well so its december 31st! very exciting.I'm vaguely settled on my activity for today. going to sleep. and keeping marcus from playing with the ipod. he sings too damn loudly at 3 in the morning to whatever random song he finds.

i think circumstances will probably make me stay until sat or sun, now depending on what chl is up to. sun seems like a reasonable day to head back. not sure yet, but you need to start somewhere. still open to other views.

so the car will only cost $988 to fix. at least from a non-mini repair place, i imagine getting it fixed at classic will cost more, but i'll deal with that in cleveland. i also need to check on the status of the police tracking down the idiot... things to do when i wakeup.

otherwise i'll note ny has decide to avoid skidding on ice, you can now skid on the 1/2" of sand they put down. it makes driving much more fun, though my car is clean, and it was a big mess before. rain in december is bad anyway though. ohh well. time for sleep i say. the last entry of the year should end on a good note. Bb.

get it? 101... ha. that was stupid.

so i was going to look into what the email address for my phone is, so people could just email me, however to do that, i need my verizon wireless, which is partnered with msn, which means i need a .net passport. which is icky and horrible, so i won't do that. its not intentional that i'm impossible to get when i'm in ny, it just requires calling my phone.

making some vague progress on the car thing, though i didn't hear from the officer yet, so we'll see. tomorrow i figured i'll check with amica, and then i can also see about getting a rough estimate from the body shop place. it should be a great way to spend a monday. i may also get a haircut, as i'm sorta in need of one, and they're easier here then cleveland.

not much else on the sunday front, i have dinner with mommie and klaus tomorrow. hopefully i can schedule it early, which will be much better then later, but otherwise not too much exciting. i still don't know when i'm leaving, i really do need to sort that out at some point... someone give me a good suggestion either way!

This is entry 100, isn't that exciting? i'd get a birthday cake or something, but i have 7/8th of a large m&m cookie from the alexis diner in newburgh, i think that's good enough. i'll save it for tomorrow.

i noticed the stupid gap between the bonnet and the front quarter panel isn't the same on the left side of the car as the right. so my car's more bent out of shape then i originally though. i tried calling mr. i can't drive again a few times today, that failed, though i reverse lookup'd his number, so i drove up the pok. besides living in housing projects (not especially awful ones, but projects none the less) his car was there, and the license plate was correct, so i'll see what i can do with klaus' help. time is running shorter though. damnit.

not much else to report, mommie and klaus aparently got home uneventfully, i'm remotely tired and smoke scented, so i've run out of things to say.

i'm not amazingly picky on driveway cleanliness, however i do need to walk on it, and would prefer i not kill myself, secondly, the walkway was even worse, and that's usually worth looking into. besides, it took 5 minutes once i was out in daylight to touch up the spots, though the walkway still has a pile of ice on it. i'll look into melting it sometime, but i figure klaus can deal with it now. the cat seems especially chatty, and she's locked down here now, so i'm inclined to run away and go upstairs. she can self entertain.

aparently ny decided to institute a new policy of putting up signs that are obvious. there's a sign at the corner of 376 and lake walton that says 'wait for green light' walter says this is because there's now a turn signal so its not immediate for each direction to swap. i think its just an excuse to not put up a sign saying 'obey traffic laws'

went out with helen, walter, marcus, jean, tooooooooooooooooom and mike. mike didn't smoke except at the bar. it was amazing. i obviously lack the correct method to have this happen.

walter + helen got a tivo for $250 through open box lunacy at worst buy (i dono why i keep going there...) it should be fun, i'm jealous. my brother needs to hurry up on getting me one. i'm already getting bored and checking out tivocommunity.com to see what tricks are available.

umm, trying to think of anything else interesting to mention and i'm failing. stupid dented car guy isn't answering, i think i tried 3 times today. bah. i'll deal with that more tomorrow. nothing else of note, though i did beat about 70 levels of cho cho rocket in a fit of bordem today. just makes the last 5 to beat special mode more annoying. i'll have to work on that tomorrow as well.

