October 2002

On Sunday, we went on a haunted hayride in Delaware (Chris, Al, Tomas, Mary, Dia, Lisa and I). The place was called Frightland, and the giant silo jack-o-lantern made it look pretty cool from afar. It wasn’t so nice, or scary, once we got a little closer, but it was worth the $15 for the half-hour hayride and getting scared exactly once each in the cornstalk maze.

No one wanted to go on any rides at the Frightland carnival. I can’t blame them since we waited for 45 minutes in the cold to get on the tractor-pulled flatbed. At least there was Torsion to entertain us, singing their renditions of pop songs. While the best part of their act may have been the Hershey’s miniatures they threw to us in our last 5 minutes in line, we did derive lots of conversation from the lead singer’s outfit: Was she or wasn’t she too chunky for that tight little outfit?

The ride itself wasn’t scary at all except for one thing here or there. That’s not to say that it wasn’t put together well. Alright, it wasn’t put together well in terms of the fear factor. However, it was obvious that the Frightland folks put a lot of time and effort into their production. There were different themed sets, and each part had exactly one thing that jumped out and “scared” us. It got a little predictable, but it was a nice time overall. I could see little kids getting pretty freaked out, and at least it was more than a moving scarecrow and a spooky jack-o-lantern thrown on top of some bales of hay.

The ride set us bigger kids up for the maze, which wasn’t anything more than a short, completely dark path through some corn. the glare from the lights on the nearby highway made it hard to see anything, so when a little kid came charging at us smacking a stick around, Al and Tomas got pretty freaked out. There was also a really tall scarecrow in the center of a loop near the end, and it scared the bejezus out of Mary, Dia and me when it turned out to be a guy on stilts who came at us.

Later that night I started giving some thought to how I’d go about making a hayride really haunted. I think I have enough ideas to throw something together next year if I can drum up enough interest. Of course, it would probably take more dedication, capital, hard work, organization and planning than anyone I know is probably capable of, but it’s so far off now that I dare to dream. First of all, bump-in-the-night things have to be used sparingly and with impeccable timing, otherwise they just seem silly. Next, my list really only consists of one main idea.

It goes like this: Along the way, among the normal haunted hayride stuff, the tractor stops all of a sudden because he received a message on his walkie talkie. It turns out the ride is going to have to be stalled because some lady can’t find her kid. The tractor waits in the darkness for a minute while the lady comes walking from where the tractor left. And she doesn’t have a face! I’m kidding, that’s not really it. After she can’t find her kid on the wagon, the tractor turns around to take everyone back to the departure point. The ride’s been postponed, and everyone will be given a rain check. On the way back, there are kids playing in the cornfield, and the lady screams out angrily for her son to “get over here this instant”. I recommend my mom play this part as I recall she has a pretty good yelling voice, but then again it may be memories of the liquid soap I was forced to eat distorting my memories. Anyway, the kid comes over but gets a little too close to the tractor and — timed just right — the tractor runs over a small log the size of a boy. Toss in a faux bloody mess, a hysterical woman jumping off a moving tractor, and a driver that keeps on going, oblivious to everything that’s going on, and I think you have a pretty scary situation.

I realize that my scenario relies heavily upon great timing and even better acting, but it’s bound to be better than a guy claiming “Pain has a face… and I am Pain.” Though I do have to give props to the skeleton in the tree that threatened to defecate on us right before a stream of water flowed from his crotch. It was a surprise and by far the best part of the ride.

I couldn’t decide whether to give out Clorox or Drano this year, so I went with Life Savers which I think are a pretty safe bet. Besides being a nice choking hazard, they were all I could afford for $10 at the gas station on the way home. I just hope I don’t get more than 11 trick-or-treaters since the prices were high in pump-land. If I wasn’t stuck in god-forsaken New Jersey — first at said gas station for 20 minutes and then traffic for another 15 — I might have been able to swing by Acme for some good candy and have had a chance to give it out. As it stands now I’ve got a dead holiday on my hands.

The day wasn’t totally without excitement. There was an array of cupcakes, homemade chocolate/peanut butter candies, and other baked stuff when I got to work. There was also a birthday party for all us Octobers, which was a nice surprise even if the cake had too much icing and I was already full from the other stuff.

Okay, running into the gas station convenience store wasn’t a total waste of time because I just got my first trick-or-treater. It was some 5-year-old in a Dorothy costume with her parents. Not sure if it was worth running down the stairs, so maybe it’s for the best if the evening goes quickly.

I only have to last until 8:00 p.m., as that is apparently the deadline for permitted visitors. I also had to hang a paper orange pumpkin in my window to show that I was a participant in the festivities. Lame as hell. What ever happened to “give me some goddamn candy and I won’t egg your house”? Over 90 percent of the people in my neighborhood aren’t being very neighborly. Hell, they’re being downright un-American. Cockasses. There’s no “opting out” of Halloween. Next year I’m egging every house that has a light on and isn’t giving out candy.

The second group just came. I got a bumblebee, a frog, and three others that I couldn’t make out. I got to say Happy Halloween and give out candy after all, and I got a little exercise from running up and down the stairs.

Now I just got a girl who was probably around 14 years old. She had a mask on at least, so I gave her a roll of Life Savers.

This just in: I’m out of candy! Dammit I knew I should have gotten some sooner. I think one of the four kids that just stopped by was a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle, but that couldn’t be right, could it? I was just starting to like the idea of annoying my downstairs neighbors by creaking the steps every 10 minutes, too; served those grinches right. Maybe I’ll invite myself over to Ross’s place to leech off his holiday cheer on my way to pick up Dia. I feel like such a grinch sitting here with my sign down, hiding from little children, not seeing the latest Halloween fashions.

The kids will have to skip my apartment and go their merry ways. Until they get to Matt’s house, that is — he’s giving out Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups with razor blades. He told me he likes to keep it old-fashioned.

Without further ado…

Hager’s bachelor party photos [galore].

I just looked at the page for the fist time since editing the photos, exporting the index page from iPhoto, and ftping the .tar file to my site. It’s kind of barebones and I forgot a title, and it isn’t real pretty, but hot damn the photos are.

I think my editing was worth the effort. I cut out a bunch of mainly-black boxes, and a few of empty rooms and what not. Again, for the unabridged collection (it really isn’t worth it) people can borrow the CD from Hager.

If I’m going to keep posting photos and media up here, I really have to spend some time designing a new index page, organizing photo links, and prettying it up a bit. This will do for now, though.

My computer has once again become a useful tool rather than a plaything. I’m currently editing the bachelor party photos and they should be online by tonight. I had to forego an additional hour of much-needed sleep this morning to get the ball rolling, but hopefully it will have been worth it.

