Roller Coaster Day…
First, I’d like to express my sincerest apology for missing my entry for yesterday. I’ve been emphatically repeating how much I don’t want to miss a day of blogging, because I know that once that happens, I’m doomed to slip into worse habits of skipping entries, degrading eventually to the point of non-use. Well, it happened last night–but it wasn’t entirely my fault.
You may have noticed that I don’t tend to get a very early start on these entries, with an average posting time that’s probably somewhere around 2 AM (the time you see is when I *started* the post, not finished it). So, when my internet started slowing to a halt last night around 12:50 AM, I hadn’t even begun my entry. A quick investigation revealed that RoadRunner (my ISP) was performing maintenance between 12:00 AM and 6:00 AM, so I was SOL. Without the internet, I had nothing to occupy my attention that late at night, and I wasn’t about to wait until 6:00 AM to get back on, so I reluctantly shut down my computer and went to bed. The silence was erie, but the sleep was nice. I realize, now, that I certainly could have typed my blog entry in Word, and then just posted it in the morning, but that didn’t occur to me at the time, so you all had to suffer through today without a new blog entry. Like I said, I’m sorry :'(.
I don’t do very well to remember what happened earlier in the current day, so it’s really not a very productive exercise for me to try to remember what I did yesterday. If I need to know what I did on a given day, I pretty much have to try to figure it out based on files I’ve saved, internet history, and phone called and emails I’ve sent and received. Now, I suppose I could reference my blog, but I haven’t yet gotten around to actually re-reading anything I’ve written here, as is the case with pretty much anything I write. I’ve submitted 8-page research papers without reading through them once, and I’ve already typed more than that in my blog, so I’ll just ask one of you, my faithful minions, slaves, readers, friends.
Despite that, I’ll try to humor you with a half-hearted attempt to recall Wednesday.
It’s safe to assume that I didn’t sleep much on Tuesday night (5 hours, I believe), and was consequently tired at work, for a good portion of the day. I don’t know what I did for work, but I know I invested some more time into my web site, and became very frustrated with Microsoft [Internet Explorer] for not behaving how I wanted it to. <geek>If you’ve ever done serious web design, you’ll understand what I’m saying about this, to an extent. Things used to be designed for IE, and wouldn’t work in Netscape. Now things are designed for W3 standards compliance, and don’t work in IE. An ironic fate, isn’t it?</geek>
I believe I watched a really horrible movie when I got home, named Cheerleader Ninjas. For just a glimpse at how…[shifty-eyes]…good…it is, check out this picture from it. It was a good waste of an hour and a half, and I don’t regret it (unlike that horrible hour or so that I spent watching the Olsen Twins’ 16-year-old movie "Getting There"…never waste your time one that one). I was on my own for dinner, so I made a frozen pizza and ate that, which was tasty. I would highly recommend the same to anyone else (unless I didn’t like them, in which case I wouldn’t want them to share in that tasty delight). I like you, though, so I think you should make, and then eat, some frozen pizza. Come back when you’re done with that.
[…Later]
Well, I already explained what caused me to miss my blog, so you pretty much know what happened with the rest of my Wednesday night (that I can remember, anyhow). Please let me know if you remember something about my night that I should know…any children I’ve fathered and forgotten about, any buildings I’ve started on fire, and should check on…things of that nature :P.
And on to Thursday….
(Hey, that was today!)
I woke up around 9 at the mercy of my relentless alarm clock, but snoozed it until around 9:30. I proceeded to dick around until about 10:15, when I finally went for a nice 15-minute shower. I then managed to whittle away another half hour or so, before I actually left for work around 11. For various reasons, I started my day in a really fantastic mood. It was a gorgeous day outside, I’d slept a lot, and well, last night, some good music was playing (although I can’t remember exactly what it was, at the moment), and I had a happy conversation with a friend, before leaving for work. I was actually kind of looking forward to work, believe it or not.
