I'm an idiot

...but most of you knew that already anyway.

This weekend I'm going out to ND for the Glee Club reunion. I'm flying out Thursday to Chicago and staying with the Otter Room guys (Jim, Shwaz, Bubba, Jesse, yes they all live together). Unfortunately, I forgot to call Jim tonight and figure out A) how I'm getting there and B)are they laying claim to my extra Purdue tix. The really odd part is that I had great foresight in setting up sleeping locations and long distance transportation, but I have pretty much completely dropped the ball on short distance transportation. At least now I've had the thought of having my computer remind me that I need to call Jim as soon as I get home from work tomorrow to actually make solid plans, because if my computer doesn't know what I'm doing, I'm pretty much screwed.

Crazy Canucks

So yes, the weekend with the parents in Canada was nice. It was good to see the parents and go to the ball game. I just wish they had informed me that I was being used for physical labor before arrived. It's not that I mind doing some heaving lifting, but I kinda like to dress in older clothes I've already beaten the crap out of instead of the clothes that didn't have permanent stains on them (yet). Anyway, the Sky Dome (Rogers Center, or Centre) is a pretty nice ballpark. It could use a better scoreboard, but otherwise it's pretty nice. It's pretty damn big too. It's seats 55K. Kind of a waste on a country that's not that passionate about their baseball.

One of the quirks of the weekend was throwing things away. Apparently there are all sorts of issues with trash since the Toronto area used to ship their trash to Michigan (seriously, can anyone really think of a better use for that state?), but now Michigan isn't letting them do that any more, so they're in a bit of a crises. Now there are 4 different places to through things out. There is the biodegradable trash, the regular trash, the paper trash, and cans and bottles. Some of these are collected weekly, the others are bi-weekly. There is even a book published by the government explaining all the rules. I spent the whole weekend asking where things needed to thrown out.

And now for something completely different. The bane of my existence for the past month, which I won't directly refer to by name, but I will use it's initials (PGCP) involves one exceeding dumb client. (If you're a college football fan and half a brain, I'm sure you can figure it out.) The client initially asked for the voting period of the second phase of this to start at 12 am Sunday morning, and end at 10 pm the next Saturday, with the next voting period starting 2 hours later. I was proud of myself catching this last week, and we seemed to be making progress towards something that didn't involve us working every Saturday night in December from 10pm to 12 am. This week they came back with a period that starts 9 am Sunday, and then goes to midnight Saturday night. IDIOTS! You don't get it do you? WE DO NOT WANT TO WORK ON THE WEEKEND! WHY ARE YOU CHOOSING TIMES THAT NOT ONLY REQUIRE US TO WORK, BUT REQUIRE YOU TO DO SO AS WELL! I hate marketing and sales.

The day's thoughts

I had an f-d up dream this morning about 15 minutes before my alarm when off that my mattress started rising and was going to dump me off the bed. Just plain freaky. Needless to say the last 15 minutes in my bed weren't all that comfortable.

I had a brilliant thought in the middle of the day that made me say, "Damn, I need to blog about it. It's so good, I don't need to write it down." Idiot. I totally forgot what it was. You'd think I would know myself well enough by now that my brilliant ideas don't last longer than about 30 seconds, and that I'll forget them if I don't write them down.

I worked out today. That's twice in 2 weeks. I'm on a roll.

In an actual intelligent move, since I no longer have the same hair stylist that I had for like almost 20 years in CT, I consequently can never get my hair cut just right, I remembered that the photo I took for my blog is on my cell phone, so going forward I can just bust out the cell and show them that. It only took me 6 months to figure this out.

I'm going to Canada this weekend to visit my parents. I'm actually cashing on on last year's Christmas present to go to a Sox vs. Jays game in the stadium formally known as the Sky Dome (I think its the CN center now). When we set this date, it seemed like it would be a great series since there was supposed to be this awesome 3 team race for the AL East. Yeah, that went well. It's also my Mom's birthday which works out pretty conveniently. I acquired the gift on my lunch break today. I think the card will occur on tomorrow's lunch break. I'm counting on it being easier to get than the jewelry I got for my Mom.

