Meh

I mentioned the other night that I was taking today off from work.  The reason was because the exterminator was coming to set traps in the attic.  For the last few weeks, Ken's been convinced we have a mouse.  He keeps hearing something in the wall and Ollie kind of just stares at one wall in particular for hours at a time.  I thought he was overreacting when he said he called the exterminator, but he's prone to overreact and after nearly 17 years, you'd think I'd be used to it by now.  So the guy comes out on Friday to do an inspection and he doesn't find any evidence that we have mice, but he does find evidence of squirrels and chipmunks, as well as a big hornets nest in the attic.  Arrangements are made for someone to come and put traps in the attic, remove the nest and whatever else has to be done.  Our appointment was for 8 to 9 am today.  I took the day off to let them in to set the traps.  The rest of the day I planned on spending on myself, maybe go shopping and treat myself to lunch.  At 10 o'clock I called to find out where the hell my guy way.  I got a lot of run around on the phone and was ultimately told that my appointment was cancelled and rescheduled for late afternoon.  What's awesome about this is they never called to let us know this.  I kind of had a little hissy fit on the phone and was promised that someone would be there as soon as possible.  I was promised between 12:30 and 2.  I was really annoyed because I was basically being kept prisoner in my own home.  Since I knew I had at least 2 1/2 hours, I went to the gym to work out some of the aggression I was feeling.  I didn't realize how pissed off I was until I saw I did nearly 9 miles in one hour.  I think that might be a new record.  As the afternoon ticked on and no one was showing up, I called back.  This time it was about 1:45.  When I was told that the guy wasn't even on his way yet, I kind of exploded.  I was NOT happy.  And I made sure the person at the office I was speaking with knew this.  I was mindful to not scream at her, but I just started going off about how unprofessional this was, what a horrible first impression her company was giving, how I'm stuck waiting when I have to get to work (okay, so I lied about that, but still, I was PISSED.)  The guy finally showed up at 2:45.  

Now if this wasn't bad enough, I made the mistake of calling Ken after I called them the first time.  I just wanted to let off some steam, but since he's the world's biggest co-dependent, this exploded in my face.  This led him to keep calling me to offer "advice."  Ken's "advice" is hardly that.  And if that wasn't bad enough, I get home from the gym to find him sitting on the couch.  He came up with a bullshit excuse to come home to check up on me.  As if I wasn't already pissed off enough about the exterminator, he just made it worse.  Finally, once the exterminator was gone, I headed out of the house.  I needed to get out and have a little "me" time.  I'm not in the car 10 minutes before he called and decided it was best that we had an early dinner.  Honestly, it was the last thing in the world I wanted at the time, but if you know Ken, if I didn't give in, he would just make it worse.  Not in a malicious kind of way, but in a he-thinks-he's-being-helpful kind of way.

This was not the day off I had envisioned.  I'm kind of emotionally spent and may actually climb into bed.  It's not even 9 o'clock.  How sad is that?

I Ordered This Last Night

Weekend

Random thoughts from the weekend.  

Last night I spent about an hour trying to fix an issue with the Norton update I installed on my computer.  I ordered a new disc and it came on Friday.  I installed it yesterday afternoon and then went about my business.  A few hours later I came back to the computer with a big error message on my screen.  I contacted Norton via their website, was immediately connected to a tech (no wait?  For real?  YES!) and he spent an hour trying to fix what was causing the error.  It took him longer than he thought, but no big whoop.  I wasn't going anywhere.  For the extra time it took, he credited my account with an extra 30 days of service.  I was surprised that they would even do this.  Bully for me!

I've gotten a little too obsessed with going to the gym.  I need to pull back a little.  We're almost half way through the month and there have only been two days that I haven't gone.  That's way more than the schedule I have set for myself.  But with all those visits, as of this afternoon, I've officially hit my 100 mile for the month goal.  For February, I'm at 103.98 miles (and counting.)  Add to that what I've done in January, I'm at 268.12 miles.  I should have no trouble passing 300 miles by the end of the month.  I like having that extra cushion just in case something happens.  I don't want to fall behind.  

Oh, and I've slightly modified my 1,200 mile goal for the year.  I now want to go 1,233.8 miles.  Why such a random number?  I put my address into Google Maps as the start and Walt Disney World as the finish and the distance is 1,233.8 miles.  At least by car it is.  If I drew a straight line between my house and WDW, I'm sure it would come in below 1,200.

My stories are starting back up this week.  Wednesday is the start of Survivor and I believe next Sunday Amazing Race is back.  My television viewing has been at a low lately, not that I'm complaining.  I'll start bitching once more of my shows start showing up again and I have trouble keeping up.

I have to take Tuesday off this week, but more about that later.

Design Crushes

Ken tapes a lot of design shows on DIY Network and HGTV.  I end up watching a lot of them with him.  While I couldn't tell you too much about any of them, there are a couple designers I have little crushes on.  The first one is Matt Muenster.  He hosts a show called Bath Crashers.  He trolls a hardware store until he can find someone willing to let him come to their house and give them a full bathroom remodel.  He's kind of cute, but he's kind of not cute at all.  But he's mostly kind of cute.

