Happy Valentine's Day!

First off, Happy Valentine’s Day everyone. Or Anti-Valentine’s Day if that’s more your thing.

Here we are, on the first Valentine’s Day ever where I am half of a couple. It took 23 years to get here, but it sure feels good. I was forbidden from going into the living room all of last night. I resisted the temptation to go peek at 2am and was allowed out there this morning when we woke up. I found more flowers (which I’ll take a picture of later tonight), a huge card, and a big heart of chocolates. :) Although what I found when I came back into the bedroom was better of course – Adam. I know I don’t express it quite enough, but I’m really glad things have worked out the way they have. He’s working tonight so we’re not doing anything fancy at all, but we do plan to go out tomorrow night for some Chinese food. Yum.

All members of the hamster clan are doing well. Pigster appears to have pulled through and is active and alert. He still scares easily but I hope that will diminish over time. Howie kind of keeps to himself and I don’t see much of him. Duey runs all night long in his little squeaky wheel. He stuffs his pouches to the brim with food and dumps it all out if you put him in his ball. He’s a funny guy, but very gentle. He likes doing laps around my neck for some reason. He’s nuts.

Nothing really big is going on these days. Kind of the calm before the storm. Adam’s birthday is next month and we’ll also have to book our plane tickets for Catherine’s graduation in May. I’m in wait mode for my banking transition although we do plan on heading back to the credit union on Saturday morning to set up a joint household checking account. See how badly I’ve been gotten? It was even me who proposed this joint account, much to Adam’s surprise…

I’ve been doing a lot of religious reading lately. I’m almost through Catholicism for Dummies. It was interesting, definitely enlightening me to aspects of both Catholicism and Christianity in general. Take, for example, the term “Immaculate Conception.” Most people think (me included) that this refers to Mary being a virgin when Jesus was conceived/born, but it doesn’t. The Immaculate Conception refers to MARY’S conception. When she was conceived by her mother and father, God apparently made it so she didn’t have the original sin that all other humans are born with (according to Catholics.) He wanted a perfect place for his son to hang out for 9 months before making an entrance into the world, so he had to create a sin-free zone – the Immaculate Conception. I never learned that kind of thing in all the years of Sunday school at all the different churches I went to. You learn a whole bunch of other kind of useless information and are required to memorize a whole bunch of crap. You never really learn the foundations of the beliefs you’re supposed to have. At this point, I probably know more about Catholicism than some Catholics do and I still have the whole Concise History of the Catholic Church to thumb through. Maybe I should read Protestantism for Dummies too... To be fair, perhaps this was never brought up in any of my religious teachings because Protestants don’t buy into the original sin concept… who knows? In any case, I’m finding it all very interesting. I won’t be converting to Catholicism any time soon and I don’t really buy into a lot of their beliefs, but it’s fascinating to get the backstory about it all. Plus, assuming things continue in their current direction, I’ll need to know some of this stuff later on since in order to marry a Catholic I have to agree to raise any children we have in the Catholic church…

But I digress.

Back to the original point of this post. Yay love!

Icky Weekend

My birthday went a little differently than planned. Adam turned out not working since they’d been slow lately so we went out to dinner at Good Company on Thursday night. It was a good thing that he called ahead and made a reservation because it seems like everyone was having a birthday there including our waiter. The food there is always good and we only had to wait a minute or so for our table this time so it was all good. After the meal we went home and ate some of the big cookie cake he got for me. Pictures will hopefully be up later this afternoon. All in all it was a good birthday.

The rest of the weekend kind of sucked. Although I thought my sinus and cold thing was getting better, I was wrong. I was up at New London on Friday and I ended up leaving around 11:30. I brought work home with me fully intending to do some of it when I got home, but I was worn out I guess because I practically fell asleep on the living room floor. I didn’t sleep very well Friday night and was even sicker on Saturday. I went shopping with Adam for awhile and between my feeling like crap and my being crabby it didn’t make for a very pleasant experience. I spent most of Saturday afternoon in bed. I felt much improved on Sunday. We went out to breakfast at Griddles and I did dishes and laundry while Adam was at work. I also took a nap and read during the afternoon. I didn’t really accomplish much this weekend, but that’s ok. My nose is all red and flaky, but I feel much better overall. I certainly supported the Kleenex company though. It’s a good thing we bought 10 boxes from Sam’s club recently. Heh. Hopefully this week will be more normal than the past few have been.

I finally went and opened my new accounts at Capital Credit Union. As soon as I get my ATM card and checks and am sure my direct deposits and withdrawals are working, the UWO credit union can kiss my money good-bye. Yay! A branch of CCU just opened in Neenah so that’s kind of convenient. They have better hours, better interest rates, better online banking. Better everything, basically. I’m moving on up…

Happy Birthday to Me...

Today’s the big 2-4. I don’t have anything special planned since I’ll be at work all day and Adam works tonight. Plus, like normal, I’m sick. I’ve got some cold thing going on and I’d much rather be in bed than at work. Oh well.

On the good news side of the spectrum, I’ll tempt fate by saying that Pigster seems to be getting better. It’s been a week now and just the fact that he’s still alive is encouraging. Time will tell I guess. I’ll be doing to major cleaning of his cage and accessories tonight. Yup, that’s what I’ve always wanted to do on my birthday – clean a hamster cage. :)

Super Weekend

Adam had the whole weekend off which is rare. Also rare was the fact that we didn’t get on each other’s nerves and have a fight of any kind. That’s what usually happens when we’re around each other for extended periods of time. Apparently we kept ourselves occupied enough that we didn’t get bored enough to pick on each other. Who knows. In any case, it was nice. We were both kind of tired on Friday night. He had woken me up at 3am that morning to tell me that Pigster was getting worse. This reduced me to tears and neither of us slept much after that. I felt like absolute cow poo all day long and just wanted to go home and hide in bed. We went out to dinner to Gulliver’s – a restaurant right down the street that he’s been wanting to go to. It wasn’t too busy when we got there. They have good food, huge portions, and a nice “fishy” atmosphere. I think I drank too much on an empty stomach and all I wanted to do when we got home was go to bed. Adam assembled the Bowflex that he bought while I hung out in bed.

On Saturday we did some shopping in the late morning/early afternoon and then went to church and dinner with his parents. We went to the church in Greenville rather than Appleton (it’s closer, I guess.) It was very different from the other church. The priest is a young man with a lot of energy. As I commented to Adam, the whole congregation seemed to be young. Lots of kids and babies. There was a baptism at the mass so I got to see how that went. During communion they had these chimes that they rang. That was different and Adam had no explanation for them. The mass was a lot more like the Lutheran services I went to for a few years. Hymns were sung and all that good stuff. It was another interesting experience which inspired a lot of conversation on the way to the casino later that night. Before that though we went out to Cinder’s with his parents for dinner. I think this was the first time we went out with them. Usually we’re at their house for some holiday or they come to our house. It was interesting. After that we drove up to the casino to lose some money. I had gotten a $10 gaming certificate for my birthday so that really is what inspired the trip. As luck would have it, it was snowing and the weather kind of sucked. In addition to that there was an accident about halfway to Green Bay and they had closed off the highway and were re-routing everyone down to the frontage road. Turns out some older lady had been trying to cross the highway to get some help because her car had broken down and someone hit her (and killed her.) It took a bit longer to get up to GB, but that’s ok. We proceeded to lose our money quickly enough that we got back home plenty early.

Sunday we slept in until about 9. I went and got the paper while Adam did… I don’t know what he was doing. Anyway, we went grocery shopping in the early afternoon and then settled in to watch the Super Bowl. I was mainly there for the commercials. I read a book during the actual game. I wasn’t sure who to root for anyway. I generally try to go with the underdog, but in this case the Fox Valley wasn’t too keen on the Seahawks winning because some people see Holmgren as a traitor. It turned out to be a moot point anyway. For a minute there it looked as though they might have had a chance, but that changed very quickly. The commercials weren’t really the greatest either. There were a few cute ones. The magic fridge (Bud Light, toward the beginning) was probably my favorite. To see it go here. The FedEx caveman and Ameriquest heart paddle ones were good too. I guess it was an ok football came with a couple questionable calls. Meh. Pittsburgh should be happy.

Cactus Beating

A while back I read in the Sheboygan Press of a female roommate being attacked by her male roommate with a cactus. I admit I found this rather humorous, but also disturbing since apparently the cactus inflicted quite a bit of damage on the woman. Today I read an editorial in the paper that made me laugh out loud…

“I am appalled over a recent Sheboygan incident in which a man attacked his roommate with a cactus. It is with this in mind that I propose our legislators enact a concealed cactus law. Such a law would help prevent future crimes of this nature by allowing anyone with proper training to carry a concealed cactus on their person. We should have the constitutional right to defend ourselves against cactus-carrying criminals at all times. It would certainly have the makings of a succulent debate between the various political parties. For instance, would a person be allowed to carry a cactus into a school? Would there be a limit on the number of cacti a person could carry at one time? Will Christmas cactus be exempt? All of these thorny issues could cause the lawmakers to be stuck in their chambers for quite some time. They will be subject to strong lobbying from garden clubs who will try to put them over a barrel. Of course, some of the legislators will turn out to be spineless and vote against the concealed-cactus law. However, in the end common sense will prevail and I'm confident the majority will vote yes for passage, allowing us the freedom to walk the streets without fear of attack. Maybe we can bundle this together with a voter ID bill. Now that would be a prickly pair. I can only hope the governor does not veto it.”

Knowing all the hullabaloo that’s been going on lately with the concealed weapon issue, this clever bit of commentary was a riot.

