Off The Top Of My Head

I have no clear idea of what to write here. I did for a post yesterday that never happened, though. I got all caught up in doing who knows what online and before I knew it, it was time for I Love Money 2 and then bed.

This morning came extra early this morning and I don't know why. I was in bed early enough and slept what I thought was long enough, but the alarm went off and it felt like I hasn't slept at all. Ken said that I tossed and turned all night long, but I usually remember when I do that. I remember nothing after closing my eyes except for Ollie licking my face in the middle of the night. Tomorrow my plan is to sleep in later than I have been. The system is down at work and we're not sure what time it's coming up tomorrow, so there's no morning overtime. It'll feel weird going in so "late", but I need that kind of weirdness.

I hardly ever do anything after work anymore. I usually just come home, have dinner, play online, watch tv, go to bed. That's a typical night. But we had errands to run, so Ken picked me up and we went to grab something to eat. I thought I was hungrier than I actually was and I still feel like I over did it. We went to Cheesecake Factory and I had a cobb salad. About half way through dinner I started cracking up because I realized that for lunch today, I had a cobb salad, too. You can't go wrong with a cobb, though. Bacon and bleu cheese. Need I say more?

After eating, we went to BJ's to stock up on toilet paper, cat litter and paper towels. Then a trip to the Targets where I got the new Prince cd and a new set of hair clippers. Splurge!

Speaking of lunch, I had a lunch date today with Sean over at Idle Eyes And A Dormy. It's been about two weeks since we had lunch. I feel bad because I was out of it enough that I just sat there and made him do all the talking. He will disagree and say I was a lot of fun, but I could have been chattier. Luckily I'll have a chance to make up for it on Sunday.

For the last two days I've been laughing over the phrase "the trots." My friend Paul mentioned how a co-worker of his called out sick with "the trots" on Monday. She didn't call out sick, she called out sick with "the trots." Classy. But every time I think of "the trots," I start laughing again.

The way I watch American Idol is to wait for it to be almost over and then fast forward through most of it, watching the whole show in about fifteen minutes. I've done this for two seasons. For some reason, Ken forgot this (again) and has been waiting for me so we can go watch it. I told him I wasn't (again) and now he's fucking up my Tuesday tv watching. At around 9, I turn on the Fattest Loser, fast forward through most of it and have it finished by 10. Then I watch Idol and have it done by 10:20. But he just went in and started Idol, 30 minutes late. How very dare he fuck with my trash tv watching. LOL.

I'm kind of scared of this new virus thing that's supposed to hit tomorrow. I don't know if I have it on my computer or not and I don't know exactly what it's going to do if I do have it.

I need to find some time to sit down and catch up on emails and blogs. I know I've been saying this for weeks, but it's getting to the point where I'm about to delete everything and just start fresh. Is that so wrong?

Time to go attempt to salvage my trash tv schedule. Wish me luck.

Poseidon & The Bitter Bug

So, I'm sitting here at the end of an otherwise spectacular day, cursing myself out for pigging out at dinner. I knew exactly how hungry I was and still had to sit there and debate what to order. I knew what I should have gotten and I knew what I wanted to get. The want side won out and I got a cheeseburger club (mmmmmm, bacon & swiss.....) and fries. I didn't need either. And if that wasn't bad enough, we weren't allowed to leave the restaurant until we had dessert (restaurant owner's orders), so I had a piece of chocolate cake. No, I didn't need any of what I ate, but I'd be lying if I said I didn't enjoy every last bite. I hate, hate, hate that I have a conscience about food. I'm hyper critical about everything I eat, but I still eat shit I shouldn't. I guess I wouldn't feel so bad if Ken didn't order me a piece of cake from the diner last night, too. (And let me tell you, if I gain anything this week, it was worth it for that diner cake. One layer of chocolate cake, one layer of cheesecake, one layer of chocolate cake, frosting. OMG!!!!!)

Anyway, like I said earlier, it was a spectacular day today. It was nice going in on a Friday not completely spent already. Having Thursday off did wonders. Finding out that FrankenKlinger had the day off was like my birthday coming early. One of my bosses' birthday was today, so there was cake. Just as she went to cut the cake, though, the fire alarm went off and we were evacuated. At first I thought it was a fire drill, but found out later that something set off one of the smoke detectors on the floor below us (dust, it turns out). By the time we got back in, I managed to talk myself out of cake (good move, Walt!), something I wouldn't have done if not for the alarm. The weather was also great today. I think the temp topped out at 59 degrees. It's starting to feel springy and I couldn't be happier. When I got home from work, there were two packages waiting for me. Huzzah! There was a box of comics (and two new t-shirts) and also an envelope with a cd and a trade paperback. Oh, and I read today that Spandau Ballet is getting back together. (Shut up, I really used to love them. Still do, in fact.) I'd be hard pressed to come up with another recent day as swell as today turned out to be. I'm hoping tomorrow turns out to be just as nice.