The second one is John Gidding.  He's the designer on Designed To Sell, one of my least favorite design shows out there.  The show is incredibly contrived, horribly staged and just plain uncomfortable to watch.  It's scripted to it's death and beyond.  It's really bad.  But John is so pretty that I don't care.  

Here's a clip from the show Portlandia.  I wish there were more clips from this episode available to post.  It was hysterical.  To briefly sum up the episode, the music industry has completely crashed and to make ends meet, Aimee Mann has turned to cleaning houses.  She ends up working for these two douchebags, who happen to be huge fans of hers.  But more importantly, they're douchebags.

Ultravox - Vienna

Another song I consider a perfect pop song. Also, another song I accidentally posted on my photo blog. It's had being pretty.

The Human League - Louise

Because I'm retarded, I accidentally posted this over on my picture blog. I meant to post it here the other night.

This song came on while I was at work the other day and I stopped everything I was doing and just got lost in it. I've always loved this song. It's a great example of the perfect pop song to me. Don't you agree?

I Used To Love This Cartoon

Jim Parsons & Dr Who

Some Pictures Of Things I Like

I don't really have too much on my mind right now.  I'm dreading going back to work tomorrow.  Not because I hate my job or anything like that.  I had a nice weekend and it went by way, way too fast, like usual.  I'd like to have at least one more day before getting back into the normal routine.  The only complaint I have about the weekend (besides it being too short) isn't really about the weekend.  It's about me.  My wrists decided to kill me this weekend.  I've got a mild case of carpal tunnel syndrome, nothing that I think is too serious to get my wrists cut apart for.  Fifty weeks of the year I'm fine.  But every so often, my wrists start to kill me.  I'm not sure what brought it on this time.  My one wrist has been a little achy for a couple weeks now.  I've attributed that to all the shoveling I've been doing in my driveway, whether that's the real cause or not.  But all weekend both wrists have been screaming at me.  I hope in a couple days they calm back down, because I have to say that it's really, really, REALLY annoying.  I've noticed that the elliptical machine isn't helping matters, either.  

Ken has taken to cooking Sunday dinner for the last month or two.  I have to say that I like it.  I like it a lot.  He's been back on Weight Watchers and that's the reason he's cooking.  Tonight he grabbed a bunch of things we had sitting around and made a makeshift chicken dinner.  He also made this baked apple thing on puff pastry that was really good.  So good that I had more than my fair share (and since I'm not on WW, I added ice cream to both portions I ate.)  I'm going to pay the price for that tomorrow, of that I am sure.

The Superbowl is on tonight and I don't care.  I'm really looking forward to Wednesday at work because all the idiotic Superbowl talk in the men's room should be over by then.  Tomorrow the game will be talked about.  Tuesday the game will be talked about because half the office won't bother to come in on Monday to talk about it.  The talk about all the commercials will be over by then, too.  I can't believe how much attention is given to both the game and the commercials.  We were channel surfing while eating dinner and stopped on the game and I got to see a couple commercials.  And I didn't think they were any better or worse than what's normally on tv.  Bah.  

I'm so looking forward to the Green Lantern movie.  I really am.  I'm still not convinced Ryan Reynolds is the right fit for Hal Jordan, but I'm still looking forward to this.  I haven't been to the movies in probably four or five years, but this year looks to be the year I put an end to not going.  I really hope they don't fuck this one up.

The new release of 2011 are starting to come out and Lori McKenna just released her new album.  I really love her.  I love the quality of her voice and I love that she really sounds like she is completely engrossed in whatever song she's singing at the time.  I've only listened to this once, but it really grabbed me.  Tomorrow at work Lori's going to help me drown out the Superbowl chatter.

Henry Cavill, some English dude no one has ever hear of before, has been cast as Superman in the next Superman movie.  I'm not sure I see Superman in him, but I'm kind of interested.  I didn't see the last Superman movie, though I should rent it.  I didn't hear great things about it, but I didn't hear horrible things about it.  I'm hoping the new movie will bring Superman back to the forefront again.

I didn't even know Wanda Jackson was still alive.  But she is and she just put a brand new album out.  What's significant about it, for me at least, is that Jack White produced it.  Now I'm not really a big White Stripes fan, but I love that Jack has this love of people like Wanda Jackson and Loretta Lynn.  A love so big that he's tracked them down and made records with them.  And he's made good records with them.  He's been both true to them as artists and true to himself.  They're really fun to listen to.  Listening to this record reminds me of a Quentin Tarantino soundtrack for some reason.

*sigh*  Apparently Steve Rogers has no chest hair.  I'm not sure how the Captain America movie is going to be, but I'm looking forward to this one, too.  I've avoided most of the Marvel movies because I really don't care, but this one looks like it could be great.  I can't believe how much Chris Evans bulked up for the role.  I liked him better with less muscle mass, but he's still adorable.

I only found out about this album about an hour ago.  I had no idea Nena put out a new double live album.  Looks like it just came out a few months ago.  I thought at first it might be a European only release, but iTunes has it for sale and now I own it.  Haven't started to listen to it yet.  Like Lori McKenna's new album, Nena's will help me get through tomorrow.