I'm Cursed

It looks as though Pigster is going the way of Chewy. I noticed it for the first time last night as I was do the weekly cage cleaning. Adam says he'll try his best to treat him and get him better, but I can't help but resign myself to the fact that yet another hamster will succomb to wet-tail. Everything was going so well and I thought we were past the danger zone, seeing as how we got him almost a month ago. *sigh* There's nothing really to be done. Just hope that maybe this one will pull through. I'm not holding my breath though. I'm done with hamsters after this one. I wasn't sure I wanted to get another one when I went to get him and now this just convinces me that Brownie was meant to be my one and only hamster in life.

Hamsters, hamsters everywhere

I think Adam has an addiction. He’s addicted to hamsters. Last night we went out and bought a third hamster. The original idea was to give Howie a playmate since he seems to do nothing but tunnel and bury himself in his cage. Unfortunately they didn’t get along too well so we had to go get a different cage. Oh well. I was worth a try. The new one is a Russian like Howie, but he’s brown rather than gray. His name is Duey. He’s a tiny thing right now, but seems happy enough. (Don’t let these pictures fool you, they fought fiercely when caged together.)


In other hamster news, it has been determined that mine is indeed a male so Pigster it is. And a pigster he sure is.

Book Update

Well, I gave up on the Proust book. I hadn’t read a page in about a week and a half and that was really dragging my numbers down. Perhaps I’ll come back to it at some point. Or maybe not. I’m counting those 62 pages though. :) In any case, I’ve moved on to Silas Marner by George Eliot. One of my favorite movies, A Simple Twist of Fate, is (loosely) based on this book, so I figured I’d read it and see how they compared. They’re obviously quite different and so far I’m amused by the religious undertones in the book. Fortunately this book is much easier to read than the Proust one was. I’ve got a few more books on the kitchen table at home that I plan to read next. One is Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility. I found a list that I made probably 5 or 6 years ago of books I wanted to read. I’ve been trying to work through that list (although I own a better part of them at this point.) The other fiction book I’ve got from the library is A Creed for the Third Millennium by Colleen McCullough. I really have no idea what this book is about, but it was on that list. I think I made the list right after I finished a huge independent study project on distopic futuristic novels my junior year in high school, so my guess is it probably has something to do with that. I guess I’ll find out.

Current Stats:
Days Gone 32 (8.77%)
Books Read 3 (6.00%)
Pages Read 987 (6.58%)

Pigsterina, or "what to name the hamster..."

Ok, so we're still not quite sure whether my hamster is a male or a female. Adam thinks it's a boy, but I'm not totally convinced yet (if you know what I mean.) So therefore the naming process has been somewhat delayed. I have narrowed it down though. In the past couple weeks, it has gotten totally HUGE!



And yesterday when I went to check on it, its food bowl was completely empty. That's why I decided that it will be named Piggy. That's nicely gender unspecific. But then while we were talking about it I thought maybe Pigster sounds better. Sounded decidedly male though. I suggested Pigsterina for a female, which reduced us both to giggles. I'm not sure it's such a good idea to name a hamster something that we can't even say while keeping a straight face... For now Piggy will do until a more official gender decision is made. :)

Time Flies

It’s amazing how fast this week has gone by. Work has been busy rolling the year. We finally got all the files moved this afternoon and I can see the surface of my desk for the first time since we closed the month about two weeks ago. Ok, well, I can see parts of the surface of my desk… the folders from running 30 hostess jobs in a row kind of takes up a lot of room. Other than work, I haven’t really been doing much. I think Proust is slowing me down in the book challenge. I am about 1/3 of the way through the book and I am having lots of trouble getting into it. I don’t know if it’s a “French book from the early 1900’s” or a “too deep for Martha” thing. I might have to throw the towel in on that one. Or at least intersperse reading something else at the same time to keep my mind alert. The book isn’t as good as my International Finance text was at putting me to sleep, but pretty close.

It’s hard to believe that January is almost over. In fact, it’s hard to believe it’s even January. The weather has been freakishly warm – I’m talking 40s and 50s. The snow is all gone and it looks like it’s April. I’m not complaining. I’m just wondering when the calm will end and the sub-zero blizzards will start again. I’m hoping never, but that’s not likely. This is Wisconsin after all.

I finally got my W-2 from Kmart yesterday. It was the last piece of the puzzle for my taxes. I haven’t decided how I’m going to file them yet. My estimated refund (according to TurboTax) is $74. Hardly even worth filing if you ask me… State refund is estimated at around $170. Once again, almost not worth my time, but I suppose I should file anyway. With the state, it’s free if you do it online. I guess I’ll work on that this weekend. Adam has already filed his. He gets a lot more back since he doesn’t claim himself on whatever form that is you give your employer that determines withholding amounts.

Football

I was amused by a post Jodi had on her blog the other day about the Seahawks and the excitement that goes along with a winning football team. Living where I do for my whole life, this kind of thing is part of day-to-day life. I’m not sure there’s any kind of study out there, but I’m pretty sure Packer fans are the most loyal football fans out there. Even with a season like the most recent one (ie. sucky to the nth degree), the stadium sells out and people are psyched on game day. A hush falls over the entire region on Sundays between noon and three on days when there’s a game. I didn’t like working on Sunday mornings because there was always this horrible rush of crazy people around 11, picking up all kinds of junk for their Packer parties. This being so engrained in my life growing up, it seems weird to me when I see games with stands half empty. It seems odd that people wouldn’t care how their team is doing. Now, I’m not a Packer fan. I think it’s pretty well known that I root for the team on the other side of the river – the Vikings. But people in this area (and Packer fans all over the country) are so dedicated to this team. This is how it is when they suck and are losing. Now, back in 1996 and 1997 when they actually had some game, imagine how crazy it got. When they won division it got worse. When they won the Super Bowl… geesh… Rabid fans only get worse when they actually have something to drink to. They say there’s some connection between the Packers losing and incidences of domestic violence. While I can’t attest to this fact, it wouldn’t surprise me. I’ve only been to Lambeau field a few times – always during the week – mostly to go to Curly’s (the restaurant there) or the pro-shop with Adam. I can’t even imagine what it would be like on a game day…

Anyway, I guess my point was that I was amused by the apparently short-lived phenomenon that occurs in other places when it seems like an on-going thing here.

Brokeback Mountain

We have been going to too many movies lately. In the last month or so, we’ve seen four: Grandma’s Boy, The Producers, Last Holiday, and Brokeback Mountain. Yep, BBM came to Green Bay so we drove up there on Tuesday to go check what all the buzz was about. It’s a good movie. Not the kind of movie I generally see, but this was my idea and Adam agreed to come along. It’s a beautiful film artistically speaking - lots of shots of mountains and wide open spaces in Wyoming (or wherever they shot the movie.) No particularly gratuitous sex shots or anything like that. I wasn’t too impressed with most of the acting. None of the leads are favorites of mine and Heath Ledger has always just bugged me anyway so I guess that was to be expected. It has a good chance to win the best picture Oscar and if it did, I wouldn’t complain. Everyone knows the story and I suppose I had more back story than most since I read the short story prior to viewing the film. It was interesting to see the translation to the big screen.

The Golden Globes

So, this past Monday the Golden Globes awards ceremony kicked off the season of award giving. I watched the show and kind of took notes so I could comment on things after the fact. So here goes:

All in all, this awards ceremony seemed very subdued. There were no outrageous moments, no overly political speeches. Everyone seemed to get their acceptance speeches in within the desired time frame. It was actually kind of boring.

In any case, the first award of the evening went to George Clooney. He seemed very nervous, which surprised me. He also made the only somewhat inappropriate comment of the night (something to do with Jack Abramoff... *sigh*) I've never been much of a fan of George, but he just really needs to grow up. While the nominees for best director were being announced later on in the show, when his name was announced, the camera showed him at his table with a glass stuck up to his eye. You know, him holding the glass around his eye with his cheeks. He's in his mid-40s now and still acts like a 20 year old frat boy.

Sandra Oh won for her work in Grey's Anatomy. When they called her name she looked kind of lost as she tried to find her way to the stage. Admittedly, it was quite a maze to get there. You'd think they'd want to make a path so people could get up there quickly. Instead, they put tables and chairs all over the place so the winners had to wind their way through the crowd, squeezing behind chairs. Seemed like bad planning.

A lot of the winners had amusing acceptance speeches. Geena Davis told a story about a little girl telling her that because of her role as president, she now had the courage to hope to one day be president. We were then informed that that never happened, but wouldn't it have been cool? Hugh Laurie won for his role in House and his speech involved him drawing slips of paper out of his pocket and thanking those people. Steve Carrell had probably the funniest speech. He told the audience he didn't expect to win so he didn't have a speech. Luckily his wife had written one for him. The entire speech kept going back to thanking his wife. It was hilarious. It was also the only speech that got called back in by someone else later on who also thanked Steve's wife.

There was some really bad fashion going around on this night as well. Most of it was really bad hair. Rachel Weisz won for The Constant Gardener. She's a lovely woman, but what was with the hair? Colin Firth did the intro to the Woody Allen film that was nominated, but he looked more like a wild mountain man than his usual dapper self.

Then there were the accents. Some accents are cute - like Russell Crowe. Some are just annoying - like Penelope Cruz. She really needs to lose it. No one can understand a damn word she says. I don't even know who the guy who introduced The History of Violence was, but he had another uninterpretable accent.

There were very few political moments in this broadcast. Those that could qualify as such were very toned down in comparison to previous years. Included in these moments would be when the best foreign film went to the Palestinians and the man who spoke to accept the award said something to the effect that it was great that Palestine was being recognized as an independent country. I didn't think it was a country... what do I know? The only other semi-political, but more of a social commentary, came from Felicity Hoffman when she was giving her speech for winning best actress for TransAmerica. Granted, she was giving thanks for a role in which she played a transvestite, but once again it was a rather muted social comment.

Chris Rock presented the award for best actress in a tv comedy. All I can say about that is thank God he's not hosting the Oscars again. I can't stand him.

Other than that, there's not much to say. Brokeback Mountain had a good night as did Walk the Line, with both Reese Witherspoon and Joaquin Phoenix winning.