And the answer to my question yesterday.... All those songs peaked at #2 on the Billboard charts. They just weren't good enough to hit #1.

Quiz

What do these following songs all have in common?

Weekend Recap

My plan for the weekend was to be a bump on a log, maybe read some comics, watch some tv and not much else. I have to say that this weekend was as close to perfect as you could get. I got just about everything accomplished that I hoped to.

Saturday was pretty damn good. I managed to sleep in. I know I plan to sleep in every Saturday morning, but it never happens. This week it did. I stayed up til a little after midnight Friday night, caught up on everything in the dvr and then crashed. Until 11 Saturday morning. I knew my body was tired, but this tired? I'm still pretty amazed at it. I mean, sleeping in for me nowadays means sleeping all the way to 8:30. Even Ollie decided to let me sleep. He's got this annoying habit of tapping my face if he feels I've slept too late. When I woke up, he was curled up next to me like a good little boy.

We had a couple of errands to run Saturday afternoon and although they didn't go without incident, we got them done relatively painlessly. One of the errands was to apply for the new passport cards. They're the size of a driver's licence and work the same way as the passport. Ken decided we needed them for the cruise in December so we wouldn't have to worry about losing our passports when we got off the ship. We went into the post office all prepared with the forms filled out. That's when we hit a snag. The woman at the post office said that the form I had filled out was not the correct form, even though it was the ONLY option at the Department of State's website. She insisted that the other form was the one you had to fill out for the card. Ken started losing his shit right then and there. He argued that he was right and she was wrong, so she asked the guy she was working with (this total douchebag whom I've never liked....) and he agreed with her. Ken still tried arguing that this is the only form for this and she kept saying no. Finally, she agreed to call the next closest post office. The person there told her she was correct, too. But while she was on the phone, the third worker came back from break, overheard the conversation and told her that Ken was right. She'd called the Department of State a couple of times for clarification and was told what the proper forms were. So finally we got the stuff processed. We spent over an hour in the post office, but the applications are mailed off for my card and for Ken's card and passport renewal.

Next up was lunch. There's a restaurant in town we used to like but stopped going to because they changed the menu (not for the better) and we lost interest. It's just been sold and a new place is in it's place, so we thought we'd try it out. Not bad. It's basically the same place with new owners and a new menu. Almost the entire staff is the old staff, so that's pretty cool. I liked it (didn't love it), but I'll definitely try it out again.

I managed to finish my stack of reading this weekend and made a dent in my backlog shelf of trade paperbacks. I have more reading piled up there than I know what to do with and it's bothering me that I can't seem to make the time to get to it. I allow myself to get sucked up into the computer and then my day disappears. Right now, my current obsession is tweaking my iTunes. I know this has been an ongoing thing, but my latest thing is going through the awesome book Ken got me (Joel Whitburn's Top Pop Singles 1955-2006) and entering the peak chart position each song in my library hit. So far, I've tagged 4,104 songs. Alphabetically, I've done A through some of S. I got to Frank Sinatra and had to stop because he's had waaay too many singles. I probably spent a good three or four hours this weekend just doing that. Yes, I know I have problems! But once this is done, I'm going to be able to make some pretty kick ass playlists.

Oh, I keep meaning to add this, but keep forgetting. Hi Archerr!

I'm glad I got my ass out of bed early this morning to go walking. I was going to blow it off because I just didn't think I had the energy, but I pushed through. It helped me come through with a decent weigh in this week. I'm back at 190 and I really had to work at it to get there this week. Behaving sucks ass, but I see another week of trying to stay on my best behavior. Wish me luck.

Random Thoughts

I don't know why I'm sitting on the computer tonight. Thursday nights I tend to shy away from it. I have a full load of tv to watch, but tonight it's been disrupted by basketball. Meh. But rather than take this extra time to do something productive, I've been sitting here, trying to catch up on my reading and writing. And yeah, I'm not making much progress. I get so easily sidetracked once I turn the computer on. I start reading an email, which then reminds me I have a word game going over at Facebook, which then makes me go look at blogs, which then sends me who knows where else and before you know it, the night is over and I've wasted it.