IPhoto is a really sweet organizer, but I’m editing most of the pictures in Photoshop. By editing, I mean resizing, red-eye reduction, and cropping my thumb out of a lot of pictures. The only annoying thing is that iPhoto keeps a copy of the original in its library folder and doesn’t recognize the new file size even after I delete the larger file and restart the application. Thanks anyway, but I don’t need 75 4-megabyte pictures of Hager on my machine, no matter how funny he looks.

I’m going to be late for work if I don’t get moving, but if I don’t have the pictures up by tonight, everyone can always bug Hager now because I gave him the cd-rom.

I was walking past a printer at work today, an Infoprint 4000 to be exact — it runs a dozen different elements that could fall into disarray at the slightest touch. One of the pressroom operators had the cover open as he was fixing something and I was surprised to see that one of the rollers was being held in place with a rubber band and a paper clip.

Naturally, this reminded me of my own adventures in fixing things. Last night on the way to a haunted hayride with Dia, AlMary, ChrisLisa, and Tomas, my gas pedal stopped working right. I had to drive all the way using mainly the cruise control buttons. The gas pedal works in that it can sustain a speed, but the pedal couldn’t open up the valve enough to get any acceleration; once I set a cruising speed of 70 I could hit the “resume accel.” button to get up to speed on the highway.

This morning I slept in instead of taking the car to the shop, and it turned out for the best because I came up with a more permanent solution. Looking at the pedal, I could see a wire sticking out; there was too much slack and it wasn’t retracting underneath the floor of the van. Basically, I had to push the pedal way into the carpet to get the cable to pull the valve open even a little bit. Simple solution: Tie a knot in the cable so it the pedal catches it before it hits the floor. The only side effect is that it’s extremely sensitive and requires more finesse now.

She requires a little more of me every day but I love her just as much as I did before.

So far my day of nothing is right on schedule. I’m watching Trading Spaces now and I have three other episodes right behind it. This one is by far the most interesting episode in a long time, not because of the projects or the designers, but because the houses belong to soccer players for the Philadelphia Charge professional women’s soccer team. They’re hot as hell too. Throw in Paige Davis and Amy Wynn Pastor (hot, sex, nude/naked, felching, bent over a coffee table while it’s being built!!!) and you’ve got an episode that more than makes up for the shitty job the designers did. A giant pop art rendition of Hildy’s face on the wall? Fugly as hell.

Tonight we’re going on a haunted hayride somewhere in Delaware. I’ve usually found this type of thing to be pretty tame, but there’s a haunted corn maze and at the very least it should be a fun road trip.

Dia’s out right now shopping at Ross, picking up my scale at Target, and getting some quarters to dry our laundry whereever she can get some. The significance of her trip is that it’s her first solo. Even though she drove into the city on Friday in the dark and rain, she had Ross and me with her. She said she was definitely nervous about going somewhere by herself, so I hope she doesn’t kill anyone. No calls yet from my cell, so she’s either doing just fine or she’s dead. I’d be fine either way, since the latter would give me something cool to blog about even though it would mean paying more rent by myself.

I guess I’d be a little upset about having to put the Scale Section of my blog on hold, too.

Jackass was worth seeing, despite what I thought and despite what Dia still maintains.

Seeing some of the so-called humor skits were dumb, like the guy dancing around wearing only a thong in Japan, but the other parts more than make up for them. Some of it was excruciating to watch, like paper cuts between fingers, man eating urine sno-cone, and toy car up rectum.

Rip Taylor should have been killed in a stunt gone awry instead of being allowed to go unscathed, but Henry Rollins’ “Off-Road Tattoo” and an appearance by Butterbean were definite draws. It’s pretty obvious to everyone what the movie is about — it’s basically an extra long episode of the same name but with slightly more swearing and less clothing.

After a whirlwind week, I’m starting to settle down.

To do this, I had to take baby steps. Friday night, I went out to see Comedian and to Sugar Mom’s afterward. There were a bunch of us that met at Lamberti’s first, then some more showed up for dessert, then Mike Lyden and Nathan turned out to be in the theater and hit the bar with us. I didn’t stay for very long since I was beat from a week of pushing myself at work, but I still had a lot of fun.

Saturday, Matt came over and I got all riled up as we watched The Amazing Race I saved from Wednesday. Then we tried to run to the Salvation Army but it was closed, so we went to the Oxford Valley Mall food court then over to catch The Ring at Neshaminy. It was just my luck that it was sold out, so we saw Jackass instead.

My plans for Sunday afternoon mostly include laundry, television, and some blogging after I shop for few necessities: A1 sauce and a bunch of other shit I can’t think of right now.

The tiny details of today are more interesting though. Matt stuck a Chick-fil-A cup over my Dodge hood ornament and it wouldn’t budge. I bet him a dollar it would fall off before the movie and so I lost a dollar when it survived 80 mph and some hairpin turns; at least I didn’t try my 25-mph-in-reverse idea to flip it off the other way. After I returned home after the movie I realized my cell phone must have fallen out in the theater, so I had to drive all the way back to look for it. The phone was at the customer service desk, but the damn cup didn’t even come off at 90 mph and it’ll have to stay on the van until tomorrow’s shopping trip or some nosybody comes along, whichever comes first.

Ah, and I just remembered the important item on that shopping list: a scale. I’m losing weight now that I’m no longer immobile, so I need to keep track of how I’m doing. I think I can get down to under 220 pounds by X-mas, but only time and a scale will tell.

My phlegm has almost found the rest of its way out, though there are still a few pockets I’m finding every now and then. It was actually fun while it lasted because I got to blog a little more. Well, that’s why I’m here now.

I’ve come to say the party is over for this week. I had held out hope of getting my hits back up by posting more, but the dream is dead for this month. October will simply have to be a dud.

The reason: Work is picking up speed. I’ve been asked to work 12-hour days all week and even Saturday too, though I’ve reserved the right to go to Six Flags instead if I can get Alex to come down from Boston. It’ll probably be this hectic for the rest of the year, which means a few changes.

First of all, the house is going to get messier, even moreso than usual. Also, Dia’s going to be taking the bus every day that she’s not arranging for rides via Ross or Ellen from her classes. The ReplayTV is going to be working overtime; a VCR couldn’t do the things I need done this week. No one believes me but I only watch a few select shows, certainly no more than your average joe.