well so i've looked at the dent again, and it isn't horribly large. of course i can't get in touch with the stupid guy, so we'll see how that turns out. not that that's the good news.

i went out with marcus and jean and starch-free (duhh) mike to the whitehouse bar in fishkill and then mulligans. (i keep wondering if hanging out at the pro IRA bar will somehow screw up my security clearance if i ever need it... anyway) marcus tried the prawn potato chips. he said they were scary.

oh, so good news. aparently jean's uncle works for some company doing something or other in utah fairly high up, as well as having contacts in lithotripsy (breaking kidney stones with shock waves) and other various bme things. so i get to see if jean can introduce me successfully... yay.

not much else exciting to report, i need to touch up the driveway cleaning, since its a bit icy in spots, and its late, so i should go to bed, not like i need to wakeup before noon for anything, but as there's 2 minutes of daylight these days, its a bit more fun if i see some of it. seasonal affective disorder or whatever that's called should be avoided when possible. just like lice.

and other exciting things. So I uneventfully got back from marcus' to another 6" of snow, which i then blowed and shoveled as necessary. we'll see how my back likes me doing this, especially as my bed at home is mediocre.

my car's loads of fun in the snow. it slides a bit and does some odd things, but its so predictable its like sledding, you just steer and go and get where you want just not always in a straight line. it does sorta plow over snow higher then 4" since the front airdam's a bit low. i was still like the only car i saw. everyone else seemed to use it as the chance to actually get the suv dirty. i love how menacing the mini is with fog lights on though. teeny car with 6 lights blasting at you. and the rear wiper was stuck because of snow and i left it on. it tried to wipe once, got halfway and stopped itself. i just turned it off and turned it back on once i had cleaned the window and all was happy again, without nasty motor breaking sounds.

i don't know what i'm going to do in honor of helen's birthday.

yes, it was the galleria worst buy.

i im'd spazz muffin, he ran away before i could see about scheduling anything. i also need to call memphis and the car moron tomorrow, hopefully those will go well. its too cold to rain on my parade, and it already snowed a crapload.

UPDATE:
I didn't mention abafreaking xmas. I didn't do much, played with ferrets (marcus has 4, one of which is small gopher sized) got attacked by his 2 friendly rottweilers, and played hearts, lost miserably in chess, won and lost several gamecube/xbox/playstation games, did ok in dominoes, accidently left the family copy of cranium there. had food, had more food. about it. more fun then staying here though, so yay. and jean talked to me. i guess she's just shy to people who aren't around for more then 10 minutes. the cat's meowing for no reason, so i'll stop now.

there's 6" of snow on the ground, i drove home to clean off the carport, and feed the cat. now fun with the snowblower. i'll update more later.

did you know its now only 2 days to helen's birthday? this is much more important then christmas, as you know, i don't really care.

i figured out on the ride home why jean is interesting. she's jewish, she's relatively good looking, and she was nice to me. i don't think this is news that its appealing. we'll ignore the not interested in guys thing, because you know, that's not relevant. as well as not ever talking to her past freshman year. oh well.

not much else to report. i think its going to be an abafreaking christmas, which should be fun. otherwise time for some sleep and the other usual things that i do after night.

so i was sitting in the damn parking lot at worst buy trying to get out after i bought a dvd player for all of $70 for the house. then some moron backs into me, while i'm beeping constantly at him. i need to call him back tomorrow and sort out the baseball sized dent in the side of the bonnet by the headlight. should be fun. suposedly the guy just stuck his plates on the car, so needs to uhrm, legally register it... just my luck. oh well, the bumper paint's a bit cracked as well for like 1", so i gather that will need repainting. such fun! stupid christmas! should have hung out with lesbian jews everyone thinks i'm fascinated with! see. problem solved.

