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"I finally got one of those fancy combo copier/fax-machine/shredders the other day. I think I hooked it up wrong though... either that or someone keeps faxing me confetti." I worked from home today. I drank an entire pot of coffee because it was there... yep. I wanted to go have a nice lunch, but I ended up working through it. By early evening, I was starving and got dressed up in nice clothes to have a relaxing dinner out somewhere, but couldn't leave the house. I'm generally unhappy with everything these days. I don't think I stepped outside once. My daily existence is tolerable because I have work to keep my mind busy and controlled substances to numb it during the down time between work and sleep. It sounds terrible to say it like that, but unfortunately it is the truth. Perhaps I'm just being a little melodramatic... or I'm depressed. Either way, I didn't leave the house today because the thought of doing anything but sitting here was just exhausting. Sitting around feeling miserable is so much easier. I spent some time surfing around the GooTube. Some people post some interesting stuff and some really should just format their hard drives. I am intrigued by the demographics and subscription rate for some no talent ass clowns that post there while other, creative and talented folks are simply steamrollered and left in the ditch of anonymity. Some of the more "popular" regulars that are kinda cool are DiGiTiLsOuL and minouye. Although funny and prolific, I think a large percentage of minouye's viewers are attributed to his sickeningly cute friend, abbegirl. Sickeningly. The thing I like about DiGiTiLsOuL's posts are the consistency. There is always a leader/intro with the trademark finger thingy and "pshhht" sound, always a title shot with soundtrack, and the posts are always black and white. Regardless of quality, there is an attempt to publish content that has a message. I don't have time to follow all these folks and their postings, but that one stood out from the bundle watched by the lemmings of The Tube. I have to admit, I created the account to have a place to host vids to post here on TPILB. There seems to be entirely too much clicky hate going on over there to invest much time in developing a video blog. Besides, I've been doing this blogournal here for so long now, it seems silly to branch out. I don't even know while I still have this site anyway. Habit, I suppose. Long gone are the days when I have anything worth reading to say. Now it's just my drivel and I wouldn't blame anyone for deleting the bookmark.

With over 10,000 SETI work unit processed and no aliens buying me drinks at the local pub, I've decided to switch to folding proteins with my spare clock cycles. "With your feet in the air and your head on the ground. Try this trick and spin it, yeah. Your head will collapse, but there's nothing in it... and you'll ask yourself... Where is my mind?" I woke up this morning with my back and neck in serious pain. I remember the summer EL and I were married, I was having these muscle spasms in my upper back due to office ergonomics or some such hooty. EL made me go to the doctor and have it checked out. He prescribed a laundry list of muscle relaxers and pain killers (Flexoril, Vicodin, etc.) to get me through the wedding and into physical therapy. I never made it to therapy, but alleviation of the symptomatic pain for an extended period was enough to fix me up. The spasms went away and I haven't had trouble with it again until recently. I really don't want to go to the doc over this because I'm not willing to take the time to attend physical therapy anyway, so why waste his time, mine, and the insurance company's money? I dug around the medicine cabinet looking for something that might help. I had the standard OTC fair... acetaminophen, ibuprofen, naproxen sodium, etc. Nothing that was going to be worth ingesting. I remembered the little Cloud Nine pellets EL was prescribed when she broke her pelvic bone in January. Oxycodone in layman's terms is medical grade heroin light. I decline further comment at this time. Regardless of which pain reliever I can neither confirm nor deny consuming, I am now, after a fabulous lunch, a few gallons of coffee, and some time up and around, feeling much better. Nanotechnology is cool. I stopped by my new office building after lunch to check it out after the build completion. We are scheduled to move into the facility in a couple of weeks. It's quite nice by comparison to my current office however, I'll be back in a cube after years in a private office. I don't mind much. I'm fairly quiet and don't really care much about privacy as long as the general office area is secure from theft, etc. I mean, it's not like I can masturbate at my desk or anything. ba-dum-dum... chang! If all goes as planned, my new view will be of lush up-close-in-yo-face greenery... a vast improvement over my current view of distant greenery. I'm all about the greenery. Speaking of, my Sago Palms that Beth gave me are so happy they are sprouting new leaves like crazy! Conversely, the Plumeria she gave me is being eaten by something and I've still not been able to catch or deter whatever this ninja insect might be from it's demolition directive. The only down side to the new building is that one of my current clients is also leasing space on another floor of the same facility. I hope that doesn't turn into them swinging by every day with some new question or problem for me since I'm so "close". My boss's boss approached me about printing some large photos from my collection of crap for the wall art. That might be cool since I wouldn't be forking over the ducats to fund the printing and framing.

Camron left this evening after a late lunch subsequent to joining me for the church service. It was nice to see her again and catch up. We are two so completely different people. For being siblings, you would think there would be more similarity. I think resemblance is about as close as we get. I've been in a funk and don't really see light at the end of the tunnel... hell, I don't even see the tunnel. I hopped on The Mare and headed for open road after Camron left. I remembered an argument regarding the most bestest superlicious ice cream ever thunkapated and decided to provide examples. It took me a couple of markets, but I finally found one with Chubby Hubby in stock. I dropped a pint off at Teddybear's before moving on to alcohol. My boss is out on vacation. Being the senior systems engineer in my region, I am stuck "on call" covering for him while he's out. With that in mind, I embraced moderation. A fellow photography enthusiast and I visited over a few beers before I continued back toward home base. I'm sure I was bug-splattered by the time I made it home. My hair looked like the enraged bankai of an anime supervillian. I'm tired, lonely, and although I've successfully been single and functionally independent in my past, I am much better with someone with which to give my affection. Unfortunately, I am sufficiently broken at the moment. Camron stopped in front of the camera for a moment before we headed to church this afternoon. I don't shoot much these days, so I'm rusty, but it's not bad for an almost-snapshot. I'm going to finish my wine and head for bed. I don't have anything nice to say.