So as I start getting ready for another day of working until 10 p.m., I’ll have to think of ways to retain my sanity. Finding the energy is even harder than finding the time I need to shop for groceries and eat dinner and do laundry. I have my iPod to keep me company after hours, and I’ll be making double my usual paycheck this week, so I’m excited about the opportunity. There just won’t be a lot to read here until Saturday.

I can’t believe I found it easier to write when I had mucous running down my face.

Dia passed her driving test. It took a lot of work, and by work I mean prepping the van this morning for a visual inspection. In all seriousness, she’s a pretty good driver — which can be attributed directly to me.

I was a little worried this morning since we had plenty of bad omens. First, Dia had trouble simply pulling into a parking space outside of the Driver’s License Center; she got frustrated and instead parked about 10 spaces away where no-one else was parked. Then, after waiting in line we were told to drive the car to the front of the building and wait for Dia’s turn to be tested. Wouldn’t you know it, it took about five minutes to get the car started. Once we were able, we got into the line of cars and watched two of the five people in front of us fail; one lady merely tapped the cones when she parallel parked, the part Dia was most afraid of.

She did alright though and the rain even held off long enough to not pose a problem. The only criticism from Dia’s tester was that she went too fast around the turns. Considering my only problem with Dia is that she’s too damn slow, that’s fine by me. I hope she can keep up the good work.

Punch-Drunk Love is one of the best kind of movies, where people in the audience walk out because of their warped expectations. As with South Park and She’s So Lovely, there were more than a few families in the audience ready to see the latest delightful comedy with their favorite star, in this case Adam Sandler. The movie is about a small man (Barry, played by Adam Sandler) with anger issues who works hard at making something with his life. Most of his problems stem from dealing with his seven intrusive sisters. A short while into the movie, Barry meets a woman (Emily Watson) and the events develop from there.

There are more than a few quirks to this movie, placing it’s cohesion somewhere between Paul Thomas Anderson’s other notables, Boogie Nights and Magnolia. Despite having more than its share of oddities, Punch-Drunk Love flowed pretty well and featured excellent performances by all involved. It boils down to a simple love tale and manages to be what lame critics deem a “delightul, heartfelt comedy”, but it is able to deliver more than the usual amount of unusual circumstances along the way.

I’m feeling better and better but you wouldn’t know it to look at me. I still can’t hear out of my left ear either, and I’ve spit into everything around me that can hold fluid: my bowl, tissues, a Star Wars glass, the pile of tissues itself, a popsicle wrapper, a plate… the list goes on. I’ve also got these super-boogers — constructed from the dark green phlegm coating my insides — that get caught on my nose hairs and won’t come out unless I use tweezers to rip the hair from the root. I think I just found a new eco-friendly, animal-friendly super glue. Right now my greatest hope is that I wake up tomorrow with a puddle of fluid on my pillow and I can hear again.

Matt came over to play XBox today since I was feeling slightly better. I even managed to get in all my shows before he did. The only unforseen problem was how I settled right into stay-at-home mode and ate way too much food, right down to the orange-cranberry bread that Dia had made for my potluck lunch at work. Even when I’m sick I manage to stuff my fat face.

Dia and I are headed out to see Punch-Drunk Love and have dinner tonight. Mary and Al were supposed to trek up here to join us, but Al got caught up at work so they’re coming over tomorrow instead. I’m thinking about having a grande olde affaire and making a slightly vegan turkey dinner out of it, complete with Settlers and movies (maybe even Point Break, Geof) and all. I’ll have to make a few calls tomorrow afternoon to gauge the interest.

Tomorrow morning is Dia’s driving test appointment. Even if she passes I don’t think she can afford the $200 a month to insure herself if she buys a car, but we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. I hope to hell that she passes because if I have to hang out one more time while she browses for shoes at Ross or Target I’m going to slit her throat.

I’m on eBay again, and if I’m not careful I could spend my entire Paypal cache. The Return of the Jedi glass picturing Jabba the Hutt I won arrived yesterday, completing that set; I paid $5 including shipping. I also just won the four-piece set of The Empire Strikes Back glasses for $14.75 total. All I’m missing are two Star Wars glasses to have them all. I’d only be one shy if Dia hadn’t broken the Luke Skywalker in August, reigniting my eBay frenzy.

I’ve also just won three McDonald’s collector’s glasses, and I’ve set my mind to getting them all. Grimmace, here I come….

I have just enough restraint to avoid seeking out the Muppets and Smurfs glasses — for now. I’m sure I could find these things cheaper at a thrift store but it’s so much easier to point and click. My laziness comes as a surprise to no-one, I’m sure.

Dan informs me that I had, in fact, been to the Spaghetti Warehouse before with him and GrAIg Cillufo (not to be confused with a GrEg). I still have trouble recalling the event, but me bugging the waitress to sit upstairs and then in the trolley car (both times to a quick rejection) sounds familiar. Dan claims it was also one of the nights that the waitress was so sick of bringing me Diet Cokes that she finally brought me a whole pitcher. If this was like other nights where I was brought an entire pitcher of soda, I eventually finished the whole thing and asked for another glass. Again, I still don’t remember eating here; in my defense, we did have dinner at a lot of different places so I shouldn’t be expected to remember them all.

The good thing about being unemployed all summer is that I know exactly how to handle a sick day. Not only is my whole television schedule worked out, I have the added bonus of being able to pause it all. Definitely comes in handy when Frank Sinatra is guest starring on Magnum, P.I.

I’m not enjoying my day at home as much as I used to, of course. The overtime I put in during the past two weeks just went right out the window and I was really excited about the annual potluck lunch I’m going to miss. The funny thing is that I could probably do my work, but I don’t look or sound real pretty right now. Better not to subject my new co-workers to the sounds of hacking up a lung.

Besides television, I was able to make a few phone calls today. The best was to one of my sisters. Since I get in trouble for giving specifics, I’ll just say that two of my sisters aren’t getting along right now. The one I spoke with sounded pretty razzled, but I manage to pick up a few snippets like “computers and dogs being held hostage”, “webcam stripping”, and “boisterousness in the bathroom”. I’ll let everyone mull these phrases over for themselves since I can’t elaborate.

I also called Verizon as planned. I have a new phone number now and even ditched the metropolitan package to save $10 a month. We rarely call out to the city, and when we do we have the cell that goes horribly underused (120 out of 500 minutes a month). The phone number change was free of charge this once, so if I get another dud I’m screwed. I cleared out my saved voicemail messages, two of which were funny ones for Barb from her redneck friends. My new life in the Verizon Phone Protection Program will be complete in 20 minutes.