The Producers

We went and saw The Producers last night. It just came to a theater in our area this past week. We seem to live in a cultural dead zone. Any film that shows in limited release never gets anywhere close to the Fox Valley. I’m not sure why. For example, I’ve wanted to see Brokeback Mountain for a while now. It opened a while ago but probably won’t be coming anywhere near me. Another movie I’d like to see that I highly doubt will come to this area is The Squid and the Whale with Laura Linney and Jeff Daniels. This same thing happened with The Door in the Floor. Perhaps I should be grateful for that though. I would have been ticked off if I had paid $8.50 to watch that movie.

Anyway, I had seen the stage version of The Producers starring Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick a few years ago. I liked it but was afraid it would be difficult to translate to the silver screen. So many plays and musicals have been transposed from one media to another and something gets lost in the process. This doesn’t seem to be a problem for this show. Granted, it was originally a movie which got turned into a play which got turned into a movie. Perhaps this explains why it seemed just fine in either form. Will Ferrell was hilarious as Franz, but when he falls down the stairs and says “I broke my leg”, all I could think of was his character, Mustafa, in Austin Powers. It sounded exactly like it did when he gets thrown down into that pit and gets shot and all that. Heh. Uma Thurman surprised me in that she seemed to dance pretty well and (assuming it was her) sing decently. Her accent was sketchy, but it worked. All in all it was a good movie. Adam liked it as well and is already saying he plans to buy the DVD when it comes out.

Random Stuff

So far, so good in hamster land. No signs of wet-tail have been seen and he/she/it seems content. Most of the time. It has stopped crying but remains spooked whenever I get anywhere near the cage. My mere presence sends it into a fit. It sits up on its hind legs with its paws up by its face and bares its “fangs.” I guess this is supposed to be menacing and scare me away. I just find it cute. I haven’t seen much of Howie lately. He always seems to be buried somewhere when I come into the room and since I can’t reach up over the top of the cage to dig around and find him (we did some cage rearrangement and his cage ended up on the top of the bookshelf), I settle for saying hello to the general area through the glass.

I had IMA last night and (for the first time, I think) things went relatively smoothly and I didn’t come home with a migraine headache. The PD session speaker was a soldier who was over in Iraq for a year or so. He had all kinds of pictures and stories to share. Aside from his overuse of the phrase “I’ll never forget” and the word “literally”, it was a good presentation. Dinner was ok. I wasn’t impressed by the food at Liberty Hall last time and this time kind of continued that trend. I figured out a new system for my responsibilities though. I decided to wait and count money and tickets after the meal (as the speaker was setting up) rather than as the meal started. This seemed to work out a lot better than the last few meetings. I felt a bit rude sitting in the back of the room riffling through money while the speaker began her presentation. Oh well. I came out perfect on the first try again this month. Woo! I think my new, “organized from the get-go” system is working well. Even the members are commenting on it. :) I accepted the offer to continue in my position(s) next year and I’ll also be taking on another extremely important responsibility: nametags. The person currently responsible for them has missed the last few meetings because of back problems and I think it makes more sense for me to take care of them anyway. I’m the one who has the most contact with the members at the beginning of the evening. I take their money. Heh. I’m having a good time with the people there. They’re all much older than I am, but there were a few students at the meeting last night so I have some hope.

Nothing much else is going on. I’ve been spending more time reading during the past few weeks. Not only because of the 50 book challenge thing, but because I realized I was watching way too much TV. I think I just watch it because its there and then I don’t have to try and think of other ways to occupy my time. I know I should try and branch out and find something to do in the community. I just don’t know what I’d want to do. I’m not going to be joining any church choir or anything like that (sorry, Mom.) There is a chapter/group of the Sweet Adelines in Appleton, but they rehearse on Tuesdays so that kind of conflicts with the only thing I’ve got going on already. *sigh* Once again I feel incredibly boring and unmotivated.

I’m not doing too well on my “spend less money” resolution so far. Last weekend we went out and bought a little 5.0 cu ft freezer for all the big, bulk items we plan to buy at Sam’s Club. We also bought a deep fryer since most of the stuff there is restaurant type foods. Case in point: a box of chicken tenders. Directions on box: deep fry for 3-4 minutes. Martha (pre-deep fryer) method: put in oven, check every 5 or 10 minutes until they look done, cut into one, find it still raw, curse the oven and various other kitchen appliances, repeat. Yeah, their way is much better. We found that when they’re baked the outer breading is much spicier than when they’re deep fried. That was interesting. Because of all the recent kitchen appliance purchases we definitely needed more storage room so we got a few new bookcases for storage. They fit perfectly and freed up a lot of counter space.

I also finally got the CD I ordered from Barnes & Noble about a month ago. It had been out of stock for awhile. I guess this is ok considering it was an import and I couldn’t find it anywhere else. The CD is the newest from Charlotte Church. This is her first attempt at a “pop” album as the other albums she has done were all of the classical genre. It’s an interesting transition. Between being from Wales and the fact that she started out in strictly classical music, she’s not too popular over here in the US. She was the voice in the score of A Beautiful Mind though and she also sang the song played as the credits rolled, so you’ve probably heard her voice. She has a very unique instrument. I haven’t decided if I like her new persona yet. I’ve listened to the CD (on random) lots of times in my car and at work. It’s not your everyday pop music. It bears little resemblance to Britney Spears. I think it’s nearly impossible for Charlotte to completely abandon her classical roots simply because her voice has been trained so well for that type of music it comes through even when she’s singing questionable lyrics to funky drum machine beats. I generally enjoy the songs. I wasn’t sure I’d like them. I went to her website before I ordered the CD and there were clips and the music videos from the three songs that have been released as singles in Europe. She has definitely changed her image. Whatever makes her happy, I guess. I just wonder if she’ll find as much success in this genre as she did in the classical world. If she makes more CDs after this one, I’ll probably buy those ones too.

10,000 miles

Hit the 10,000 mile mark on my car earlier this week:



Kinda blurry, I know, but it was getting dark out on my way home from work and I pulled over in a parking lot to snap the photo with my cell phone. Not the greatest quality camera.

As you can see, it was 37 degrees outside. It's been oddly warm here lately. Got up to damn near 50 a few days ago. Just crazy...

The Saga Continues

Well, Adam's hamster, Howie, seems to be doing well. He's generally happy and playful. He has a bad habit of pooping and peeing on whoever is holding him. I'm not sure if it's nerves or if he just likes peeing on people. In any case, it can get messy.

We went back to Animal Adventure on Thursday evening to see if the babies that we saw there a few weeks ago were ready to be sold. They were and I found a baby teddy bear hamster that I liked so we bought it. It's still an "it" for the time being because it's too young to tell if it's a he or she. Therefore I'm waiting to name it until I can tell. My gut feeling is that it's a girl, but who knows.



Let's see if we can keep this one going. It was treated for wet tail as a newborn so hopefully it can resist the fate the others fell to.

50 Books

I'm being a joiner (in the best sense of the word.) My sister-in-law Jodi decided to take the "50 book challenge" and I figured it might be fun. There is a whole group of people doing this over at LiveJournal, so why not me too? I've created a separate web page to log the books I'm reading. Each time I update it I'll post a little something here though. I just created a really rough version of it for now. It might change later. I also got around to changing the links over there on the right, so now my website and my photoalbum are linked here along with the new site.

Year 2005 Survey

I found this while wandering around the blogging world and I thought it would be fun to answer the questions myself as well...

What did you do in 2005 that you'd never done before?
Lots of things. I bought a brand new car, I dated one person for more than 3 months, I moved in with that person, I went out to New York to visit my mother, and probably a ton of other things I’m forgetting about right now.

Did you keep your new years' resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
I don’t think I really made any last year so they were pretty easy to keep! I haven’t really made any this year either although Adam keeps bugging me about them. They’re usually the same old thing – lose weight, become enlightened and at peace with the world, that kind of bullshit.

Did anyone close to you give birth?
Lisa had her son in March I believe. But 2004 was really the big “everyone I know is having a baby” year.

Did anyone close to you die?
Chewy, the hamster, did. But no HUMAN did.

What countries did you visit?
Does Canada count?

What would you like to have in 2006 that you lacked in 2005?
Hmm. I don’t know. More money in my savings account? I spent a lot of money this past year.

What date from 2005 will remain etched upon you?
Well, April 13th was a good day.

What was your biggest achievement of the year?
Just one? Heh. I don’t consider anything I did this year to be an “achievement” really. I just kind of lived life.

What was your biggest failure?
I never fail. :) Just kidding. I know I keep letting Adam down on a certain issue so I guess that could be it.

Did you suffer illness or injury?
Just your usual colds and the bruises that come with being a clutz.

What was the best thing you bought?
My new car probably. Although I really like my new mixer too…

Whose behavior merited celebration?
Uhm. I don’t know. Who made these questions up?

Whose behavior made you appalled?
How about Mr. Scientology, Tom Cruise. What a dumbass. Thank goodness I never thought he was cute.

Where did most of your money go?
Rent, of course. And car payments, food, practical stuff…

What did you get really, really, really excited about?
Lots of things. New car, new relationship, new house…

What song will always remind you of 2005?
Don’t Phunk With my Heart by the Black Eyed Peas. We heard that song about 10 million times on our way to and from New York.

Compared to this time last year, are you:
a) Happier or sadder?
Definitely happier. Last year sucked.

b) Thinner or fatter?
Unfortunately fatter. A lot fatter. *sigh*

c) richer or poorer?
Richer. Yay to a full-time job with benefits!

What do you wish you'd done more of?
Travel. I didn’t get out much and after our successful camping excursion I would have liked to do it again.

What do you wish you'd done less of?
Sitting on my butt watching TV.

How will you be spending Christmas?
Christmas has already happened, but I spent it with Adam and his family.

How many one-night stands?
None.