Bitter blog

OK, I need to keep myself up late (sometimes I hate working for a .com) so I'm blogging. First things first. Brady Quinn has not improved at all from last year. He peaked last year, and has made no improvement to this year. There is not a doubt in my mind we will win every other game on our schedule, with an exception of USC. That won't be pretty since they are pretty talented. However, I see no improvement from last year to this year for Brady. There is no doubt in my mind that some NFL team will draft him too high, but the reality is, he will never be anything better than a Mark Brunell type QB. He is capable of taking care of an offense, and not screwing up if he has the players around him (the picks today really weren't his fault), but he's not going to lead a team to a a bowl. He's a caretaker, not a leader. He's good enough to help the team get there, but he can't lead you there on his own. Also, our defense till sucks agaisnt a good offensive team. Hence, me not feeling at all confident about USC. I like what Charlie's doing, but he's still a few years away from getting the offense and defense up to the same talent level. The national championship just isn't going to happen for us this year.

I dislike your juvenile humor.

So with Brady Quinn being on the cover of the Mag a few weeks ago, this cover obviously made it up into my cube. It must also be noted that there are at least 3 Michigan fans in my office. I put said cover up in my cube Tuesday I believe. Today I discovered Mr. Quinn had sprouted a sharpie mustache and devil horns. Consequently, said cover has been removed. Michigan fans are clearly the culprit. After hearing many a story from other domers of their trip to Ann Arbor (I believe my junior year), I know the Michigan fans have a well established reputation of being complete assholes. Now, my most hated sports franchise is USC (followed by the Yankees and then Michigan). I believe however, that my most hated fan base is in the reverse order, of Michigan, the Yankees (both obnoxious assholes) and then USC (guilt by association). In conclusion, I will leave you with a classic.

GO IRISH! MUCK FICHIGAN!

Cater to your audience

OK, I'm going to talk about my free shoes some more since I don't really have anything important to talk about, and since most of my readers are female, and consequently won't be alienated by me talking about shoes. Since I got out of work at 6:30 today (that's right, an actual normal time to leave the office), I also had time to work out for the first time in 2 or 3 weeks. I decided that this would be a good time to bust out the new shows since the old ones have some respectable holes on the inner lining. Here is the link to them if anyone is really that curious. My limited searching turned up the retail price of these to be about $140. These are probably even nicer than the sneakers I bought for myself a few weeks ago. They're also about $100 more expensive than those that they're replacing. After using them, I think they're a bit wide for my foot, but I'm not going to complain too much, 'cause hey, they were free. (Gift, horse, mouth, what?)

In other news, Rory called me this evening saying there was a space in his car to AC if I could get to Philly by 2. Um, yeah, some of us have jobs that require us to show up, and give at least a little notice that we're not going to be there. That and my boss is on vacation this weekend, which means I kind of need to be around in case something breaks. A definite downside of being one of two technical people in the office.

Speaking of the AC, when I won some money the last time I was there, they gave me a $100 bill. I can't use this. I don’t spend that kind of money, unless I'm buying a monthly metro card, but those machines don’t accept $100s. I now need to find something to spend a lot of money on which is difficult because I'm cheap. It is entirely possible this will sit in my wallet for weeks, if not months. I hate carrying this much cash on me.

Anyway, I need to go to bed and let my body recover, because I am most definitely going to feel the effects of not working out for a few weeks tomorrow.

Free shoes

Things must be getting better. Two days of blogging in a row. And I left work at 7:15 today. ::sigh:: It's sad when the 9.5 hour day starts seeming short. I still haven't worked out in weeks, but at least I have a little relaxation time at the end of my day.

I forgot to mention this yesterday, but for the start of Monday Night Football, they let us wear t-shirts they handed out to us last week that said, "Is it Monday yet?" (If you're not a sports fan and/or don't watch the ESPN and you're confused, just pay attention to the t-shirt at the office part.) To me this obviously meant that we could also wear jeans and sneakers. There were like 6 people out of like 200 hundred that seemed to actually take the offer up to dress down. Very disappointing. Everyone seemed to say, "I forgot" or "I didn't know we could wear jeans." C'mon people, if they're going to let you wear a t-shirt, you should automatically assume you could push the envelope in what you can wear to the office. I hate corporate people.

Anyway, today I got free shoes from work. New Balance sneakers. I didn't get to try them on, but I did get to choose the size I wanted. How this happened, I'm not really sure, but I'm going to run with it since the shoes I'm currently using to work out (you know, when I used to have time for that sort of thing) are really on their last leg.

There's a chance I might even go out this week. Before the weekend. It's the little victories in life you need to look forward to.

Oh, because I'm a dork like that, and I know you all care, 2 out of my 6 fantasy teams won last week. Thankfully, one of these was in my money league. There real even though was having my friend call me from AFRICA to set his lineup for him since he doesn't get internet until, well today I guess. I guess he really want to defend his championship.

I see the light?

Apologies for the disjointedness.