I’m disconnecting my phone tomorrow morning, regardless of how horrible I feel. I get recorded messages at least twice a week for the bitch known as Barbara Bacorn and formerly known as 215-54-PUNCH. That’s my number now, and I don’t mind posting it since I’m changing it soon enough.

The first hint that something was up were the friendly calls from people for their friend Barb. A little annoying, but one by one most of them got the hint. Some were way more stupid, and continued to leave messages on our voicemail despite the fact that it says who you have called. I have this one lady’s message still saved for the next time Matt comes over.

When Matt was last over here, you see, I got another in a series of annoying calls from Mr. Brown. Or a recording of him at least. The only thing his message said was “You need to contact me at…”. The idea was that the debtors get so annoyed at being harassed that they pay his collection agency. It must work because I was furious. I kept calling and telling them that they had the wrong damn number, and finally one day they got the hint.

I was always hesitant to blog about Barb because I didn’t know how to spell her name correctly. Well, when I went to Circuit City and set up an account to buy the ReplayTV, the guy asked me, Mr. Bacorn, if my first initial was indeed “B”. For a second he even said he couldn’t sell me anything because I still owed them money. I got my hardware of course, and now I even have the spelling of the broad’s name.

Even the FBI called looking for Barb’s husband.

The final straw is Comcast, who are far less accomodating than Mr. Brown. They claim that there is absolutely no way they can change the phone number asssociated with Ms. Bacorn’s account and the $185 she owes. When I called the number left by the automatic messsage and entered my account ID (phone number), I almost screamed at the total I owed. The account rep who came on the line eventually explained the mix-up, and that’s where I am now — pissed off.

I had a pretty decent number and was just getting used to dialing it quickly. Now I have to get another one and I can’t even leave a forwarding number, since the debt collectors would just follow the trail of bread crumbs. Maybe the phone company can give me a tip as to where I can reach Barb; they can trust me to deliver the “important messages” that I’ve been receiving on her behalf.

This shade of green does not belong in a human being. I think I’m calling in sick tomorrow, sick leave or not. Kelly was out today, and Keith was looking as awful as I was. Unlike him though, I stuck it out until the end of the day. At first I was just stuffy, but now I can’t hear out of my left ear, my left lung has shooting pains whenever I stand up, and the phlegm has relocated to my chest.

I’m going to break down and get some medicine when I pick Dia up from her GMAT course at the Sheraton. I’m stopping for bread mix for a potluck lunch at work tomorrow (in case I wake up miraculously cured), so it won’t be out of my way. I feel worse than I did walking through K-Mart with a plunger after Hager’s bachelor party, so the white trash at Acme better not mess with me while I’m loaded full of slime.

I have a cold, and I’m not eligible for six leave for another five months and 11 days. Ouch. I’ll at least have to bring a box of tissues to work with me, the bathroom paper towels I’ve been using are killing me.

I was going to complaing about my paycheck not being in my bank account yet but it showed up this morning. I keep forgetting that just because Commerce Bank is open on Saturday does not mean transactions are taking place, plus Monday was a holiday so that was another setback. If it weren’t for the facts that I had $12 in my savings account (that’s a lot for me right now) and Wawa allows cash to be withdrawn in $10 increments, I would have had to skip lunch yesterday. I’ve just been too tired/forgetful to make lunches for Dia and myself lately.

Dia is taking care of me right now, so things aren’t all bad. Three loads of laundry across the street mean I won’t have to recyle anymore, at least until two weeks from now. Soup’s on the way and will… hold on. — Dia where’s my soup?! — and will be here in time for The Amazing Race which I’m so excited about that I’ll watch live, commercials and all.

Got a few items for today:

First letter (s-mail): “Robert Rudderow, Your License/Operating Privelege is suspended indefinitely. You may be considered for restoration if you complete the following requirements: ‘Default to be cleared’. Amount owed: $165.20. [With love,] The State of New Hampshire”

In my excitement of getting a speeding ticket that was less than $250 I guess I forgot to pay it. Dia doesn’t think she picked up the tab on this one either. Time to pay the piper.

Second letter (e-mail): “Everything you said was true about Yoplait. General Mills owns Columbo as well as Yoplait.

The main thing you overlooked in this commercial… Woman licking pink lids. Think about that for a sec. Ok now for the payoff.. at the end of the commercial they said ‘Together we can lick breast cancer’. Isnt that just a great slogan? Who are the ad wizards that came up with this one?

Im searching all over to find a media file of this commercial. No luck yet. -Jay Stansel”

This was written in response to my post about lame commercials, and constitutes my first fan letter. I didn’t catch the slogan about licking breast cancer, that is a pretty asinine slogan. I wrote back saying that the next time I see the Yoplait commercial on television I’ll go into my ReplayTV and get the mpeg for him. I’m not sure I have the space on my hard drive to work with video right now, but then again I never see commercials so I won’t see it on anyway. So — my first random letter. Sweet.

I need more late night friends. Driving home from the show I saw two guys walking into a Dunkin’ Donuts and got really jealous. The only thing keeping it from turning into depression was the knowledge that I was at least out and about at midnight myself, and had just seen one of the greatest shows ever in Gloucester City, N.J. As a side note, I ran into Jeff Fields there as well. I made a mental list of the people who I thought I might run into last night while I was waiting, and he didn’t make it even though I remember now talking to him about the show they headlined in Princeton. He’s in a band now, and filled me in on how he and Gus were doing, listened to my updates and about how I haven’t called Gus’s contact at some Greek-American newspaper yet, and told me how he Gus had sent him the link to my blog and that he had been reading a bit over the summer. So a shout-out to the readers I didn’t realize I had, I’ll try a little harder to not be as boring.

But back to my raison d’aller. The best shows are always the ones where you can feel the music. Not the touchy-feely, make-me-want-to-barf, let’s-just-BE way either. The kind where you don’t want to breathe because it might interrupt the bass reverberating in your chest; actual thunder under your skin. That’s what most of the show was like.

I’m not a big fan of Shellac’s slower (dare I say poetic) songs at shows, but it was a nice set overall. I had forgotten all about their question-and-answer periods that peppered their last show I went to. Other than great music and a barely interesting performance by the Danielson Family (read: cult), there was some freak on the stage doing some hissy-fit/spasm thing and he allegedly ripped some girls nipple ring out (this point was raised during the aforementioned Q&A sessions with your host Bob Weston). Weston also exchanged some words with some guy standing right behind Yoni; the guy was apparently heckling most of the night, and seemed to have a problem with going outside of Philly to see a show. Not cool.