What was your favorite TV program?
I didn’t get cable until October, so up until that point I watched a lot of NBC. The Apprentice (Trump version) was good. I’m also hooked on 7th Heaven on the WB.

Do you hate anyone now that you didn't hate this time last year?
Hate is a strong word. There are very few people in the world that I truly hate. No one fell to that status this past year.

What was the best book you read?
I didn’t really read too much this past year. Too busy sitting around watching TV I guess. I believe John Irving had a new book out and I read that, so probably that one. It was called Until I Find You.

What was your greatest musical discovery?
Er… that Adam can’t sing? I don’t know.

What did you want and get?
Lots of things. I generally get what I want.

What was your favorite film of this year?
I saw a lot of them. More than usual probably. I really liked the movie Prime, with Meryl Streep. I liked it because the ending was not what you would have expected.

What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
I worked a normal day and then went out for dinner with Adam to Applebee’s. I turned… uhm… 23.

How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2005?
I don’t think I have one. I got a lot more color in my clothes though. Adam’s mostly to blame for that. He complained that all I wore was black and purple.

What kept you sane?
Are you sure I’m sane?

Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?
Uh, I don’t really have a celebrity crush right now. No one really stood out for me this year.

What political issue stirred you the most?
I tend to avoid politics.

Who did you miss?
No one, really.

Who was the best new person you met?
I didn’t really meet a lot of new people outside the people at work. I’m boring…

Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2005:
Back-up your hard drive. Tee hee.

Quote song lyrics that sum up your year:
I’ll have to think about this one…

The Hamster Game

So, the third time's a charm, eh? This guy lasted only a few days. No, this one didn't die. He just had a nasty temper and a habit of biting anything that got in his toothline. Since Adam was after something a little more cuddly, he had to take this one back. Didn't even have a chance to name him...




This one is hamster #4, otherwise known as Howie. He seems a lot friendlier although he tends to hiss at you if you wake him up. We'll see if this one can last.

The Holidays

I’ve got quite a bit to catch up on here so this might be a long entry. First of all, let’s address the whole hamster issue. When Adam got home from work on Friday afternoon he discovered that Chewy had checked out (permanently) at some point during the day. This was especially surprising to both of us since he had been so active and chipper that morning. He had gotten sick a few days after we brought him home and we had been giving him medicine and watching him carefully. Who knows what happened… Adam brought him back to the pet store and found out that pretty much every hamster in the store was sick and they were quarantined. Nice of them to let us know… Needless to say, we won’t be going back to that store. I was pretty blue most of Friday night and Saturday. I don’t know how I got so attached to him so quickly. I just hope he died while he was sleeping or something. It would make me feel a whole lot worse if he had to suffer too much.

I managed to get quite a cold sometime between Tuesday night at IMA and Thursday-ish. It remained with me until Christmas so most of my vacation time was spend sleeping or laying in bed sneezing. It usually happens that way. We spent Christmas Eve afternoon at Adam’s parents’ house. We exchanged gifts from the secret santa deal, had a light lunch/dinner of sandwiches, and hung out for awhile. This time his older sister seemed to be in a much better mood and there were no quizzes about where my family was. Good thing since I had absolutely no idea this time. :) We went home and I think we went to bed pretty early since I was still sick and we had to be up relatively early the next morning. We got up on Christmas and I went to church with Adam’s family. After that we came home and had our own Christmas thing. We went up to Adam’s uncle’s house to have some time with his uncle, aunt, and grandmother who I hadn’t yet met. They all seem nice enough although I was informed that the grandmother is always more pleasant to be around when she has a few beers in her. In the midst of opening presents and talking, Adam’s parents were invited over to our house for dinner. I’m still not quite sure how that happened. Meh. So after we left his uncle’s we came home, did some turbo cleaning, and I cooked dinner. His parents were a little late (I think they got caught up in the football game or something), but it was nice once they got here. After dinner we sat around and talked for a bit and then they went home.

We did some major shopping on this past Saturday all throughout the Fox Valley. We stopped in Oshkosh so I could buy some new bake ware. I also bought a teapot. We stopped at Kmart so I could pick up a few pant hangers. No one else seems to carry the kind I was after. Unfortunately my former manager was there so I had to hear her unpleasant voice for the first time in 6 months. That sucked. Then we headed up to Appleton. We went to Sam’s Club and bought items in bulk for the first time with our membership. Fun stuff. We also went to Bed, Bath, and Beyond and had the call the GB store and hold the food processor I wanted since the Appleton store didn’t have it. We stopped at Cub food so Adam could get his crab legs. We also happened to find some cheap champagne for the evening. Strawberry flavored… Then we headed to Green Bay, stopping to pick up some cheese at Simon’s on the way. We got the food processor – I paid $35 for a $100 item! Woo! – and then checked out a pet store nearby to see what kind of hamsters they had. I wasn’t ready to seriously look for a replacement, but Adam was. We didn’t find anything there so we headed back to Appleton. We went to Petsmart where we had seen some cute Russian hamsters a few days earlier. When we got there they were pretty wiped out though. Only a few were left and I think most of them were dwarfs that were mislabeled. The girl who helped us was pretty clueless. I don’t think she really knew what she was doing. She felt comfortable enough with us to overshare that she lived with her boyfriend in her boyfriend’s mom’s house. His mom really likes her. (So, what… geesh…) She also tried to get us to buy a very expensive bird. Who knows why. Anywho, I didn’t see anything I liked, but Adam picked out this feisty little white guy. No name has been picked out yet. This one is all his though. I don’t really like him too much and he doesn’t seem to like anyone. After we got him settled in the cage we brought with us, we headed back home. As I put away all the crap we bought, Adam got the hamster settled in the other cage.

We headed back to Appleton to catch the 7pm showing of “The Family Stone.” It’s ok, I guess. There are some funny moments and some sad moments. It’s no contender for the Oscar or anything, but it’s a cute movie. It was much more crowded than we’d anticipated and we ended up being completely boxed in by an old lady with horrible perfume and a younger woman with even worse perfume. I think both Adam and I had monumental headaches by the time the movie was over. We walked out back into the fresh air and then headed up to Green Bay. We checked out the Casino but when we saw cars parking all along the drive up to the hotel we decided it would be suicide to try and do anything there. We turned around and drove across town to Lambeau Field. We had a beer at Curly’s and hung out for a while. When that got boring we headed back across town to his Grandma’s house. His cousin worked until 11, but we were supposed to hang out there and celebrate the new year with him and a few of his friends. They sat there playing Madden ’06 while I laid on the couch, bored out of my mind. Harold had a few too many and I was reminded of all the bad parties I had gone to during my sophomore year of college. They turned off the video game before midnight and we watched the re-run of the ball dropping and toasted each other with the cheap strawberry champagne. Tasted just like Boone’s Farm… We headed back home pretty soon after midnight since Adam had to work in the morning.

All in all it was a bearable holiday season.

RIP Chewy

I don't really want to write about it now. I'll post again later.

Good News/Bad News

Ok, so the bad news first. That's how it goes, right? We noticed that Spaz (that's what we named our hamster) was not happy and was getting more lethargic and depressed looking each day. She also smelled horrible and wasn't eating. So we took her back to Petco on Saturday to see what was up. Turns out she had wet tail, the hamster version of diarrhea. I felt horrible when the salesperson told me that she probably got it from us not washing our hands before we touched her or something like that. I already was sick and was hopped up on cold medicine so I got kinda weepy when we decided to just return her and have her treated in the store.

The good news is that we picked out a different hamster and brought him home. Well, Adam kind of picked him out because I was scared and sniffling. He picked a male that was kind of running up to the glass begging to be taken home. On the way home he got ahold of one of the air holes in the box and almost chewed his way out. I had to cover the hole he ripped open so he wouldn't escape into the car. While we cleaned out the cage and washed everything off to make sure no wet tail germs remained, we stuck him in the old cage where he preceded to chew on anything he could get his teeth around. When we got him into the new cage he explored for a bit and then went to work chewing at various parts of that cage. It was decided that "Chewy" was an appropriate name because it's apparently his favorite pasttime, followed closely by obsessive cleaning and food hoarding.

He's being a much more normal hamster with a healthy appetite and frisky personality. This leads us to believe that Spaz probably was sick before we got her here and it just got worse over the week we had her. This doesn't make me feel completely better, but it helps.

He's cute too... and he's scared of me, just like Spaz was...

New Family Member

We went and bought a hamster on Sunday evening. I don't really remember how the whole subject came up but we talked about it for like 2 days and then went out to Petco and bought one. It's a light brown teddy bear (female.) We don't have a name for her yet, but Spaz or Psychotic seem appropriate. She is so skittish and nervous all the time. Maybe it's just because she seems to hate me... I don't know. But she needs to calm down or else she's going to give herself a heart attack.





I'm sure there will be a ton of pictures of her on this site. She's so cute... She needs a bigger cage though. She is a lot bigger than we thought she was. We're working on that...

As promised...

Not a very good picture of the license, but you can still see the horrible red gradiant thing they went with...and my awful, awful picture. *sigh*

Dumb Commercials

There are some really dumb commercials on tv this time of year. There are certain stores I will never shop at/item I won’t buy simply because their commercials annoy me. Most famously for that is Van Vreede’s. Their commercials are just pictures of their merchandise with this obnoxious voice-over by this man and woman. Right now their thing is no interest, no payments, no down payment etc. The lady says the “no” part and the guy says the other part. But she says it gradually louder until she’s yelling. No interest, NO payments, NOOOOO down payment!. It’s so annoying! I hate Van Vreede’s.

Another obnoxious commercial are those Welch’s grape juice ones with that little girl. Her voice alone is grating. Add to that the stupid dialogue and her screaming “forty” at the end of the purple grape one. Ugh! Good thing I don’t like grape juice in the first place because I definitely wouldn’t be buying Welch’s.