So starch-free mike was wondering if there's a law against making U-turns on route 9 using the ebrake. i thought it worked pretty well, assuming you had enough of a running start so you could get the car to rotate. if you're first in line, i wouldn't want to try it.

not much else to report, besides beer that was wretchidly hoppy. i would advise against it. but i can't remember its name. i also tried to get a dreamcast. that failed, because it has s-video, which the crappile tv doesn't have. nor does the adapter or receiver convert s-video to composite. things to do tomorrow i guess.

like calling westchester... still need to do that.

i think that's about it for a sunday. it really wasn't that exciting beyond the usual things. you know, burger king lunch. forgetting to clean my car. meh. sundays.

I need to check in with Westchester MINI tomorrow if I'm feeling motivated to see about fixing my seats and the cigarette lighter. I went and saw sweet home alabama. it was good. the theatre was crappy. i'll get over it. i think i'm hungry now.

i got bored and looked up how much a morgage payment would be on a house (through hub.gov) according to them, a $120K house would have payments of between $1100 and $900 for 30 years at about 7% depending on how much down and what type of loan. That's sad, I was hoping I could buy a million dollar house. I guess this could postpone it a bit, since its supposed to be 29% or less of your gross salary. That'd mean you'd need to make payments of around $9K/month, (110K/year) so you'd be at $350K/year. how sad. with all that math, do you ever get the feeling the reason loans are for 30 years is because then you can buy a house 3X your income and its simple?

enough housing discussion. nothing else interesting is happening tomorrow, or today for that matter. i just noticed mommie and klaus are collecting AOL cd's in the dvd cases. sorry, one's msn. i have no idea, but i would gather these are klaus'. scary world. very scary.

a quick entry to stay on target. albany was fun, we went to dinner at french place, then went back to friend of dave's place, stopped for snack on the way, ended up buying a fryer and making mozarella sticks, fried artichoke hearts and in theory french fries, which never got made. it was amusing, i guess you need to purchase things when the house has only been moved into for a week.

i mentioned to dave i'd like a tivo. he seemed to think this could happen for my birthday.

i got a B in IT and Stat. i'm annoyed, but i'll get over it. 3.8 is still an acceptable gpa, but it would be nice if i could raise my IT grade, i think i deserved an A

people spent all of the albany time looking at my car each place i went. it was odd. i saw another one on the road and flashed them. it was exciting. yay for 8 month old cars that still get attention.

I need to quit staying up this late. oh well. i got an email from the executive hr person at sofamor danek asking about jan 6th interviews. yay.

i went to trader joe's in danbury, and got 3 1/2 cases of fiji, i ordered 3 more, those should be in on sunday. that will give me about 90 1.5 liter bottles to last the ~150 or so days until graduation in may. i just need to find room for them and my stuff on the way back to oh. shouldn't be awfully difficult though.

tomorrow its hanging out in albany with dave. that should be fun, once i get in touch with him.

i saw LOTR with marcus, i'm not sure if its just me being tired, but it was damn long, and not amazingly interesting. i guess i'm not a big science fiction (or whatever genre it is) fan as i expected. i guess it was worth seeing for $6 though i had nothing else to do.

nothing else to report. an eventful night that needs to end sometime.now is as good as any.

So after getting some useful help from starchy mike (everyone thank him...) on finding wegs, i got my sub and some iced tea. i only realized i had drank nearly all 64 ounces of it when i got home. then i was really awake. now i'm tired. its all odd. anyway i'm going to write more tomorrow i think.

i was wondering why walmart's ads never show people smacking their kids in overcrowded aisles and everything a mess while the employees yell at each other in spanish. its not very realistic, and i bet they know it.

i'm a step closer to an interview at sofamor danek the week of jan 6th. yay. (funny how memphis is across the mississippi from arkansas, on the subject of walmart)

i got home uneventfully, i'm going to my mom's international luncheon thing tomorrow. it should be interesting, though i'll need to wakeup at like 10 to get there. crapo. i should go to sleep then, as i'm never good at falling asleep on time recently.