The best part of the night was the atmosphere. Oh Hara’s! is a three-story building which is pretty loose with the way they handle minors; it was nice to see a show that wasn’t being run like a concentration camp for once (though they did stamp my hand). The bands played on the third floor, and Steve Albini made it clear from the start that the little stage area was by no means a boundary line and that we could get as close as we wanted to so long as we didn’t knock the microphones into their teeth. It was definitely an intimate gathering so this didn’t pose a problem — with only a hundred people or so there wasn’t any need for crowd control.

The surest sign that I had a kick ass night: I can’t hear a damn thing except a constant ringing. Sweet, sweet show-deafness.

I reserve the right not to blog a whole lot today.

They were going to have donuts at work for me; they forgot. No big dea really, but slightly disappointing.

Matt wanted me to skip work to hang out with him today. It was tempting but I need the money for now. If only I’d had a few more weeks under my belt; right now I don’t even know how to contact my boss should I decide to stay home one day. It’s not an issue yet, since I went into work despite Matt’s pleas and felt guilty for several hours.

Also at work, my dad called. He loves the phone and I can’t stand it. I’m not even predicating this with a “he means well” disclaimer. I hate it when he calls me and demands to talk. This time it was even worse because I hate talking in a professional setting and amidst people I don’t know too well yet. Even worse, it’s about some guy who wants to mentor me on writing or Libertarianism or writing Libertarianism? This was something that definitely could have waited until later, espcecially since I said several times that I did not want to talk under those circumstances. Now I couldn’t possibly be any less interested. I’m really not bitter or anything, just extremely disappointed that I was forced to talk at work simply because I’m too polite to hang up.

I was also asked by my dad and Lauren last night to remove my mean remarks about her boyfriend. (My dad’s frustrated because Lauren thinks he’s been turning me against Rob.) To be fair, I have never met the guy but have been judging him solely on what he writes on his blog. So I deleted the two mean words I used to describe him but left the link so you can come to your own conclusions. I won’t be mentioning him any more here since I made a promise. I will say one last thing though: THE GUY CLAIMS HE CURED SOME KID’S CANCER! Alright, I’m going to be sick now.

Got in just as the first SNL skit was finishing up, and damn it was nice to replay just the first five minutes and catch up during commercials and while that dumb bitch Faith Hill was performing. It’s as if I’ve always had a ReplayTV, and it’s sweeter than Yoohoo.

Richard Cheese and Lounge Against the Machine played about an hour and a half set, and it was pretty damn good. There were only one or two songs I wanted to hear but didn’t, and Rob and I got autographed copies of the new album. I just finished ripping the disc to mp3, even though Dick gave a lame little lecture on file sharing. Apparently he doesn’t care that it’s the only reason I’ve bought his two CDs.

Also went to the Spaghetti Warehouse for dinner with Chris and Lisa. I’d never been there before and it was pretty good. SNL is sucking pretty hard right now, thank god it’s almost over; tomorrow I’m going to see The Transporter and The Rules of Attraction even though I don’t think they got great reviews. They’re worth a double sneak-in matinee at least.

A picture of (clockwise from top) my sister and her boyfriend as promised, my family at Cirque du Soleil, Dana and Lauren’s dog Chewbaca, another of Lauren and her boyfriend, and my sister with her hot friend also named Lauren.

Since a picture’s worth a thousand words I could be set through the end of the month, but I don’t want my number of hits to drop any lower. E-mail me for prints.

Posted on Greg’s blog. Chin up, Greg.

I have the same dreams I’ve had since childhood: getting run over by a tank and becoming a slowly spinning manhole cover, drowning in a pizza shop with those wooden bars separating the rows of tables, peeing in a corner on a mechanical gadget because I know it’s the only think that will wake me up. Or is it? Because I soon remember (and just in time, too) that blinking my eyes is all I have to do instead. Then it’s on to the next day and not just so I can look forward to the next night’s dreams either. The only chance I have to create new dreams, which I am only occasionally able to do, is to have a day full of experiences both good and bad. That’s the reason for living, to dream.

I’m typing away while my moon goddess sleeps on the couch. Time to finish this up so I can get to bed; I’ve got movies to see tomorrow. Time for a little stream of consciousness action.

work rocks. i tried to keep my birthday under wraps since i’m new at work but it came up somehow and i’m getting donuts brought in on monday. have to share my special day with that hack columbus. matt’s scared about something or pretending to be. though the fact that he really won’t talk about whatever’s on his mind says a lot. maybe if i say here how he already told me, he’ll do it. [cut for sex] see matt, now you’re in trouble anyway so you might as well tell me what’s up. are you going over or something? dia just went to bed and wouldn’t watch what i wanted to show her on tv. watching blind date and laughed so hard at this jerk dunking a chick 4 times in a hot tub that i woke her up. she wanted to know what was so funny and i started to describe it to her before i realized that i had replaytv. seriously, i didn’t plan it to prove a point for my last post, i’d swear to god if he existed. i rewound it about 3 minutes but she wasn’t interested. she’s such a killjoy. tomorrow i’m going to see the transporter and rules of attraction with or without dia. also cash my $500 paycheck. not much for a week’s work, but once the overtime starts coming in i’ll be good to go. need to pay off the $2800 credit card bill, the $20 i owe ross and tomas each, and the apartment people $100 for dia bouncing our rent check. ouch. yoni was wrong about shellac coming next saturday, it’s actually on tuesday which makes it a little annoying but i’m still definitely there. hope to get a whole group to go. mullen and greg and yoni for sure, and we’ll probably run into a bunch of WKDU types there too. Tomorrow is Richard Cheese at Silk City and I can’t remember when I’ve been so excited to see a show. It’s kind of early, 8 p.m. to be exact, but i’d love to see a third movie later that night. i need to get matt over here to watch all the television shows that i recorded for him but have already watched. maybe i’ll trade him for his xbox for a week, which i was trying to convince lisa to buy. she want’s some fighting game called tekken, which of course sucks because its a fighting game. you can only fight 2 at a time on those things, or at best 4, so what the hell’s the point? i’ve got to have a show and tell one weekend where matt and i introduce these people to the technology they don’t know they need yet. matt wants to get together for beer and wings some night but the official Loop gathering isn’t until nov. 2nd when he’ll most likely either be in training or deployed. i wonder if i can get sent over as his assistant to watch his back and what not. it would be like that owen wilson movie with me as eddie murphy. “see that’s the kind of stuff we’re gonna be doing on the mission!” dave said dan wasn’t too hip to the idea of bringing the womenfolk along for our night of drinking, but if it’s in baltimore that’s the way it has to be. i don’t see dia much during the week since we’re both at work and she’s got class 2 nights a week. still, we have more time than people who are pumping out kids once they’re married, which is no one we know (yet) thank god. back to november wings night though, it should be a nice little road trip. i’ll probably stop by and see the family and my dad’s car while i’m there, maybe beat my mom up for forgetting to give me the Bally’s paperwork but more importantly for forgetting that I even asked her anything about it. I want to transfer the lifetime membership from my dad to me, which is allowed for some reason, so i can work out in the dead time between when i wake up at 6:45 to drive dia to the train and 9:15 when I leave for work. when i start losing weight i won’t have to stand for silly ross’s jokes in defense of al’s fugly haircut. gel or no gel, your man’s hideous mary! almost as disgusting as this one long paragraph. i’m almost out of things i wanted to update on. oh yeah, lost a filling. there’s a big hole in my once-infected tooth. did you people still reading this know that i haven’t been deleting, and i have been switching between capitalized words and non-caps? anyhow this — and i haven’t been slowing down between sentences. pretty much like i’m drunk except i’m not. it’s better to read in a monotone tone because then it’s not totally insand. anyhow this hole in my tooth doesn’t really hurt but it’s definitely gaping. i jabbed a pen up there and even though it didn’t hurt it’s still a tad uncomfortable. when my insurance card comes in the mail it had better be before the 4th of november, because that’s when i get the big ol’ root canal. i wonder if i’ll be able to work the next day? i hope so, because work is really fun. definitely camaraderie at the office. people left this meeting with refreshments so they could all get back to work, and everyone works late almost every day. i’m not sure if they’re all hourly employees, but even so it says something that people want to be there. it’s getting more hectic and the temps are leaving one by one, but its still fun especially when we’re talking movies or macs or mac accessories and extensions. i think i might need to do this type of straight-shot rambling more often. i’ll have to get an opinion before i come to a decision though. tomorrow i have to send out an e-mail about tomorrow night. actually, let me do that right now. Paul, tell me what else i have to say, because i think i’m all caught up. game night rocked, though al’s suggestion that we have a game day might be a good one. we need to get a few good games in in a row to satiate my urges. mmmmm, urges. time to go and catch up on the blogs