Winning the prize for most unrealistic is the current Aleve commercial. In each situation, this person doubles over in pain and whoever is with them whips out this box of Aleve and says, “Here, try this.” Who carries around Aleve still in its box? How ridiculous…

Don’t even get me started on those Stein Mart commercials. Who wears clothes like that? *shudder*

Then there are these LoanMax commercials. They had some on tv last year which were more disturbing than annoying. They had this big dude (think Jolly Green Giant) dressed up as an elf and this little dude (think Mini-me) dressed as Santa. For some reason he was driving this miniature car. It was just odd… I haven’t seen that yet this year, but now they have some radio spots. It’s quite obvious that these commercials were made in a different part of the country. As a native Wisconsinite, I realize we have quite the accent and an uncanny ability to completely change the pronunciation of any word just because we feel like it. Like the lake right next to 21 is Lake Butte des Morts. Proper French dictates that this should be pronounced “Beuooht day more.” But no, here in Wisconsin, it’s “beudemore.” Anyway, in this commercial they list off locations of their businesses in the area. The announcer pronounces Fond du Lac quite correctly “Fon doo lock”, but anyone from this area knows it’s really pronounced “Fon duh lack.” They pronounced Green Bay with the emphasis on “Green” when anyone from around here knows the emphasis is on “Bay.” They don’t really mess up Appleton, but that’s kind of hard to mispronounce. In this commercial they even have weird pronunciation of car and cash and catch. It’s the “a” or something. I don’t know. It just bothers me every time I hear the commercial.

New License

I forgot to mention previously that on Monday we went to the DMV to finally get our addresses changed. Only took a couple months… If I’m feeling brave perhaps I’ll take a picture of my new license. I decided to get a completely new one since my old one said I lived in Sheboygan and had the glaring red box around my head announcing that I was underage. The new licenses are pretty ugly. They’ve got this red gradient thing going on. My picture isn’t the greatest either. I look retarded. *sigh* Of course Adam’s picture came out all cute. Grrr. Life is unfair. :(

The Apprentice Finale

So the Apprentice finale aired last night. (The Donald version, that is.) I actually fell asleep while watching the Discovery Times channel so I missed the first 15 or 20 minutes of the program. The show was scheduled to go to 2 hours. Surprisingly, the first hour and a half was made up of the carrying out of the final tasks with minimal introduction and stupid comments from Donald and the announcer at the live party out in New York. After all of that, Donald spoke briefly with the eliminated candidates. I must say that Alla has really disappointed me. From the beginning of the season, she was one of my favorites. If you recall I actually predicted that she had a good chance of winning. All of the sudden in the last two episodes she turned into this monumental bitch with such an attitude that even Donald told her to shut up numerous times. Last night was no exception. She jumped all over Rebecca seemingly unprovoked and Donald had to tell her to back off yet again. *sigh* Is she ticked because everyone knows about her pole-dancing past or something? Yeesh.

This finale had little of the suspense or uncertainty of past seasons. It seemed from almost the beginning that Donald intended to hire both Randal and Rebecca. I mean this whole season has been out of the ordinary with multiple firings on one night and the total elimination of a team twice. When the candidates chose opposing projects it seemed to solidify that hunch. So when Donald said, “Randal, you’re hired” I really wasn’t surprised when he interrupted Randal’s celebratory dance and asked him to come back to the conference table. I WAS surprised when Randal did a 180 and let his ego get in the way of who he had projected himself to be throughout the whole interview process. When Donald asked if he thought that Rebecca should be hired as well, Randal selfishly proclaimed that the show was called “The Apprentice”, not “The Apprenti” (which, by the way, is NOT the plural form of apprentice…it’s not even a word! Nice going Rhodes scholar with 5 degrees…) so there should only be one - him. The crowd quite rightly booed while the credits rolled.

Last season it seemed that it would have been the right thing to do to hire both of the ladies in the final two. Kendra and Tana were two very different people and each one was suited for one of the two projects Donald lined up. It was a shame he chose to hire just Kendra. This season was even more shocking. I’m still hoping he’ll come back and tell Randal to get bent and hire Rebecca anyway. I think Randal lost a lot of supporters with that stupid move. It was totally out of character (unless he was just acting this entire time and this is a glimpse of his real self…)

All in all, a rather disappointing ending to an otherwise entertaining season. Kind of left me with a bad feeling.

I've got no title for this...

I finally got my act together, finished my letter and sent the cards out. If anyone who reads this wants one (and doesn’t get one) it’s because I don’t have your address. It’s up to you to get it to me. I figure anyone who’s important enough should let me know if they’ve moved. We’ll see if I get any of them back as undeliverable.

There’s not much going on here lately. The weather sucked for awhile, got better, and now it’s supposed to dump 6 inches of snow tonight. There’s no way to win weather-wise in Wisconsin. If it’s not the snow, it’s the -15 windchills or the roads of solid ice. Ugh. But once again it’s my own damn fault for not moving somewhere else when I had the chance…

The next few weeks are going to be interesting. Boring at times, perhaps, but interesting nonetheless. This week is pretty normal except that I had vacation yesterday. Adam went to the Packer game on Sunday night so I knew he’d be getting home in the early morning hours and would wake me up so I didn’t want to have to go to work after that. We did some shopping and caught up on some sleep. I’ll be in New London tomorrow (hopefully) finally getting the fixed assets inventoried. We’ll see how much the weather messes with those plans. The rest of the week should be relatively uneventful. I think the monthly meeting is Friday, but I’m not involved with that. I just reap the free donut benefits. Then I have plans to go hang with the accounting guys from college after work on Friday for a while. Hopefully some of the professors will show up since it’s the end of the semester over at UWO.

Next week I work Monday and half of Tuesday and then I’m off on vacation or holiday until the following Wednesday. Heh. This is what happens when you wait until the last minute to use your vacation time. Not that there’s really much going on during that time anyway. Pretty much everyone else is off anyway. IMA has their holiday meeting next Tuesday night and hopefully things go well with that. The speaker had been contacting me about setting equipment up (which I’m pretty sure isn’t in my job description) but I think I managed to get everything taken care of. Adam plans to come with me since it’s the “bring a guest” meeting of the year. I’m afraid he’ll probably be bored out of his mind and wonder what kind of person he’s with after meeting some of the IMA members. Eh. He should get a good meal out of it at least.

When I return to work on the 28th it will be time to gear up for year-end stuff. I’ll be out in New London again on the 30th to do some major job closings and G/L clean up before the end of the year. I caught the year-end closing right at the end last year so it will be interesting to see how things go from the start. Presto’s year-end always seemed pretty low-key. I came in on Saturday or Sunday a few times, but it really didn’t seem much more strenuous than a normal monthly close (excepting adjusting entries for taxes, accruals, etc…) I guess I’ll just have to wait and see.

Holiday-wise, I think I’m pretty much done doing whatever shopping I’m going to do. I still have to come up with something to get for Angie, my boss, though. I’m not sure what the appropriate gift is. Adam’s idea of a pen didn’t really do it for me. I’ll have to keep thinking on that one. As for other people, I’ve got a couple more ideas floating around in my head, but I’m not sure I’m going to act on them. I’m more focused on what kinds of things I want to get myself after Christmas :) I’ve really been making good use of my new mixer. This weekend I baked two different batches of cookies (peanut butter chip and peanut butter/chocolate chip) just because I felt like it. It was fun, and they turned out great. Made the house smell good for awhile. Kind of got rid of the onion smell that had been hanging around since I made meatballs. I’ll definitely be getting a food processor, but I’m also looking at getting serving dishes since I really don’t have anything like that. I’ve also been eyeing a few other things, but I only have so much space in the kitchen. I suppose we really could get rid of the duplicated appliances (like the two coffee makers sitting in the closet…) but I don’t know. I have this problem throwing perfectly good appliances out just because we found a better one. I don’t think Goodwill takes stuff like that either… *sigh*

Anywho, hopefully this “getting a cold” feeling will go away and I’ll be able to stay healthy during the next few weeks.

Community Property

Adam and I had a conversation about weddings and marriage and the like last night and it got me thinking about Wisconsin's screwed up community property laws again. One of the main reservations I have about getting married is because of these laws. I saw how they screwed my mom big time during her divorce and I have no intention of getting myself into that same boat. Not that I expect that to happen, mind you. You never know though.

I was just doing some research and it looks like a prenuptial agreement trumps the community property laws. This makes me feel a little better about the whole thing. There are only 8 states that have these stupid community property laws and Wisconsin has the most messed up version of them. Washington is one of the other seven. Evan & Jodi, I was wondering if you've come in contact with anything about the laws out there and what you think of the whole thing...

Funny how things work out...

While I was looking for the most recent copy of my resume (that being one of the things swept away into oblivion by the terrible hard-drive crash(es)) I ended up in the file manager of my geocities website for the first time in quite a while. I kind of stopped updating or changing that once I got my independent blog and photo sites. As I looked through all the pages there, I came to my “What I Want in a Man” page . This was up for a while, linked to my Yahoo! profile, just as a kind of guideline for all the loser guys who would randomly IM me. I figured if they could get through an entire page of bitchy text, they deserved my attention. I took it down soon after I graduated. Then something else in the file manager caught my attention. It was a page simply entitled “Adam.” Funny thing is this page was created (according to geocities) on March 13th - a month before I/we got my/our act together and became all official. Interesting…

John Irving Movies

My brother had written a blog entry about John Irving’s The Cider House Rules a while back and I had intended to comment on it. I didn’t get around to it and the more I thought about it, the more I thought I should give this topic its deserved amount of attention. There are those who would rather see a movie based on a book than read the book itself. There are those who would rather read the book than see the movie. To each their own, I say.