I know I've talked incessantly about how much overtime I've been cranking out at work, but considering that's about all that's going on in my life right now, it's no big surprise. We get paid on a bi-weekly schedule and yesterday was the end of the latest pay cycle. When I totaled up my time card this week, I realized that I am now less than 8 hours away from meeting the amount of overtime I got paid for all of last year. And it's only March. I'd like to say the extra money has been nice, but I haven't really noticed all that much extra. We're aggressively attacking our debt and according to the latest spread sheet Ken printed up, we should be completely out of debt (with the exception of the mortgage) on September 4th. It's just six months away. I'm still trying not to think about it too much and get excited because you never know what's going to happen between now and then. My job is pretty stable, or so I've been lead to believe, but Ken lives in fear every day that his job will go away. But the thought of actually being able to put money away is such a good thought.

I'm so happy the weekend is almost here. I've been looking forward to it more than usual. Probably because I'm feeling pretty burned out and I really didn't get much of anything done last weekend. This weekend I hope to be able to attack that stack of comics I got last week. I hope to get all caught up on my television watching. I hope to put another dent in the pile of unwatched dvds. I hope to keep my internet wasting time to a minimum, too.

This week the weather finally took a turn for the better. By better, I mean it got up into the 50s. And I finally got outside and started walking. I think I might have already mentioned this, but I can't remember shit right now. Anyway, on Sunday I went out and walked one of my routes. Tuesday night after work, I did it again. And that's when I realized how out of shape I've gotten over the winter. I don't give up walking completely during the winter. I keep it to a minimum because of the weather. Sunday mornings I get up at 5:30 and go to the mall to walk with the blue hairs for an hour. Walking the mall and walking outside are two completely different things. The mall is flat. My outside routes are not. Outside takes a little more out of me, but it's a much more pleasant walk. I haven't walked home from work as of yet. I'm waiting for the weather to get a little nicer before I try that. Plus, I need to build my endurance back up a little more. And as the weather gets nicer, I need to learn to get my priorities in order again so I can incorporate some regular exercise back into my routine.

And just because, I pre-ordered the new Jill Sobule cd today. I adore her.

Stolen... Again (This Time From Kevin)

Your rainbow is shaded yellow.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What is says about you: You are a joyful person. You appreciate optimism. You're good at getting people to like you.

Find the colors of your rainbow at spacefem.com.

Trouble

I'm having trouble making time. It seems like time is whizzing by me and I'm not getting anything done. Last night I had things I wanted to write about (that have since left my head), but ran out of time. It's getting close to happening again. Not good. Not good at all.

My weight is up some from last week. This is no surprise to me at all. Last week, particularly the second half of the week, I found that I was making poor food choices. Like, tragically poor food choices. I know what I should and shouldn't be eating, yet I chose to ignore my better judgment. This week I'm trying to refocus and get back on track, but it's been hard. I ate a little too much snacky stuff tonight when I got home and I can already feel myself getting pissed at myself. But there's nothing I can do but refocus tomorrow and hope for a better day.

I love that the weather has taken some baby steps towards spring. Yesterday morning I got up at the crack of dawn to go walk for an hour at the mall. When I got home, I headed right back to bed. When I got up, Ken decided it was a good day to start some post-winter yard clean up. And I was rather surprised at how nice it was outside. It was only mid 50's, but the sun was shining and the temps felt really nice. Nice enough that I took my first outdoors walk of the year. Today the weather was similar, but cloudier. I was going to walk home from work, but the thought of catching a ride from a co-worker won that battle. I need it to be just a little nicer out before I start walking home from work. Now that I got my first taste of the nicer weather, though, I'm really itching for full-blown spring.

Apparently the mouse we had on Friday night didn't escape. The cats were onto it all day Saturday and kept stalking it. Poor Ollie was obsessed. I don't think he slept a wink Friday night or Saturday night either. Sunday, even. It seems either the cats have finally lost interest or the mouse is gone because they've both given up the hunt. It's been years since we had a mouse in the house. Poor, fangless Puss Patrell had no problem catching the last one. These two cats could learn a thing or two from my sweet angel baby.

Crap

I let time get away from me today and I didn't get as much done today as I had planned (and trust me, I didn't have very much on that list.) The worst part of this, though, is I don't have time to write out anything here other than this. I've got my stories to watch and then bedtime. Bah. I'm going to try to make more time tomorrow. ::Fingers Crossed::

Oh No! CT Does It AGAIN!

MTV Shows

Because He Can't Leave Well Enough Alone

My house is a fucking mess right now. It looks like something blew up in three rooms. That something is Ken.

