends faster than it begins. The summer is almost here.. which means extreme slooooowness, but until then, gotta enjoy it while it lasts. Plus having a fridge in my office now stocked with soda, water, and fruit is a pleasure.

Gotta jet.. night now.

Did you tell the brats?

So very very busy. Barely.. enough.. time... to skip class. Yeah, skipped class last night. Been hanging out with a bunch of cool kids the last couple of days. Gonna try to blog tonight. After I recooperate from the 3 mile run last night. Email from Jake:

Why are you ignoring me now? Are you mad? Is it something I said? Can you ever forgive me? See, the thing is, I’ve had a rough time lately and I guess I needed a punching bag. My grandma died. My dog bit me. I’m losing my beautiful straw-colored hair. They cancelled my favorite TV show. I found out I have colon cancer. I lost 9 of my fingers in a boating accident. Someone sent me a virus over AIM. I heard a story in the news where this guy killed a puppy. My bagel was burned this morning. I have more hair on my nipples than I used to. This girl that I was seeing isn’t actually a girl. I failed to win the National Hotdog-Eating Championships. And, to top it all off, I’m not Irish! So, you can see why I was snappy earlier. I’m sorry.

Keeping America Safe

Eeek. Like a whole week has gone by. Here I am, Sunday morning. Reminds me of last year when I posted maybe 3-4 times a month. Dunno.

The week has been a good one. Things calmed down. Class went well. The weather got warmer, then colder, then warmer. I've been doing homework. I've been working odd hours. My mother came up and visited me. Had dinner. Saw a movie.. or two.. or three. My sister is staying with me for a week now, but I'll be lucky to see her 10 minutes all week. But we did watch a marathon of Lost last night. Seriously... WHAT happened to Michael?? I knew something was going on (after Alison's comments all week) but I was blown away.

Friday, Katie, Carrie and I went out to lunch at Aja Noodle, which is a really great asian-style stir-fry place down the road from me. Carrie, my classmate and homework study buddy, always has such entertaining, wild and scandalous stories to tell. She's usually whispering them in my ear during class, but Katie doesn't usually get to hear them. Such crazy things happening in her office... love affairs between the boss and his assistants (he's married), self-made home porn shorts on the office digital camera, love triangles between coworkers... it's a little bit different than the going-ons in my office. We laughed at how nothing could be compared to her office daily-goings-on.

But we do have a new grumpiness threat assessment level for our office. It rose from "Elevated" to "High" on Friday, but then dropped back to "Guarded" toward the end of the day. Pretty nifty. I apparently miss out on a lot of action seeing how my office it in another part of the building.

Gonna try to get outside today... hopefully it will stay warm. My digital camera has been returned to me, so I can start taking some more shots (and stop using old shots from February like the one from above), plus I plan to take some mid-week days off this summer and go out in the middle of nowhere and enjoy nature, take a bajillion photos and just relax. I can't wait.

Nightmare Of You

In The Bathroom Is Where I Want You
Nightmare Of You

Break it out, just break it out
Don't hesitate the dilate
What is your name? What do you do?
I'm not that kind of man
But I'll make an exception for you

We're flexed and pressed for time alone
Don't stall in the stall
I want to do a little, I want to do it all
But now wait, I'm a gentleman-in-training
Wait, wait, I'm a professional in feigning
love...

Voluptuous and finely cut
What will it take to get you up
and dance with me in wistful heat
In this little club between A and B?

In the bathroom is where I want you
Against the graffiti walls
We know no love at all
And just to see your body in a place so tacky
Well, there's no better irony in my own depravity
Oh, but go slow...

I do want to fall in love
But I just don't know how to...

Too much talk of migraines and aneurysms

What? I'm supposed to "record" my comings and goings? Supposed to "log" the details of my life? This is what I was meant to do, huh? Sometimes I forget, sometimes I just avoid it. Or sometimes you screw up bad enough you just want to avoid the computer for awhile. That phase lasted maybe 5 hours. But I'm back!

I met my group at Starbucks on Sunday, which was freakin hilarious. Whenever I've met any homework groups, we've always met in the study rooms at the school. Quiet. You can talk without shouting. It works. But at Starbucks, I felt like we were competing for attention and all the while being uncool drinking my bottle of diet coke. One of my group members had her babysitter call and cancel on her, so she brought her 3 kids! The one was a baby, which kept spitting up and making noises but had the biggest eyes you'd ever seen. Finally the guy behind the counter asked the kids to STOP running around and jumping on the chairs. All the while, we debated Blockbuster Video and the coming threats of Reel.com and Netflix. Exciting, I know.

Meredith, one of my group members, is graduating in June. Well, actually, this re-enforces my belief that I'm in a class a little ahead of my skill level. When I registered for it, it yelled at me and warned me I may be jumping ahead. Well, seeing how almost every classmate in that (hellish) Monday class is graduating in a month.. and I'm still a YEAR+ away... yeah, I'm a moron. But Meredith just got a $110,000 job in NYC working for Lord&Taylor. Awesome. Gives me some hope that all this effort isn't for naught.

Rachael and I spent about 3 hours planting, hoeing and digging in the dirt for her flower gardens that afternoon. The weather was beautiful and I felt so useful and happy digging in the dirt. Jake is pissed at me cause he thinks I'm trying to sleep with his wife... which I only further exacerbated throughout the evening as Rachael gave me hugs and glances. Ha. But he did try to make her jealous toward the end of night by neglecting his wife and begging me to play war games with him. We settled for watching a (very very odd) episode of "Big Love" which gave Jake the idea that I should marry Rachael's sister and Jake should marry my sister... there has to be easier ways to do it. I doubt Nola wants to marry Jake anyway.

Whew.

I now am beginning to understand about 5% of the pain that Laura and Cynthia go through with their migraines. I have migrated a coworker from a MAC to a PC over the last few days.. and the longer I work on it.. the larger the brain tumor I get behind my left eye. I feel it coming on.. and working on the issue for THREE hours Friday and FIVE hours straight Monday didn't help. I came in early this morning to give PC lessons and only discovered that the little brain aneurysm of mine kicks in with the slightest bit of stress.

Which leads me to the end of the day when I broke a very important application under my protection. I am desperately trying to finish my 3rd job (now that job #2 is done) so I can have a happy and quiet summer (taking two more classes, unfortunately) and worked on one of the 27 tasks left... and I made a slight error and overwrote my backups... so not only did I break it.. I had no way to restore it. I just pushed in my keyboard, turned off my music, got up, pushed in my chairs and left work. I was ready to jump off a bridge. But by tomorrow, our IT folks are restoring the files from backup, so all will be good for when I walk in at 9(ish).

Sigh. It's only Tuesday and I want another weekend.