To my knowledge, these are the JI books that were adapted to the big screen. Let me know if I’ve missed any:

The World According to Garp (1982)
The Hotel New Hampshire (1984)
A Prayer for Owen Meany (as Simon Birch (1998))
The Cider House Rules (1999)
A Widow for One Year (at least the first half – as The Door in the Floor (2004))

I’ve seen them all and read all of the related books. I think I actually own all of them (the books) but Garp…

The World According to Garp
This is perhaps not the best JI book or movie to start with because it’s perhaps the most bizarre. That’s not saying much though, as most of his books are kind of out there. Big screen wise, Robin Williams plays the title character, Garp, with Glenn Close as his mother. Overall the movie was very well done. I’m not sure what else to say about this one. I’ve only read the book once and although it has one of my favorite completely messed up scenes ever (the one in the car in the rain…when she bites off his…you know…) I never really got into it too much.

The Hotel New Hampshire
I actually just finished reading this one for the third or fourth time last week. The movie has a lot of relatively well-known actors (Rob Lowe, Jodie Foster) but it is really just poorly made. It sticks to the general plot points of the book but it just doesn’t give it the pizzazz I think it could have had. Maybe it’s because it was made in the 80’s, but it just has that low budget look. The book itself is one of the stranger ones. There are several themes that keep finding themselves in JI’s books: prostitution, weight-lifting, wrestling, strange sexual situations, strained relationships, death in weird ways. Someone always seems to end up in Amsterdam or somewhere else in a German-speaking European country. This book has it all.

A Prayer for Owen Meany
This is actually the first JI book I got. It was a gift from Evan (although I believe he told me that Jodi is actually the one who picked it out.) It was interesting enough, but it’s really not one of my favorites. Too much overtly political commentary I guess. The movie kind of altered the story a bit and kept Owen (aka Simon) as a child throughout the entire film rather than have him grow up as he does in the book. The overall theme therefore changed quite a bit, but the ultimate “Owen/Simon as a hero” plot point remained. But a lot less politically motivated, with no mention of Vietnam. I found the movie (starring Ashley Judd, who I’m not too fond of) to be a little dippy. A feel-good movie of sorts I suppose, but just not my cup of tea. They had to take out all of the good parts because they altered the story so much from the original.

The Cider House Rules
I read the book before I rented the movie. Therefore I didn’t have that preconceived idea of what the characters should look and act like that my brother mentions. Charlize Theron is a beautiful woman, but I didn’t really like her as Candy. I don’t know. Something about her bothered me. My favorite character in the movie version was the man who played Mr. Rose. While I must say that The Cider House Rules is perhaps the best adaptation of one of JI’s books, I’m afraid there are some problems with it. Most noticeably, the character of Melony doesn’t exist in the movie. She is a rather important person in Homer’s life in the book. I just couldn’t understand why she had been eliminated in the movie version. I saw or read an interview with JI somewhere discussing this point. Apparently he believed that her character was too strong and would ultimately overpower the other more important plot points. I guess he has a valid point – and it’s kind of hard to get a 500+ page novel into a reasonable length movie. There are other changes that were made from the book and, while I thought the movie was pretty good, the book is definitely better.

A Widow for One Year
I must say that I was the most disappointed with this movie adaptation. What I think is most disturbing is that in the extras on the DVD there is an interview with JI and he appears to have been satisfied with the whole thing. *sigh* How can you be satisfied when someone turns your awesome book into some boring hour and a half long melodramatic snore-fest? I was really looking forward to this movie as this book is one of my favorites. Granted, they only tell half of the story in the movie. The cast was decent (Jeff Bridges, Kim Basinger) but it just never gathered any momentum. The book is full of great scenes and lots of heartbreak and emotion that the movie never seems to capture. Not to mention that the second half of the book is probably the better half… Eh, I was highly unimpressed with the movie. The book definitely wins in this case.

I guess it must be mentioned that in order to get a decent rating from those parents over at the MPAA, each of the books that has been made into a movie had to lose some of its JI charm. He definitely has a messed up sense of humor and is, at times, quite crude. I mean, the subject matter alone is enough to put some people off: abortion (The Cider House Rules), incest/rape (The Hotel New Hampshire), swinging – the partner-swapping kind (The 158-pound Marriage).

Anyway, I guess my point is some authors write in such a way that it’s difficult to get a decent movie out of the original publication. Most of JI’s books are near or over the 500 page mark. They’re full of wonderful description and dialogue, but it’s just not practical to try and cram all of that into a movie. Of the attempts that have been made, I’d say that CHR was the most successful. He even got an Oscar for that. (Funny about that…in his most recent book, Until I Find You, the main character is a screenwriter of sorts and JI has him fictionally win that Oscar since he didn’t want to take the award away from someone else.)

Wow, I’ve almost written an essay here. Sorry about that. :) That’s just my two cents (or perhaps a dollar or so in this case.)

Thanksgiving Weekend

We did the Thanskgiving Day meal over at Adam's parents' house as planned. We also did the "secret Santa" arrangements as planned. Since I highly doubt anyone involved (except Adam) reads this, I think it's safe to reveal that I picked his mom. I think I'm pretty much done shopping for her already. She was easy :) I'm not really planning on getting too many other people actual gifts, but we'll see how things go. I've got my letter pretty much typed out and I bought cute snowman paper yesterday while we were out shopping. The meal itself was good, as usually. Slightly non-traditional (lasagna), but good. I couldn't find my Lactaid before we left so we stopped at Wal-Mart on the way. Turns out it was hidden way in the back of one of the cupboards so now I have lots of it. I still maintain his older sister was glaring at me throughout the entire meal (she was sitting across from me) but Adam says she's just crabby all the time. Hmmm. I don't know. It was also kind of odd when his mother and younger sister kept asking what the rest of my family was doing for Thanksgiving. I guess they'd find it strange that we don't really talk to each other much, but I just gave them as much information as I had and sat there feeling stupid. *sigh* Oh well.

On Friday we had our own Thanksgiving shindig here at our house. I made cornish hens with cornbread stuffing, broccolini (baby broccoli) with lemon and garlic, mashed potatoes, biscuits, and champagne. Ok, I didn't make the champagne, but you get the idea. Pictures of the scrumptous meal can be found in my photobucket album. After making all of that I posed the idea of having Christmas here instead of at Adam's parents' house. His mom said she'd think about it, but I'm not holding my breath. That's ok though. Less hassle for me.

Saturday was our shopping day since neither of us was insane enough to go out and try and do anything on Friday. We got ornaments for the tree and garland for outside on the balcony. We bought and returned two stars before we found one that wasn't too tall or too stupid looking. Overall I think the tree looks pretty good. I might be biased though because I decorated it... It's a good thing Adam got the garland and lights up outside yesterday because it's been raining all day today. I was going to try and get a picture of them after they went on at dusk (we got a timer...) but I think I'll postpone that until it's less wet out.

Overall it was a relaxing and productive weekend.

Christmas Tree

Just a quick post here to say that we got the tree up on Friday, decorated it last night. Here's a picture:



And here's our special ornament for this year:

Yeah, I know. Cheesy.

TV

I have a lot of free times these days. That of which isn’t spent eating or messing around on the computer is generally spent watching tv. I’ve kind of gotten into a pattern. Most days I get home around 5 and watch re-runs of “7th Heaven” on ABC Family. Then at 6 I switch over to “Good Eats” on the Food Network followed by “Wheel of Fortune” at 6:30. I’m going to win that prize one of these days. I can just feel it. On Mondays I watch the new episode of “7th Heaven” on the WB and then by 8 I’m usually wiped out enough to go lay down in bed. On Tuesday we’re generally at the gym or doing other things. There’s nothing good on Tuesdays anyway. Same goes for Wednesdays. I started the season watching Martha Stewart’s version of “The Apprentice” but I very quickly lost interest. I still check it out every once in a while, but I usually end up watching the Food Network. On Thursday there’s Donald’s “Apprentice” which I watch weekly as a devoted fan. I’m rooting for Alla. :) Friday’s are pretty boring because it seems that the television programmers decided to put every horrible show on Friday. The weekends are up in the air most times. I watch a lot of “In the Kitchen” on, once again, the Food Network. Sometimes there’s a good movie on, but most times I get so bored I go and do something else. Sunday offers football and, later in the evening, “The Simpsons”, “Family Guy”, and “Desperate Housewives.”

I watch way too much tv and should really try to scale it back. It’s not as though my life revolves around it though. I am going to have to tape the special 2 hour long “Apprentice” on Thursday though because we’ll be over at Adam’s parents’ house…

Winter

Well so far winter sucks. And it isn’t even really winter yet. Last week Wednesday it snowed and rained and the temperature was just right so the roads froze over into a sheet of ice. Luckily for me, my body decided to give me a migraine headache that day so I spent my time in bed. There were something like 200 accidents on highway 41 in the couple of counties nearby. People just don’t know how to drive in this kind of weather. I have many pet peeves as I am generally annoyed about something all the time. One of my main ones around this time of year is horrible driving skills and etiquette. Last week I had to drive up to the casino in Green Bay for my IMA meeting. It was raining and dark and generally icky out. I was driving about the speed limit, leaving plenty of space between myself and the car in front of me. I just hate when you’re following a car and their tires kick all kinds of crap up on your windshield. So, a car passes me and then cuts me off, eliminating that cushion I had created. This pissed me off. I wasn’t leaving space there so he could move over. I was leaving space because that’s what you do when it’s crappy outside and you have no desire to end up with your front end smooshed into the back end of someone else. Driving in snow and ice isn’t really that complicated. You just have to be extra cautious and especially aware of the other drivers around you. People always drive too fast and that is what causes most of the accidents on highways during the winter season. I guess these people haven’t heard of “leaving a little early to give yourself some extra time to get places safely.” I am confident in my ability to drive in snow. I just doubt that ability in the other drivers on the road.