Last night I was sitting in my office, playing online, minding my own business. The cats both tend to hang out in here with me. Lucy has a perch in the window next to my desk and Ollie just has to be near me, no matter what. And that's how most of the night was. Until the cats caught wind of something. At one point, I noticed they were both on the floor on either side of the radiator. I didn't really pay it much attention until a little while later when they had moved on to the book shelf next to the radiator. Lucy was trying to look behind it on the right, then she'd move over to the left, then back to the right. Ollie was doing the same thing, but Lucy seemed to take the lead. So I assumed we had a mouse. No big whoop. It's still winter and mice tend to find their way inside. We haven't had a mouse in a few years. Whatever. The cats would stalk it, lose interest eventually, the mouse would escape, end of story.

Around 11, I was beat and climbed into bed. I put on the tv to watch the final episode of Pee Wee's Playhouse that was on the dvd in the dvd player. I wanted to watch it and then pass out. About 10 minutes in, Ken walks in the bedroom to recap the conversation he just had with his sister. He asked where the cats were and I told him they were in my office hunting a mouse. I should know better, because that just set off the panic. He started freaking out, ran into my office to check out the situation. Then he panicked some more because he couldn't find a flashlight. Then he panicked some more because he was sure it wasn't a mouse, but a bat. And the more he thought about it, the more freaked out he got. He decided he needed to move the book shelf out and make sure it wasn't a bat and also, if it was a mouse, he wanted to catch it and set it free. Of course, those were his only plans. He thought nothing out. He unpiles everything I had set up on top of the book shelf, moves it out enough for Ollie to jump in and grab the mouse and run. Now Ken's at the peak of his panic. Ollie has the mouse and is running away. I don't know what he thought was going to happen. Did he think he'd move the book shelf and the mouse would say "thank you" and climb into his hand? Now I'm back up out of bed and following Ollie downstairs. Because he's brilliant, Ken immediately heads for the kitchen for a bowl, a broom and a dust pan. What the hell he's going to do with these things is anyone's guess. Ollie's playing with his mouse and drops it at one point. The mouse escapes and hides under a chair. Freak boy doesn't know what to do, so he up ends the chair so the mouse can't hide under it anymore. Ollie goes after it, but it's too quick for him and ends up under the radiator. Now I get to watch Ollie stalk and Ken freak out. This is exactly what I want to be doing at 11:30. Eventually, Ken chases the mouse out from under the radiator and it heads for a chair in the next room over. And this is where we lose the mouse. Ken tips this chair up, too, and the mouse is gone. Vanished. I think it found a crevice to either hide in or escape. But now I have three rooms is complete disarray. I told him flat out last night that I'm not lifting a finger to clean up his mess downstairs. Conversely, I don't want him to touch anything in my office. He trashed it and I don't want him "fixing" anything.

I usually have Ollie sleep all cuddled up with me at night, but not last night. I was cat free the whole night, which was really nice. This morning I found him, still in complete hunting mode, sitting by the radiator. He's not done with that mouse, apparently. I'm guessing he didn't sleep at all last night. I'm sure he's going to crash soon. Lucy, on the other hand, gave up long ago and is sleeping on her perch right next to me.

One More WTF Moment

I just caught a glimpse at the widget over to the right of this and noticed that it's my Blogoversary today. Two years and counting. So much for planning a special post or anything. Hell, at least I noticed it now and not two days from now.

WTF?

Here are my WTF moments for today.

Not one, but two of my contemporaries called out sick today and I was expected to do their jobs as well as my own. And I have more than enough of my own stuff to work on today. WTF? As long as one of them is better and comes in tomorrow, I'll be okay.

Ollie, my boy cat, is up on my desk right now and he's fucking around. I just caught him trying to tear open a candy bar I have sitting on my desk. WTF? Cats don't even like dark chocolate.

I have a protective screen cover on my iPhone. Unfortunately, when I put it on, I never noticed that there was a piece of cat fur on the screen, so I've had that stuck under the protector since I got my phone. Today I noticed the fur was gone. And so was the protective cover. WTF? Where did it go. I didn't pull it off. I asked Ken and neither did he. These things don't just pop off by themselves. Now I've got to go out and get another. Ack! But not tonight. I'm exhausted and have no desire to leave the house.

I left work tonight and caught a ride home with my friend Amiee. We were around the corner from our building, stopped at a red light, when a man dressed in full Revolutionary War garb was walking by the Capital Building, all by himself. WTF? If it was a publicity stunt, it failed because I don't know what it was for. He was just walking around like normal. I'm still scratching my head about that one.