no, OH, like the state. which i plan on leaving at noon. that should get me to williamsport's wegmans (i've been to scranton + wilke's barre's already) at approximately 5, and 10k miles. it'll be sub-tastic. (not as good as dibella's, but i'll manage)

nothing else great to report, i did another 2 loads of laundry, that makes something like 6 in the last week, and i really could do 1 or 2 more since i need to wash the old sheets. i think i literally have 50 shirts. but they're nice, and i can't see getting rid of many of them, since they fit and are in good condition. i'll reevaluate the options in jambuary.

i need to get a job. my engineering skills have been mostly related stacking dishes as high as possible, in order to get them to dry in time without having too many cycles. its sorta sad.

so the long story of today was going shoe shopping with erin. (sneakers specifically) we walked into the store, erin said something to the effect of 'what do you have on clearance somewhere between 6 1/2 and 8 1/2. she looked puzzled, erin said 'i have no feet, the size doesn't really matter. she acted odd, showed one crappy pair, that was a 6. said uhrm its a 6, erin said well it might work, the woman looked odd, erin said well my feet don't really exist so it doesn't matter. the woman looked puzzled, and moved on. We found another pair, she said she had lots of odd people, so what did erin mean by her feet being weird. erin said 'i have no feet'. erin then tried on a pair using the shoehorn and making very odd noises. the woman was a bit shocked, and then made smalltalk about feet. it was highly amusing. we left (with a cool pair of sneakers) pointing out said woman is now educated about feet, and probably feels awful for thinking erin was just being sarcastic. wahoo.

anyway, need to get to sleep sometime soon, so i can wakeup, and pack and well that's about it. i need to debate bringing the gamecube. i probably will, though any comments before i leave would be useful.

I'm tired, and I agreed to drive shareef to the train station tomorrow (aparently opie (the opaz) died about 20 minutes from here from a blow head gasket, so he's training it back home. anyway, his train's at 9, so blah. but on the upside, i did get lots of cleaning done, did dishes, (got annoyed mitch didn't do anything before he left, except create more dishes, but oh well) cleaned my room, and got a good chunk of laundry done. i think 2 more loads and i'll be pretty much finished with it, at least enough to stop caring.

i was so impressed with an explorer i saw while driving in michigan, it was covered in mud, who knew anyone actually took them offroad. i got depressed however when 10 minutes later i saw a malibu with even more mud on it.

i went to rally's for fast food excitement, as there's nothing to eat here. which caused me to wait 10 minutes for no reason in the driveup lane, which ended in them giving me my drink overfilled and dripping. i asked her to wipe it off, and she wiped half of it. do'h. you'd think most people wouldn't want massively leaky drinks in their cars....

flowers submitted my resume to nottingham. we'll see if that goes anywhere, not like i'm banking on anything particullarly exciting. i meant to change my sheets over today, but upon washing the new ones, they created a pile 1/2" thick of lint in the dryer, and are still wet, so they're drying, i figure i can deal with one more night of the now uniformly blue-gray plaid.

current thoughts have me going home on wed. any votes supporting or rejecting that will be heard starting now. ok, time to shower and go to sleep. i think its a reasonable activity, since i have no idea how it ended up being 2am... time flies when you're umm, flying. or sitting, or whatever it is i did. i didnt' even watch that much tv, i kept getting inturrupted so i never really paid attention, i guess i'm just skilled like that.

No grades yet either, i figured i should mention that. damn everyone being slow.