It snowed again last night and was still snowing this morning as I left for work. This is most snow in November we’ve gotten in 5 years. I’m not too thrilled with it. I had to brush a good inch or two off of my car this morning. It never fails that as I’m brushing a pile off the top of the car a gust of wind blows the whole thing back at me, dousing me in snow. It’s so annoying. The drive in to work wasn’t too bad. The snow was just beginning to get gloppy on the roads. I left about 45 minutes earlier than I usually do. But not because of the snow. I figured the earlier I got here this morning, the sooner I could leave. Traffic wasn’t too bad and there were only about 2 people who were apparently in a great hurry and rudely rushed by, endangering the lives of everyone else in the vicinity. *sigh* It’s going to be a long winter.

Christmas Gift Ideas

So this whole gift exchange thing with Adam’s family… I have to come up with some ideas of what I want for Christmas by Thursday. This is difficult for me. I’ve never been one to ask other people to get me things. I don’t know if it’s my independent streak or if it’s something else. I am just not very comfortable asking other people for things. I even feel bad about eating food in the house that I know Adam bought. I know it’s completely ridiculous. We alternate weeks, taking turns as to who pays when we go grocery shopping. It’s generally pretty equal this way. I still feel weird though, eating stuff on weeks when I know he paid. I guess it’s just something I’ll have to get over. Anyway, back to the gift exchange. Adam tells me to just put down places I could use gift cards for. I don’t know. Gift cards are en vogue these days and all, but I just think it takes the fun both out of choosing the gift and getting the gift. Plus then you know exactly how much the person spent on you. The problem is I don’t know what else to ask for. I don’t need anything and I don’t know what I want. I don’t want to ask for stupid things that I don’t need just because I have to put something down on that piece of paper. Does anyone have any ideas of what I might want to ask for? Leave me a comment if you’ve got suggestions. I’m struggling with this whole thing. Just one of the many reasons I dislike the last two months of each year…

My Problem (ok, one of them...)

There are times when I’ll think of something I really want to write about and post here. The problem is that by the time I get in front of a computer, I’ve completely forgotten what it is I wanted to write. I’ve come up with a solution. I think. I’m trying to write down the subjects I want to touch on in my little notebook and then write about them later on. We’ll see how well this works.

DB vs DC

I hate holidays. If for nothing else, I hate them because it means the few days leading up to them are the longest days at work ever. This is because all of the people who have been here for a few years have earned enough days of vacation to leave about a week and a half before the actual holiday. I think most of my office has off for the entire month of December. Me, being a humble employee with less than one year of service, does not have this luxury. So I sit here, in my cube, in the deafening silence. Today wasn’t so bad. I had stuff to do and also had a meeting about the new profit sharing plan they’re implementing, so that took up some time. Tomorrow also shouldn’t be too horrible. Residual stuff to do from today. It’s Wednesday that is going to be absolutely terrible. My manager is off as is her manager. Actually, her manager is off all week. I am guessing there will be about 5 people here on Wednesday. And by that time I will have pretty much nothing to do. The middle of the month tends to drag because not much is happening in my world. I’m not looking forward to it.

Now about this new profit sharing thing here at work… Formerly they had a defined benefit pension plan. With my vast accounting knowledge, I can tell you that these kinds of plans are a pain in the butt. But actuaries like them a lot because they keep them employed, coming up with complicated formulas and pulling numbers out of the air and all. The company finally decided that it was time to change. This was not particularly a big surprise to me. DB plans are kind of like the original version Nintendo. Or maybe even the Atari. They’re old news. What’s big and hot are the DC, Defined Contribution, plans. Otherwise known as your 401(k). These are much easier to manage and a lot of the responsibility is put on the employee rather than on the employer. Of course, the employer is still responsible for ensuring that the money they say they’re putting aside for the employees is really there (there have been quite a few debacles around that subject lately), but there are no funky formulas and the company isn’t the one putting up all the cash. Pretty nice deal for their side, eh? Understandably, this is causing a bit of a ruckus among employees who have been with the company for a while but not long enough to be grandfathered under the old plan. This doesn’t affect me as I’ve been here less than a year. I am not even vested in the pension plan and will therefore not even be included in the people who will have their service years frozen.

I’ve digressed. My original plan was to talk about the new profit sharing program. Now, when I worked as an intern over at Presto Products, I was very familiar with their profit sharing program. Heck, I did all the payout estimates and booked the accrual each month for three years. I knew what elements were measured and what the payout percent would be for each level attained. I must say, they had a pretty good program. If the company did well, employees could get quite the bonus. This bonus was in the form of a check sent out in February. Cash. Moola. That employees could spend right away on whatever they wanted. Good deal. Now, this new “profit sharing” plan that Bemis has come up with is different. This incentive will come in the form of contributions to the accounts you have elected for your 401(k) to go to. You can’t touch this money until you retire. It’s based on % growth of EPS year to year. At a minimum, everyone will earn 2% (of your wages, that is.) At a maximum, 5%. I don’t know. It’s not smart to complain about “free” money, but it seems like we’re getting a bum deal somehow. I know Americans in general really need to learn how to save and it’s good that the company is trying to help secure comfortable retirements for their employees. I guess it’s not fair to compare one company to another, but it just seems like something is off. Maybe I came into this company with too much knowledge about what kind of benefits other people get…

In any case, I’ve bumped my 401(k) contribution up to 8% to get the maximum company match starting January 1st. That’s another point I could grumble about (they contribute, at max, 2.5%) but I won’t. I can’t complain too much or I might get in trouble. :)

I'm going to asphyxiate myself with my phone cord

It’s amazing that phones with cords still exist. Sometimes I would kill for a cordless phone at my desk at work. Over the past week or so, my phone cord has become a knotted mass of plastic. When I pick up the receiver to answer, the entire base of the phone scoots along my desk after it. I have to lean my neck down in order to talk into the phone at a distance where the person on the other end can hear me. It’s just ridiculous. So today I took action. I took the receiver off the base and dangled it over the edge of the desk. I watched it twist and turn for a few minutes. It didn’t get all the knots out, but it’s a vast improvement. Unfortunately I’m certain this is just a temporary fix. Stupid phones.

Not much has been going on lately. Can you tell? I’ll be up in Green Bay this evening for the joint IMA meeting. I have a feeling it’s going to be a long night. If I get too bored, I suppose I could just sneak out and go to the casino that is next door. Heh. Adam is left to his own devices this evening, as he has the night off and I’ll be out. Tomorrow and Thursday I’ll be working up in New London on the fixed asset inventory I think I mentioned before. It should be interesting. The Plant Manager has assured me it will definitely be a painful experience. And he wasn’t joking. Between tonight and two days breathing in ink fumes, I should have one heck of a headache for the remainder of the week. Yay! Good thing nothing of much importance is going on. The monthly executive meeting is this Friday, so I’m looking forward to the free food that generally accompanies it. One of the perks of working at the corporate office I guess.

I bought Christmas cards yesterday while shopping at Shopko. I haven’t started working on a letter at all, but perhaps I’ll get on that this weekend. It’s still relatively early, so I’m not too concerned. I do like to get mine out early though. That way people who forgot I existed still have the chance to reciprocate the card before the time has come and gone. Aren’t I nice? Since my twice in a row computer hard-drive meltdowns, I have been backing my hard-drive up every couple of weeks. This means my address file should be safe. Of course, if anyone reading this knows for a fact that I don’t have your address or the address I’ve got is wrong, let me know. I don’t really plan to send out a “give me your address” e-mail at all. I figure if someone moved and didn’t bother to tell me, they don’t deserve a card. So there.

Now some random blogging about stuff in the news that caught my attention:

* As it has made national headlines, I’m sure most of you have heard about Steven Avery and Teresa Halbach. I just find it kind of fishy that this guy is released from prison in 2003 after it is found that he didn’t really rape someone and then he goes and (most likely) murders this woman, hides her car and possessions, and burns her body. It seems kind of suspicious to me. His previous conviction was overturned due to DNA evidence that proved it wasn’t him. This additional testing only came at the insistence of a group called the Wisconsin Innocence Project, which is associated with the University of Wisconsin Law School. Now, it’s not that I’m doubting the reliability of DNA evidence. It just seems odd that he is almost certainly responsible for this new crime. When he was released from prison 2 years ago, he appeared all over the news saying he had no hard feelings for the DA or the courts for their mistake. He is currently in the process of suing for wrongful imprisonment or something. Then he goes and does something like this? But apparently the whole family is kind of shady. They own an auto yard in Mishicot or thereabouts and even most of the neighbors are wary to talk about them on camera. He has been formally charged of the crime this afternoon after being held for a gun violation. It should be interesting to see how this plays out. His brother is already crying out that he’s been framed by the local police who apparently have it out for the entire family. But it has also been reported that some of the family loyalty is waning with all the evidence that is being released to the pubic.

* Last week an 18-year-old was elected mayor of a small town out in Michigan. He beat out the incumbent by something like 2 votes. And some people say their vote doesn’t count? Granted, this particular town only has 8,200 residents. It should be interesting to see if he shows up in more “important” races down the line or if this first taste of political action kills his desire to lead.

* They’re going to raise postage by 2 cents on January 8, 2006. Oh no! Thank goodness it doesn’t take effect until AFTER Christmas cards are sent. That increase could send some people into bankruptcy.

* The Advance Titan is the newspaper associated with the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh. I know a few people who are still on staff there and all I can say is that I’m embarrassed for them. The paper has been degraded to such low quality journalism that it isn’t even funny. Add to that the joke that is the comments section on their website and you have a perfect display of how colleges have been forced to admit just about anyone in order to make ends meet. I actually know the EIC, and although I can believe that he is doing some of the things he’s doing, it doesn’t seem like it would be good move, career-wise. He can’t just go and delete everything he wrote here when he decides to finally graduate and get a “real” job. I continue to read the online version every week because, let’s face it, who can resist a train wreck? What I’d really like to know though is where the faculty is in all of this. I know the paper is not associated with the journalism department, but perhaps they should be. It pains me to be associated with this level of moronism. But then again, if you think the AT is bad, you should check out Life and Liberty News, “UW-Oshkosh's #1 Source for Political Commentary,” (aka UWO’s right-winged newspaper wannabe.) It really is quite amusing and possibly worse journalism than the AT.