Before I get to how my life is better from work, I’ll give a shout out to all the unemployed types still keepin’ it real. Paul Zak asked me to update my blog and so he’s really the only reason I’m posting. I could be snuggling up to my true love right now… and by true love I mean ReplayTV of course. Dia’s passed out on the couch while my DVR gives me love.

I was very skeptical about the whole DVR revolution until I started reading a little more about it. Pause live television — who cares? Watch your favorite shows whenever you want — why on earth would I want to do that? Holy shit it’s the truth. I completely understand why broadcasting companies are up in arms about the whole thing.

First, a disclaimer; Chris’s blog just loaded in my window, and I happened to catch the link about TiVo, follow said link, and become totally disgusted with what the linked article had to say — total coincidence. Some of it rang true, like the bit about getting stuck with a DVR zealot at a cocktail party, but the rest of it was hogwash. The most glaring error is the part about set-up difficulty. I can’t speak for TiVo but ReplayTV is a snap, and the market isn’t different from that of a simple VCR.

Allow me to drool for a minute. Right off the bat I’ve become acutely aware of just how little time it takes to watch a television show without the commercials. Auto-skipping through them all allows me to watch 2.5 hours of television in a little over an hour and a half. I’ve got my wonderful little box set up to store various numbers of episodes of Trading Spaces (Paige Davis nude naked Olsen Twins Alex McCleod Amy Wynn Pastor hot bod boffing her power strap-on tools!), the CSI:s, original Law & Orders, and tons of Comedy Central programming. If I don’t get to an episode, it’ll get erased when the channel I’ve created reaches the maximum number of episodes I’ve specified. It’s also got an ethernet port so I can access my recording settings remotely via the ReplayTV Web site almost anywhere I go. Not only that, but it takes seconds to download the channel/show guide used to record shows, I could send shows to someone else who has a ReplayTV though even with a cable modem it would take a while, and I could log in from my laptop and grab the mpeg files to burn them to DVDs.

VCRs should be a thing of the past, that’s for certain. It was worth shelling out $450 to have 80 hours of recording space and not to have to worry about switching tapes around. But that’s nothing compared to how it’s changed the way I watch television now. I’ve only had the thing since Sunday and I’m already addicted to being able to watch shows on my time. With a full-time job and relatively fewer recreation opportunities, every minute is precious; being able to sqeeze only what I actually want to watch out of my television time is a godsend.

The only drawbacks are that I get so sucked into watching all my recorded shows I sometimes forget that other shows are being aired that I wouldn’t mind watching; and I also have to remember to catch up after I’ve paused a show, otherwise I return to live TV halfway through another.

But I’m able to take the TV Guide Web site from my bookmark list, and it’s nice to know that if I was kidnapped tomorrow for three weeks, I could come home to find all my shows waiting for me.

Work is good, the days go by really quickly and I the commute is actually relaxing. Sweet-ass paycheck at the end of the week will be very welcome since I just put a ReplayTV on my credit card. The only thing I don’t like about work is that my dad will be stopping by to see the digital presses on Wednesday. Here I was dumb enough to think I could remain apart from my family simply because I work hours away from them.

Events for the week are game night on Thursday, and Richard Cheese on Saturday at Silk City. Other than that its just evenings of errands, chores, and television.

Speaking of chores, I dropped two birthday cards in the mail for two of my fellow Libras and picked up a bunch of groceries. I’m too wiped out to type any more right now, so perhaps tomorrow morning.

I woke up this morning and felt really bad so I deleted my angry rant. Rob and Matt said it was too harsh, and now that I have a clear head I agree. It might be too late judging from my extreme tracker, but it did help to get it out in writing though. Sorry, old man; and if you did already read the meaner post, please let me know so I can (heh) post it back up….

The gist of it was (and still is) this: I was looking forward to driving my vanload of people to Maryland for the wedding, now I’m driving no-one. I’m pretty sure Lisa asked me for a ride at game night, since they were at one time pretty close friends. Now, we don’t do anything. Al and Mary give us a call every now and then to go out on a Friday night; Chris and Lisa usually only call when they need a ride somewhere and now I don’t even get that much.

That led me to other analyses, mainly that Chris was a deadbeat. Without spelling them out all over again, let me say that Chris is one of the most talented people I know and is throwing it all away. He’s either lazy or truly happy, and he doesn’t seem to like his job all that much seeing as how he tells us this whenever we ask him. So here’s this ball of talent wasting away before our very eyes because Chris isn’t working hard enough to do something with his writing ability. He really should do something with his life so he’s worthy of having children someday. He should stop reading books, watching television and movies, and wasting energy linking to other people’s stupid Web sites and start putting all his talent and knowledge to better use.