You know, I personally think my car being slightly but not terminally broken isn't a bad thing. if it keeps non-enthusiasts from buying it, because they don't want to deal with the hassle, so be it. character isn't awful, and it currently doesn't cost me anything to get it fixed, besides time, but as i'm unemployed, i can't really bill myself.

i was staring at the map on the wall, and decided i need to do more travelling, i've been, in recent memory (so ignoring trips to florida when i was 5) to about 25 states, i think its important i visit (visit=at least drive through, airports don't count) the other 25, then i need to move on to something else random, like going across canada by train. i bet it would be fun as well. now if only i could find someone interested in such adventures, i could do things like postponing working until july or so and spend some of the time then running around. i haven't even dusted off my passport and i've got months worth of travelling. oh, yeah need a job too, such problems.

i found something to do friday night (handy, as seeing as i haven't left michigan, it looks like i'll probably head back to ny on tuesday, unless erin's somehow interesting enough to stay in cleveland) anyway, dave + allie will be in town for some wedding/funeral/whatever i lose track, so i got invited to go run around albany with them. no one tell mike i'm going to albany... this could be a bad thing. but otherwise it should be fine. and that mike, not the other mike who would get offended if i called him something starchy. (i sure hope you name your kids somethings like maskalans maskalans, so they don't have that problematic too common name problem)

nothing else amusing to report, though it did snow a bit here, so i got to drive around on snow tires in both freezing drizzly stuff at like 35 degrees and snow. the tires did well, i guess this makes up for their tendancy to suck. dave pointed out i could adjust the camber a bit, but i dono if i want to spend $50 for an alignment to do that in the first place... april should just show up so i can take them off, feel like i got my money's worth and go run off to my job, which would be all squared away by then.

if i report anything else interesting today, like that i saw the movie john q. and it was good and you should see it, i'll run out of things to say tomorrow, so i'm going to quit while i'm marginally ahead.

So i found some update time, interesting i actually went to bed earlier, as nothing else was happening, so i didn't have any time to update after midnight. since no one commented, i'll take that to mean that this wasn't a huge heartbreak, even if it was one.

nothing else amusing to report, though i did recall that i hadn't been driving very much, so i had forgotten how relaxing it was for a bit. i think it just relates to it being generally peaceful, but unlike sleeping, is somehow productive. not a bad balance. though i always seem to think i'm the only person who thinks that, well other people (mike..) but that's still a small selection of the population.

i dono when i'll leave here, i need to go do laundry and some other fun stuff in cleveland, but nothing else interesting is happening, and no one's bothered to call me and see what's happening in ny, so i'm not in a huge rush to go back there. i figure i'll sort more of it out in cleveland.

if i find something else to write about i will, but otherwise end of another fascinating update from around the country, and well that's about it.

No, I think damnit will work just well as a comment. On the subject of that, I think you're one of the select few people who consider whatever 'average' size you will have 'small'. Anyway. yay for going well.

So i went across the street (i could chalk this up to not getting more comments, but i won't, because that would be mean) to chatham's (i have no idea how to spell her name, suposedly its after someplace on cape cod, but i'm too lazy to look it up) nothing especially eventful, just a fun way to spend the evening. One of her roomates decided I needed cake, but somehow managed to push the plate into me, leaving a large patch of whipped cream on my shirt. she appologized the entire evening. it was generally quite funny. Another roomate, who oddly I have yet to talk to sober, but is otherwise quite cool fell asleep in the middle of a conversation, so I blew out the candle in her room and left. a good way to spend an evening, even if my room's not the least bit clean. i'll deal with that umm, later. like jambuary.

not much else interesting to report, as some of you know, the stat i started at about 11 (i was slow waking up, sue me) i ended up finishing it at 7. 8 stupid hours of being basically productive. i don't see how that was better then a normal final, since unlike a set time of 3 hours, i was obligated to finish it, even though it was like an hour late, because of course everyone else probably finished it, and i didn't want to fall behind on the curve, seeing as i could actually do well in stat, even though its probably my worst class. you know, i've been watching myself type, and it is kinda funny, even if i just get used to it. though i need to rely on the clicking, i was listening with the earphones before, and it was confusing as all possible somethingorother because i couldn't hear each click, so i didn't know if i actually had hit the key or not.

not much else amazing to report. i think i'll wakeup sometime around 11 or so (that'd give me a nice happy 8 hours sleep) and then clean a bit before running up to michigan. i hear its nice around this time of year. that and well, i remembered that the ipod charger was sitting in my bag which i hadn't unpacked from california, so its happily charged, which was the major problem with a small road trip. yay for problem solving. boo for problems existing.

about the end of tonight's super happy fun report, though i must pre-warn you, it could be more difficult for me to update from mi, as well as generally over break, but i'll try my best, stay tuned, since its not like you have ads or anything to wade through to read this.