While at work today, I was thinking about how much extra I've been working this year and how nice it looks on payday. But then it hit me that while this might be true, why am I just as poor, if not poorer now than I was before I was slaving away for the man? WTF?

Four Days

Oops. Didn't realize I haven't posted here in four days. Not intentional, but sometimes there's either not enough time or not enough going on to write something down. I have to say that this time there just hasn't been a lot happening worth jotting down.

Today I'm having a "day of beauty." I've got next to nothing on my agenda and I like it that way. I cleared out the dvr already so I'm all caught up on my trash tv (for now.) Only thing about that, though, is Hell's Kitchen cut off before it was over, so I don't know who went home. I suppose I could google it, but that's not gonna happen.

I'm fearful as to how I'm going to feel this week. I hate when the clocks jump ahead an hour. It's just one lost hour, but that one lost hour usually takes me all week to get used to. It's been hard enough as it is getting up as early as I have been lately. I'm going to try for it again tomorrow, but I have a terrible feeling I'm going to feel it. I'm kind of feeling it today. I got up at 5:30 and my body did let me know that it's still only 4:30. I've been debating taking a nap, but I'm afraid that's only going to fuck me up when I try to go to bed tonight. If it happens, it happens, but I'm not going to actively pursue it.

I'm a little freaked out about this coming week. For the last year and quarter (or so), I've been obsessively going through and making sure I've listened to every song I own. I've conditioned myself that this is the way to listen to music now. But as of this very moment, I'm down to 277 unplayed songs (not counting Christmas). I mean, they've all been played before at one time or another, but not since importing them to iTunes, where I can track 'em. Depending on the number of podcasts that come out this week, I should have gotten through the rest of these songs by Wednesday at the latest. It's been all about these songs, making playlists revolving around these songs... all that stuff for the last 15 months. I'm going to have to get to work creating new playlists, figuring out what stuff I need and don't need on my iPod. I'm a little overwhelmed by the prospect. If only all of life's problems could be like this. LOL!

So now that I'm, for the most part, caught up on my music listening, are there any singers or bands I should be listening to that I'm not? Suggestions, please.

I've been also trying to get through the pile of dvds I have that I haven't watched or haven't finished watching yet. This weekend I finished off the Match Game 4 dvd set and started (again) the 10 dvd Pee Wee's Playhouse set I got for Christmas a number of years ago. I forgot exactly how much I loved that show until watching a few hours of it last night. I can't wait to get though the rest of it.

Now I'm off to read the Gotham Underground paperback.

What Keyboard Key Are You?

You Are "tab"

Some people might try to say that you're always spaced out. You do tend to be a dreamer, but you're also a great multitasker. You work quickly and efficiently. So it's no problem if you goof off a little while you're working. And if people want to think you're flakey, that's fine. You're getting more done than they are.

What Keyboard Key Are You?

Huh?

I'm not convinced I woke up this morning. At least not totally. Today has been one of the biggest blurs I've experienced in a long time. Last night I could not fall asleep to save my life. I stayed up a little later than usual to watch crap tv. I turned the light out and my mind just ran and ran and ran and no matter what I did, I couldn't fall asleep. When the alarm went off this morning, it was about four hours after I'd finally nodded off. I then learned that I'm not 25 anymore. I can't function on four hours of sleep like I did when I was younger. It took everything in my to focus on work today. At lunch and again at my 2:30 break, I managed to fall asleep. At my desk. Granted, it was only for about five minutes each time, but I FELL ASLEEP AT WORK. Not good. Not good at all.

To keep things surreal, the phone at my desk rang this morning. Expecting to hear Ken's voice at the other end, I was quite surprised to find this man calling. All the way from France. Just to say "hi." Go over to his blog and you can hear him say "hi" to you, too, in the video he just posted for his 1,000th post.

Oh, and did I mention my issue with the bus this morning? I'm standing at the bus stop, normal normal, and the bus comes and decides not to slow down and stop for me. As it's approaching me at full speed, I wave my arm out, more in a "what the fuck" kind of way than to flag him down because he's going too fast to stop. He then decides to stop, but now I've got to haul ass up the street to get on. If it's not bad enough it was snowing at 6am, if it's not bad enough that the wind was howling at 6am, does the bus have to ignore me? I think it was a sign telling me that going in that early this morning was a big mistake.

Tonight's big plans include posting this, watching a little bit of trash tv and then sleep. Not that I'll need one, but I might pop a pill to help me sleep, too. I just know that sometimes when I'm this over tired, I'll lay in bed and curse the world because I can't fall asleep.