Now that I have a job, I’ll be telling him as much every time I see him since that’s only about once every two months, pretty much whenever Lisa wants to play Apples to Apples.

I returned home at 5 a.m. on Sunday morning from Hager’s bachelor party feeling awful. It was a really fun night, and even though some people feel that alcohol is unnecessary and stupid I bet I had a better time. The van worked out nicely for carting around our merry band of drunks (and the tired, sober sort as well).

But back to the reason I was feeling awful. When I drink, I eat; and I ate way too much. So baby did I have the runs. Runs so bad I let Pat use the bathroom first before we went to bed. Runs so bad I couldn’t sleep lest I crap my pants (not that I was feeling well enough to sleep anyway). Runs so bad I stopped up the toilet. This wouldn’t be a bad thing except for the fact that I didn’t have a goddamn plunger. Poor Dia had to do her business, powder her nose or what have you, right on top of a smelly load. Then I had to go again, which would have been bad enough if it was just a foul smell, but in the past it only took a few flushes to get the toilet working again and so that’s what we tried this time. Big mistake. The situation was so dire that I had to hold my testicles up to keep them from dipping into pool of filth stenching up the room — to no avail. After cleaning myself (and the seat) up from the shit explosion, I donned my crumpled clothes and Dia drove us to many stores in search of our salvation.

With my ongoing ailment I was in no condition to drive, but luckily Dia has her learner’s permit so I thought I could just sit in the van while she ran into the store. Dia didn’t bring her shoes though, so I had to penguin-walk it into K-Mart myself. I found the plungers with no problem and headed to the registers, thinking how if only we had somehow worked a plunger into the previous nights events I wouldn’t be having this problem. As luck would have it, there was only one register manned and one family with three shopping carts lined up at it. There were four self-checkout registers but two were down, one was in price-check mode, and the last had some incompetent using it. I went to the returns/exchanges counter and gave the girl what must have been a pretty salty I’ll-plunge-you-if-you-say-no look when I asked her to ring me up. If she had said no I would have given her the whole story — testicles and all — and it would have been the perfect ending to this story. Instead, she was nice and I waddled back to the van, plunged the hell out of the toilet, and then used it five more times. Sleep was out of the question though, since Pat woke up soon after and we played XBox and ate breakfast before the Alias marathon came on. I finally crashed at around 6:30 p.m. for two hours and I was fine again.

And now I have a plunger.

I had to leave the previous post up even though it’s meaner than I intended. I get incensed and then I act like an ass. I posted horrible, horrible things about Marc and Lisa before, and I guess I haven’t learned my lesson yet.

I’m not so much truthful as hurtful, and I hope I’m not tasting the sole of my shoe for too long this time. Chris, please forgive me. I’m sorry for calling you fat. Even though you are I shouldn’t be posting it here; not to mention that I have no room to talk. My fat, lazy ass gets a job and all of a sudden I’m Ann Landers? God I’m pathetic. For the love of Christ, I’m the guy who posted right after this one about testacles dipping into a tainted bowl of toilet water.

Geof said I was an asshole a while back for my earlier posts and I’m sure he’ll say the same thing again. What can I say? I’m a bad person. Chris, please don’t ignore me on Saturday. I was just angry and had no-one to talk to. I need a hug.

Once upon a time I was worried about Chris. I worried that Lisa wasn’t good enough for him. Then I worried that he was wasting his talent because Lisa was making him happy. Now I know the truth, Lisa is likely the only thing that keeps Chris from passing from existence.

First, let me explain why I was simmering with pent-up anger. Chris works in a dead end job all day. He makes a tiny amount of money from what I gather, and spends most of it on rent for his shitty, over-priced apartment where he merely exists anyway. I’m pretty sure the allegedly fiscally responsible Chris has a pretty swanky retirement plan underway, even though most financial experts say that it’s better to put money away in a few years once you start making more money. (You see, even though starting early is good, you can put in much more — comparatively — in a few years when you’re earning more. Earning a few extra years of interest at this stage of the game doesn’t mean squat to us yet.) What does mean squat is that Chris doesn’t have a license, isn’t writing anything but stupid links to other people, and doesn’t go out unless the charming Lisa arranges it for him first. There’s no sarcasm in the latter part either, I truly thank Lisa for being the only thing Chris has going for him.

The direct provocation for this rant is that I was supposed to be driving my good friends Chris and Lisa to Hager’s wedding. After all, Lisa had asked me for a ride at game night. After my two e-mails about the trip went unanswered I made a phone call and found out that Greg will be driving them down instead. So as it turns out, Chris Puzak (aka Shit Head) doesn’t want to be my friend. He doesn’t care that he left me high and dry without any driving companions. Neither does Tomas for that matter, but Tomas is an over-sentimental drunk who never came across as the caring type in the first place. Chris, on the other hand, disappoints me; we used to do things together, now he doesn’t even do things by himself.

I had to withhold saying some of these things since I was previously unemployed, but I’m saying them now. “Get out Chris! Do something! You’re the most talented person I know and you aren’t doing anything with your pathetic little life except reading and watching television. Jesus Christ you’re almost as fat as I am and you aren’t even doing anything about it!”

Now, before any of you start using my own faults to refute my arguments remember that it’s not relevant. I know I’m overweight, and I’ve always said that once I got a job I’d start working out; I’m definitely a petty person as you can see from this tirade, but his inconsiderate actions set me off. But back on topic: Chris is the issue here and he needs lots of help. We need to make sure that he doesn’t end up a deadbeat father because he’s a deadbeat and Lisa wants a kid. Do something worthy before you procreate, old man. He needs to cry himself to sleep for a few nights in a row before he knows that his life is headed nowhere.

I just saw a glimpse of heaven. It was the tail-end of a McDonald’s commercial and some guy in a suit was hugging Grimace (Grimace!). I don’t eat fast food anymore unless the toys are really fantastic and part of some extravagant eight-piece gadget-puzzle, but oh how I do love a good commercial. And it’s got the Grimace in it — nothing can stop him, nothing! I’ve got the shirt to prove it. It’s got me thinking about buying a bunch of those glasses on eBay now.

A stupid commercial, by contrast, is the Yoplait yogurt where they pledge to “donate 10 cents for each lid that you send in, up to $750,000.” Bite me, yogurt people. You’d have to eat three just to match the cost of your own stamp to make it worth your while. Why not just donate some damn money? And what’s with the paltry limit on the donation? Even if they could ever dream of getting that many stupid lids, they’re going to limit the generosity of the idiots who sent them; I hate Yoplait. Columbo is so much better, they have spoons in their lids. Why not just donate the money instead of making a big joke about it? They’re spending enough on advertising on television and magazines, that’s for damn sure. What a waste.