After arriving at work around 11:20 (I would probably be embarrassed about that, if I really liked my job), I was soon drained of the energy and enthusiasm that had characterized my morning at home. I know I had a conference call with my boss and another co-worker at 11:47 AM (phone call history is nice like that), but past that, I just remember looking at the clock, and being amazed it was 1:45 already. (Isn’t it fascinating how quickly 1:45 arrives, when you don’t get to work until 11:20? :-D) I biked over to Chipotle to pick up my lunch. It takes about 20 minutes to get there, order, and back, and I bike pretty quickly, so you can try to do the math on how far it is, if you want. I was a little reluctant to eat Chipotle today, because I’d eaten there three times last week, I believe, so I don’t want to tire myself of chipotle before the summer’s end. Even so, the only real options available to me are Chipotle, Noodles & Co, and Subway. I’d eaten Noodles on Monday and Subway on Tuesday, so Chipotle seemed like the best option.
With all this Chipotling I’ve been doing recently, I have my ordering process down pretty well (although admittedly not as well as I had the taco bell ordering down for my senior year). "I’d like a chicken burrito with pinto beans please." [Wait.] "Hot salsa, sour cream, cheese, and a little [make the universal ‘little’ gesture with thumb and forefinger about 1" apart] lettuce, please. Thanks." With the exception of this person putting a little more lettuce on the burrito than I would have liked, it all appeared to be prepared to my standards. The bike-ride back to work always seems to be into the wind, so it’s an annoyingly more difficult ride, but I get there eventually, anyhow. I’ve also gotten into the trend where I know that I’ll drink exactly two cans of soda with my Chipotle Burrito, so I grab those, and make my way back to my desk. (What can I say; I like routine/not-change.)
The first 2/3 of my burrito was fantastic, as well it should be. I’ve also started trying to consistently take one Centrum a day, to hopefully compensate for my horribly un-balance diet over the summer. I don’t remember thinking about this in the past, when I took Centrum, but the pills have a pretty bad taste/after-taste, just from putting it on my tongue for a moment, before swallowing it. I’m supposed to take the Centrum with a meal (it aids with the absorption of certain vitamins into the body, or some crap like that), so I usually try to remember to take it in the middle of a meal, which I’ve been doing surprisingly well. I only think to mention that, this time, because of the god-awful taste that was waiting for me in one bite of rice in my burrito. I still don’t really know what it was, but it reminded me slightly of something being extremely salty (like when I had to gargle with really strong salt-water when I had mono). I ate the rest of the burrito except for the rice, so I was fairly displeased with that overall experience.
The rest of the day passed essentially without incident. I went home around 7, microwaved a Chicken Cheese Chimichanga (mmmm, delightful…no bad bite in that one), and then had to run out around 8. I had agreed to tutor my neighbor in Excel. I had absolutely no idea, going into the lesson, what her skill level was, so I was scrambling to get together some examples, and whatnot. After seeing her Compaq Presario running Windows 95, I pretty quickly guessed what her skill level was, haha. We spent an hour and a half doing something I’m confident I could replicate in about five minutes. It paid well, though, so I’ll do that. I don’t think I could do that for 40 hours a week, but I’ll do it for an hour an a half, once or twice per week, for the price she’s willing to pay. She was, without a doubt, the most excited I have ever seen a person get about Excel. Yay for number crunching…apparently?
I got back here around 9:30, then, and actually started this blog entry shortly thereafter. That would make this my longest blog entry yet (both by measure of time spanned from beginning to completion, as well as page length), although it still doesn’t make up for my missed entry yesterday. I killed another ant while writing this, so I can’t give the disclaimer that "no animals were hurt during the production of this feature." I can just see PETA (not to be confused with PEDA) rallying together to come protest outside my house.
I also was somewhat productive tonight, in that I finally got a computer ready for my brother. I told him, yesterday evening, that he could come pick up a computer to borrow, some time after I got home from work. I was supposed to call him when it was ready. Meh. He can live without it for one day (unless of course he needed it to order an online prescription that he needed to prevent his death…that’d suck). I’ve apparently turned into some sort of computer broker. One friend picked one up some time last week, now my brother’s picking this system up tomorrow, which I just wiped clean after getting it back from another friend. Damn, I’m such a geek pimp.
I think that’s all I have for tonight [sigh]. Nelly – #1 just came up on my playlist, so I think that’s a good song to listen to while going to bed. I want to see "I, Robot" (or possibly Catwoman, if you’d rather see that) this weekend, so let me know if you’re interested. G’night, at long last.