PCD

Ok, a couple different things I want to touch on in this post.

First of all, I broke down and bought an actual CD this past week. Normally I'd do the "borrowing from other people illegally" thing, but I decided to do the right thing on this one. It's the Pussycat Dolls. I'm not sure exactly what possessed me to go ahead and purchase this CD, but I'm kind of glad that I did. Now, the Pussycat Dolls appear to be the lead singer and then four or five backup ladies who dance around in their underwear, thrusting their hips, acting like hookers, asking whether you want your girlfriend to be a freak like they are. Surprisingly, very few of the songs on their CD are anything like their "Don'tcha" hit. There are a few tracks that even have a blues kind of mood. The lead singer, Michelle, actually has quite a powerful and amazing voice. Sometimes she sounds like Natalie Cole, sometimes like Christina Aguilera. If you can ignore one or two of the songs, the CD itself is pretty decent.

Secondly, we went and got a Christmas tree this past Thursday. It is sitting in the box in the second bedroom and will probably stay there until after Thanksgiving. It's a 7 foot Alleghany Pine or Fir or something. Fake of course. (I think the "it's in a box" thing should have given that away.) It's a cute tree. Hopefully it will fluff appropriately after being de-boxed.

As of now, it looks like we'll be going over to Adam's parents' house on Thanksgiving evening, after Adam is done at work. They're not quite sure what they'll be doing yet. It all depends on how his mother feels - she had shoulder surgery this past week and is hopped up on drugs. Adam works again the day after Thanksgiving, but not until 5pm, so we plan to have a quasi-Thanksgiving thing here in the morning or early afternoon. We saw this good looking recipe on Food Network yesterday morning for cornish hens with cornbread stuffing, so we're going to give that a try.

I admit it, I'm totally addicted to the Food Network. I recently got one of Rachel Ray (i.e. the lady who does 30 minute meals)'s cook books and made her pretzel coated chicken this afternoon. Yum-O! LoL.

Anyway, for Christmas, apparently it's a tradition to do a "secret Santa" deal with his family, so I'm included this year. It should be interesting. I'm not real big into the Christmas/holiday thing, so we'll see how well I handle this.

I'm going to make a concerted effort to go to the gym (or do Tae Bo here at home) everyday. I went alone on Friday and we went together on Saturday morning. Including Tuesday, I figure I did about 5.5 or 6 miles this week. *sigh* I need to be more motivated.

Anyway, I've spent the day cooking and cleaning up after myself interspersed with episodes of "Sex and the City" and some football. I can't believe the Vikings pulled another field goal out of nowhere to win. So awesome...

Blogging about a blog

As I was perusing some other blogs on the blogspot domain, I came across a blog from an 8th grade teacher in Ohio. She posts questions and her students respond in the comments section. One of the questions posted asked whether you’d rather be a jock or a nerd. I found most of the responses laughable and filled with pathetic grammatical and spelling mistakes. 8th graders are typing these answers? What is the world coming to? Perhaps I was just an extraordinarily articulate 13-year-old.

One of the responses that made me laugh out loud was this one (with some liberties taken to correct spelling):

“I would rather be a jock because jocks play sports. Nerds read and do home work all the time and don't have fun. Jocks can become a famous athlete someday. Nerds could become the president. And for some reason everybody hates the president.”

Everybody doesn’t hate the president because he’s a nerd. Everybody hates the president because he’s an IDIOT with seemingly little or no knowledge of how to run the country. And there are absolutely no famous athletes that everybody hates…no…course not… And what about Arnold? He’s more of a jock than a nerd. And that guy from Minnesota…the wrestler who was governor for awhile. Politicians aren’t always the ones with the brains. ‘Tis a shame.

It just amazed me how alike most of the answers were. The kids who wanted to be a jock stated that by being the jock one could: 1) be popular, 2) play sports and thereby get a hot body, 3) get the chicks, 4) be famous. They didn’t want to be a nerd because nerds: 1) are losers, 2) get picked on, 3) have no life and sit at home doing homework all day and all night. The kids who went the other way and opted for the nerdish way of life said that nerds: 1) get better grades and therefore can get into college more easily, 2) are nicer than jocks. They didn’t want to be jocks because jocks: 1) are jerks, and 2) are stupid. Now, it looks like the jocks have a better argument going on here, which I find disheartening since the jocks are the ones who are supposed to be stupid…

I’m am, without a doubt, a nerd. I really don’t remember sitting at home doing homework all night. Then again, I never did homework at any time. I got picked on, but not necessarily because of my nerd status. I think it was more my fat status that prompted that. But I think there’s something to be said for the attractiveness of intelligence. There are plenty of people out there perfectly willing to look past a hideous outside in order to extort the smarts underneath. It’s amazing what people will do to get someone else to do their homework. In any case, I found this particular posting especially interesting. Full of stereotypes and generally bad for society, but interesting nonetheless.

These children are our future (jocks and nerds.)

The Blue Screen of Death

I’ve been slacking on this blogging thing. Sometimes it’s like days go by and I don’t even notice. Last week was pretty uneventful. Adam worked every night so I was left alone to my own devices most of the time. I went to the gym alone on Thursday, which was ok. It was kind of busy, but I did about 40 minutes on the treadmill, liking the incline feature. Adam had Saturday off so we went out to a bar for the first time in a long time. We slept in on Saturday morning, something else that hadn’t happened for quite some time. We took some time to go shopping, but didn’t really end up buying too much. He watched the Badger game (or at least as much of that as he could – apparently they got their butts kicked) and some Ultimate Fight thing later on in the evening while I took a nap and tried to alleviate my headache. He worked again on Sunday so that left me to watch the Vikings win and the Packers lose. All is right with the world. When he got home we went bowling (which had been the original intention on Friday.) I was able to prove that I do, indeed, really suck at the game. I bowled 60 or 70 something, 91, 47. Just pathetic. I did beat Adam on the second game though. Not quite sure how that happened. In any case, we stopped at Taco Bell on the way home and called it a night after watching (most of) Desperate Housewives.

Today has been a long day. And it’s not even over yet. I planned to take the trash down to the dumpsters this morning on my way to work. On the way down the stairs, the handle on the paper bag in which I had stashed the old newspapers and cardboard boxes decided to rip off and the whole thing went tumbling down the stairs, spewing newspaper et al all down the stairs. I should have taken that as a sign… When I got to work, I turned on my computer and surveyed the mess that is my desk. As soon as I logged in and the startup scripts started running, I got the “blue screen of death.” Now, this had also happened last Friday, at which point I called the IT helpdesk and someone came down and looked at it. Apparently they forgot the part where they’re supposed to FIX it. *sigh* So, right away at 7:30 I called the helpdesk again. Got a different person and told him the lowdown. He said he’d inform the person I’d worked with on Friday what was going on when she came in (around 8:30.) Ok. Fine. I putzed around for a bit trying to find something to do that didn’t involve a computer. Hard to do these days. I decided to finally get rid of a bunch of file folders from 2004 that have been sitting on my desk since…well…2004. That done, I sat and waited. And waited some more. As 9:00 rolled around, I gave the consultant from Friday a call to her direct line. I got her voicemail (shocking, I know) and left her a message. Time ticked by with no response. Around 9:30, I called the helpdesk again and got a third person. I told her what was going on and she said she’d ask the other two how things were going and they’d get back to me. Sure. As I grew more bored, I decided to go offer my assistance to anyone who might need some (non-computerized) help. The first person I asked was Sue, the receptionist. Rather than give me any work, she decided to call the head honcho up in the IT department and get to the bottom of this whole thing. HH tells Sue that first IT person (from Friday) will call me. So I head back to my desk and wait for the phone to ring. And wait some more. Finally my manager is just as frustrated as I am so SHE calls the helpdesk. Surprisingly (or perhaps coincidentally) she gets the person I had worked with on Friday. Said IT person claims she didn’t know that no one had come down yet. Uhm, yeah. Ok then. I think the helpdesk needs to work on their communication skills. So, at about 10:45 I finally get someone to come down and look at my computer. It progressed throughout the morning to bluescreening as the login scripts started to bluescreening before I even logged on, to bluescreening about a minute after startup. I actually got a read an email once! Anyway, when the IT person got down here, it let me log in and gave her no problems while she read error logs, did diagnosis crap, downloaded and installed drivers. Pfft, I don’t know. I’m no IT person. I regained possession of my computer a little after 11. It appears to be working for now, but I’m not holding my breath that I’ve seen the last of the evil blue screen. I’m just hoping it doesn’t take 3 ½ hours to get it working the next time. You’d think the fact that I wasted that much time waiting around would have made the day go faster. Unfortunately, it didn’t appear to work that way.

Not quite sure what the plans are for tonight. Adam has off, so we’ll be going to the gym for awhile. After that things are pretty much up in the air.

The coming weeks don’t look too exciting either. Next week I have the IMA meeting up in Green Bay. It’s a joint meeting with another chapter so I’m hoping the meal collections aren’t too messed up. The meal choices leave a bit to be desired: shrimp scampi or filet mignon. I’m probably going to go with the filet mignon in the hopes that it comes with side dishes that are more appetizing than the shrimp. Adam tells me to eat at McDonalds on the way there and then bring the filet mignon home for him. We’ll see. I’ll be up in New London two or three times this month since I have to do a fixed asset inventory. I’m pretty sure 95% of the stuff on the current list is nonexistent, but I still have to wander the plant looking for it. *sigh* Other than that, not a lot is going on. It looks like Adam will be working both Thanksgiving and the day after. I’ll most likely be cooking a chicken on one of those days since I dislike turkey and I’ll have a lot of spare time.

That’s pretty much all I’ve got. I plan to start working on an “end of the year” letter at some point. That should be fun, given the reactions I got to the one I sent last year. Heh.