Another bad commercial: that credit card commercial where the monkeys are making money from a persons interest payments? Ya ya ya?! How can monkeys possibly spend money to get the things shown? How?!

Posting to my blog has become more of a chore lately. It is a good way to give everyone the lowdown at once, but there really isn’t anything to talk about but how my job is going, and that’s mostly boring in small doses. Other than work I don’t do a whole lot. I could list my commute times and comment on what I’m doing to shorten my drive every day, I could talk about how I’ll be paying off my bills soon and the list of things I’m planning to buy again, or I could write about how everyone on The Amazing Race is a complete and total loser and how I’d make a better contestant. The only problem is that I’m bored about those things myself, and I’m afraid of starting something significant and having to leave when I don’t finish it by 9:20 a.m. when I have to leave for work. Even when I have free time in the evening I find myself rushing around to do laundry, running simple errands, and making sure Dia doesn’t do all the chores for the night herself. That doesn’t leave much time to read anyone else’s blogs let alone write my own, or write e-mail either come to think of it. Since I don’t have a station at work yet, I can’t even sneak in a quick message here and there.

Last night while shopping with Hager and Dia for groceries, Hager asked me if I knew I had been “tagged”. I asked him what the hell he was talking about, and he said he didn’t know if I was aware Dia had put a sticker on my ass. I knew what a fool I was even before I saw the big, round store sticker on my right ass cheek. In the haste of getting ready for work I missed one of two stickers on my pants, and apparently it was there (and plainly visible) all day. I wonder how many people think I’m a total moron now. Alright, time to veg out.

The entry entitled Hager Part Two will have to wait until tomorrow morning since tonight is a really good T.V. night. I still wouldn’t consider myself a couch potato despite all the evidence to the contrary, because I become Mr. Activity when I get into my work routine. I’m not in a routine yet though, so television is all I can squeeze in while I’m working out a permanent schedule. Tonight I indulge in The Amazing Race and Law & Order, two of my favorite shows.

Besides a more sober post about Hager and my thoughts on Greg’s criticisms of alcohol, I have a picture of Lauren’s homosexual army friend to post too. A quick note on Hager though: There is no registry yet, nor will there likely be one. So go out and do your best if you’re getting a gift. Remember that it should be a gift that both of them can use, even if they won’t be using it anywhere but Maria’s parents’ house.

The work today was more rote than I expected, but the people I work with are far more interesting than I imagined co-workers could be. I work in a department where the merits of Macs versus PCs are debated daily and the Mac side is more popular, any of a dozen applescripts are used once every ten minutes, and unlike those at Aramark my co-workers aren’t all lazy, family-crazed gossip mongers. They’re young, they’re hip, and the enjoy being at work and running around to get things done.

It was only my second day and I already banked some overtime. Because I stayed a little later, Keith was able to take less work home with him. After he left things even went awry, and I had the skillz to force quit QuarkXPress, restart after the resulting memory error, load the fonts in Suitcase again, print to a postscript file, then push the job along to the printing department so they could be 500 pieces further along tonight. I know it’s not much, but it is nice being able to deal with problems that come up instead of being an ignorant peon, and it’s only my second day. The only thing I lack is a VCR so I’m not lost during future discussions of The Sopranos.

Hager’s on his way over now, and then we’re heading out to get Dia at the train station and pick up groceries and Dia’s prescription. Hopefully I’ll have time to interview him about his bachelor party to post it tonight, though it’s doubtful since we should definitely play Halo while we have Matt’s XBox sitting on my floor.

That should have been a thesis for one of my classes. It will have to go unwritten — along with my posts about Hager’s bachelor party — since I’m pretty exhausted.

No, work isn’t tiring, and with only a 35-minute drive each way neither is the commute. The hours aren’t the reason I’m tired either, since I’m sitting at home and watching a full hour of Newsradio right now and I’ll still get home at 6:30. No, retaining that little part of my unemployed summer are definitely helping with the transition to the working world.

What’s making me tired is my family. After a mentally challenging first day of work, the last thing I want to do it drive two hours to pick up furniture from my sister Lauren’s ex-boyfriends place. She lent it to him before they broke up, and because she was incapable of a little planning it fell on my shoulders to get it rather than have it dropped off at my apartment. She was supposed to meet me there last night to help, but she was instead moving her stuff. She didn’t have a chance to move it over the weekend because she was in Georgia at some wedding with her Sherpadunce. The most frustrating part was that I really didn’t need her help, but I just resent having to do her dirty work when she lends out furniture and can’t even arrange a simple delivery. She also neglected to mention to my other sister (Dana) that I wasn’t available to help move her out of their apartment on Saturday but was available on Friday instead. So I had to tell Dana that she’d have to move by herself because Lauren is a poor planner. My third sister, Jamie, still has my student ID (and Dia’s too) so I can’t see movies at a discount and if Dia needed to use the library or the Korman center or any other resource for the class she’s taking at Drexel she’d be out of luck. It’s going on two weeks now and the lazy kid still hasn’t even thought about sending it.

As for work, it seems okay so far. During my first co-op I got home around the same time but I had to get up before 6 a.m. and still skip showering to do it. Still, anyone who says working is more fun than sitting at home all day and watching television is a liar; and come to think of it I’m still getting up pretty early to drive Dia to the train station. I hope to get a gym membership soon so I can spend the two hours following train drop-off duty more productively. It’s definitely for the best that I have a job now, since no-one’s blog is updated and I was just starting to run out of cash. However, it will take some time to get used to shaving every day, and not being able to take Dia places like the doctor’s office are going to be a drag. Thankfully, Ross was nice enough to drive her yesterday, though she did have to walk half an hour home. No worries; it was good exercise and it’ll get her more committed to getting her license.

What I actually did yesterday was preparing postscript files for the printer by binding Quark documents to Filemaker Pro databases. It made the day go by pretty quickly, and I’m told that the job gets a lot more interesting today, when I’ll actually be laying out some boring letters. Still sounds pretty dry but it’s stepping in the right direction so Quark design shouldn’t be too far away. The environment is business casual but at least one guy near our department was lounging around in a T-shirt and no one’s shirts were tucked in or anything.

Well, I’d better be off. Let’s see if I’m as optimistic after meeting two of the other three people who work in my department and seeing if it truly gets more interesting.