Everything really is better with bacon.

Friday at last. This is a week worth tucking into the past. I'm more or less done with my firm commitments for the week, just following up on some loose ends before business as we know it pauses for two days. The world never really sleeps unless inconvenient. I've had to tell three different people about EL in the last two days that didn't know and asked how she was doing. It's like taking a shot in the emotional solar plexus. I can make it through the story without crying so I suppose that is progress worth noting. Today marks 6 weeks since my grandmother's surgery. It seems like just yesterday that my mother, aunt, Beth, and I were standing in the recovery room. Where has that time gone? First it's 6 weeks, then it's 6 years. It's the best I could hope for in my postliminary survival. Camron doesn't get off until late, so she'll not likely arrive until after midnight. I need to find some firewood before cocktail hour.

"If you take care of your character, your reputation will take care of itself." Big day tomorrow. My little man is coming home. Camron is driving him up from his grandma's house after she gets off work. I have a few meetings downtown, but hope to be done early. I'm so ready for weekend downtime.

eleven-ish in the aye emm: I know I've mentioned this several times before, but it obviously needs to be said again: If you are a man and decide to wear your shirt tucked in at the waist of your trousers, then wear a belt. This is not open to interpretation. Just do it. /sigh I woke up this morning with a slight sinus headache and a substantial ache in my upper back and neck. Other than the typical creaks and pops upon rising that come with getting older, I felt well rested despite the pain. The weather had shifted over the night and a fog had settled over the city foreboding rain. My client was happy since everything was running tip top since the changes we made to the network on Monday night, but I still needed to stop in and make sure they no longer needed my assistance before attempting to standby on an earlier flight. I booked the last flight out to provide more time, but with the weather setting in like this, I was getting a bad feeling about hanging around. At least my travel is slightly more nimble without checked luggage. I packed a change of clothes in my laptop bag and just bought toiletries when I arrived in town. Target has an entire aisle of those tiny travel-sized toothpastes, deodorants, etc. When I had to reschedule to allow another day in town, I actually had to stop at a clothing store and purchase clothes to wear today. It's not the ideal way to expand your wardrobe, but spontaneity breeds adaptation. I really like the shirt I purchased. The fabric has surface texture, but it's so soft to the touch. If I weren't wearing it at the moment, I'd read the label and share the materials. The security desk just called all passengers to the gate which means my time is running short. This is one of those airports where there is no gangway tunnel to the door of the jet. Passengers must walk out onto the ramp and climb the stairs into the plane. Most have propellers and you're luck if you get one of the few Embraers that fly this route. I'm concerned about Penny and Bianca. I left them plenty of food and water for even the three days I unexpectedly spent here, but they tend to get mischievous when upset with me for being gone. I moved all my indoor plants onto the back patio so they should be fine. Something is eating the plumeria Beth gave me, but I can't find the culprit. I'm tempted to set up a web cam or something to record the activity. Whatever it is, it's extremely hungry. Time to board. Ciao. _______________________________________________________ Twelve-ish in the pee emm: I heard Reese and Ryan are breaking up. Obviously it is because she heard I was single now and wants to pursue me with the hopes I'll be her babydaddy. _______________________________________________________ Twelve-thirty-ish in the pee emm: The aircraft I'm on is obviously one of the older in the fleet... so old in fact, not a single seat in the plane reclines... not even a smidgypoo. There are no oxygen masks that fall from the overhead in the event of sudden decrease in cabin pressure. Not here. There are access jacks to plug into the oxygen delivery system, but you have to request a mask from the flight attendance in the event of a sudden decrease in cabin pressure. The creases in the leather seats are deep and random, showing years of fannies exerting the cyclic stress of trips to the lavatory and countless boarding ceremonies. The lines look like the cracks on a vinyl upholstered automobile seats subjected to 15 years of unforgiving west Texas sun. The fold down tray tables are discolored and slightly warped, but still serve their purpose quite well. It started raining the instant boarding was called, so all of the passengers were a little damp when we made it across the tarmac to the ladder. Once the props were spun up and we gained altitude through the clouds, the visibility cleared and we were able to see sun again. Hopefully the weather in Houston is not so dreary. I'm quite thankful I even made it on this flight. The young man at the ticket counter explained that standby on notice less than 3 hours would institute a hundred dollar convenience charge regardless of whether I made it on the flight. I explained that I was in dire need of a "homeboy hookup" and he apparently sensed my street cred was sufficient to reroute the security cams and skinny up the down low. He cleared me on a later flight in the afternoon to flag the 3 hour requirement, then re-ticketed me for the one that I wanted. Presto. I'm in. Jimmyjammajam. I'm really tired and think I'll try to snooze a little before we head for the ground. _______________________________________________________ Three-thirty-ish in the pee emm: Wow, there are some kitties happy to see me. As great as it was to be home, I had to come into the office to wrap up a few things. Happy hour *will* be starting shortly however. I am glad I wasn't home for Halloween. I'm afraid I would have had to follow through with my plan to issue ketchup, Taco Bell taco, and soy sauce packets to the little bastards that didn't say "Trick or Treat!" with a big smile. WTF is up with kids these days? Hang in there... the week is half way over.