I think I may be seeing the light at the end of the tunnel for these past few shitty weeks at work. Granted, I still stayed until 10 tonight, but that may not have been necessary, it just nice to have a few hours where no one talks to you and you can get some actual work done. That, and if you have to spend a few late nights at the office, I'd rather do it on a Monday than on like a Thursday when one feels like weekend mindset sort of begins.

Anyway, this past weekend I went to a wedding, which was fantastic. I didn't know the people getting married, I was just the date, but it was a blast. The people there were all a lot of fun, and the DJ actually did a pretty good job. I needed a break like that more than I realized. (Shh don't tell, I actually had more fun at this wedding than the one where I at least knew one of the people getting married and a few of the guests ahead of time.) The previous weekend I almost felt like I wanted to cry after doing work for 6 hours Sunday morning and bringing my laptop a party that evening to check up on things. This Sunday had but a few minor glitches at 8:30, a big improvement.

So, anyway, getting back to the light. I thought I might have started seeing last week, but then it kept moving away from me. Now I'm not sure because we haven't been able to see more than about 3 days ahead of ourselves for a month, and the list of things we had to do seems to be ending, but we haven't updated in weeks, so we don't really know anymore. I'm pretty sure my boss in on the verge of quitting (his life has been even worse than mine), which would cause my life to go from "shitty" to "wow I'm fucked" should he decide to do so. I'm pretty sure it wouldn’t be a nice kind 2 weeks notice either, it would be more like a middle finger to the VP, I'm not going to show up any more type quit. The thought is entertaining, except that since the company moved me to the city, I'd have to pay back all of my moving expenses, which I have no interest in doing, so I'm willing to tough it out for a while. That, and being at the low end of the pay scale, I get paid for my overtime which my boss doesn't, so at least my bank account will thank me when this is all done.

Because I think things are lightening up, I'm going to start getting into work at 9 again. Maybe it's not a big deal to you, but an extra half hour of sleep in the morning sounds almost orgasmic to me. (Can you see how far down I am right now?)

More disjointed news.

One of the (elite few) things I miss about CT is getting to see the Pats on tv. I realized that this Sunday when I didn't care for any of the early games. (I watched anyway, but that was only because I was in desperate need of some veg time.)

I watched the first half of the ND game, and then had Kat text me updates for the second half. Clutch to say the least. ND's offense is wear I expect them to be, and their defense is better than I hoped (so far). Let's hope we keep this rolling next week.

I also need to apologize to everyone for not really reading blogs the past few weeks. I'll have a lot of catching up to do when my life starts to approach something sane.

I'm alive, really.

Sorry for dropping off the face of the earth, but recently my life consists of getting to work by 8:30, and leaving around 10, so I don't even turn on my computer when I come home. Life basically just sucks for me right now, but I think I might be seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. Maybe. I'll see if I can't get a real post up on Sunday.

Herpes and Drinking Games

Question: if you were hanging out someone at a bar who had/was recovering from cold sores, would you willingly offer that individual your drink, and then finish it after they tried it?

Anyway, since the softball field was apparently under water, we cancelled softball and just went to the bar where the beer pong started right up. Now we all know that drinking games such as cups and beer pong aren't exactly known for being completely sanitary. Despite the fact that I still frequently use the concept of "It's alcohol, it kills all the germs," I realize this far from the truth.

Now, the individual in my office who was recovering from the aforementioned cold sores went straight to the beer pong table. Now, as I was not part of the first games, but certainly known as a regular participant, I quickly started formulating excuses not to play should the individual with cold sores lose. Thankfully this ended up being a non issue since cups started up later on and I got to start with a nice clean cup before I was asked to play beer pong.

Now, those of you out there with more extensive knowledge on herpes than I, can it be contracted by simply sharing a glass?

In sports news, is baseball season over yet? The Red Sox have had one of their worst collapses of all time, and there is no way I built up that much bad karma for them by hating on the crappy Indians. But seriously at the all-star break we were in first place in the AL East. Suddenly, our bullpen when from veteran to old, and we brought up young guys who just aren't ready for the majors yet. Things looked grim after getting swept by the Royals. We were pretty much done after getting swept by the Yanks, and to rub a little salt in the wound, the Mariners swept us. We were 9-21 in August. On top of this Manny's knee is hurt, Papi has heart problems, and our good rookie pitcher Lester (who is 22) has been diagnosed with Lymphoma.

Sooo.......bring on college football!

Actually, I'm not as excited as a should be because I just put in almost a 60 hour week working on a college football program I'm sure you will hear advertised about every other commercial break during the college football season, so I haven't really had a chance to get that excited. Oh well. GO IRISH! BEAT YELLOW JACKETS!