I dislike stat. especially as I haven't yet started on the final. Mitch and Reefi have been working on it for hours. I guess its going to be a fun tomorrow, since even though i slept for like 4 hours after the IT final, i'm still sorta tired.

looks like rain/snow tomorrow evening into saturday. good news for having snow tires (which incidently aren't amazingly good on the dry, and i can make understeer, but do soften the ride noticibly) bad news for skiing. better news for stat. since that needs to get done stat.

haven't heard anything from sarah, so i'll just count that as positive.

not much else to report since i didn't do anything today except for sleep and the IT final and sit around... but sitting was good. i really need to hurry up and finish the 2nd 3rd of my edumication though.

I figure I should point out Thursday's sarah's boob job. not the one you're thinking of (obvious for those of you that know her) but breast reduction. I dono what this especially has to do with me, or you for that matter, but surgery is scary, and voluntary surgery is no exception. I can't do much, i'm anti relegious so i'm not going to do anything on that front. I figure i'll probably run up to michigan this weekend and offer in person support. another one of those puzzling situations without a clear plan of action, my umm favourite types.

on other subjects, 2 finals, + 1 final paper done, and only 2 classes left to deal with. positive news really. IT shouldn't be too bad tomorrow, about the same difficulty as cleaning the bathroom today. i ended up smelling litterbox fresh, i didn't even need deodorant, i went to class smelling like bathroom cleaner.

do you ever wonder if in my laziness, and not separating entries, anything i mention serious gets overshadowed by random ramblings? i think its more realistic, since that's how i think anyway, and if you're offended by it, you don't know me well enough. i took some pictures of the mini today, but as with yesterday, when i tried to add more pictures to the gallery the gallery making software left (not up) and crashed, so after entering all the captions twice, and still failing, i gave up. there's some new ones in there, but whatever. i also expect to separate the galleries into car and non-car stuff, maybe that will fix my problem on it being broken at the moment anyway. or i could register a different domain as i mentioned earlier, how difficult.

my hand hurts like hell from writing literally 8 pages for the entrepreneurship final today, so it seems to have migrated to my left hand, which is now hurting as well. makes me want to give up typing and go to sleep. and i shall. because i can.

So I had mashed potatoes for dinner. Nothing too exciting, though I did use up some butter that had been in the fridge a while. I'm not sure if its scary or not that that's what I had. (I actually did have some frozen peanut chicken thing, but it wasn't very filling so it didn't count). Anyway, that's the extent of the mashed discussion.

So the car's fixed. for the time being. Over in the UK there's another two recall things, one for cars before april, one for before june. A handbrake replacement thing, and then bonnet insulation. Since i was at the dealer's, i figure if they knew about it, they would tell me. i'll just get it done at white plains or albany.. it'll be more fun anyway.

I've been trying to chrome side vents, so they're primed now. one came out ok, the other less, but we'll see with the final product, not like it'll be a part people stare at from 1/2" away.

I bought another microtechnican (the pliers thing on my keychain) it was $10, i figure that's not an awful price. i also found out swiss tech is now (i swear it moved) in perry oh. which is positive, as its slightly east of mentor. amusing that when i stop driving up to mentor several times a day i find this, but oh well. i can try and get the utilikey i have that's broken replaced. funny how i've bought like 10 different tools since high school, and only 1 actually broke, i lost all the others...maybe that this one broke so it won't stay on my keys is the big issue. anyway, nothing to report, time for sleep. final tomorrow!

This actually happened on saturday, but i forgot about it for two days. amusing. I saw a yellow omni. with checkerboard running stripes. And chicken lights. i was sad i didn't have my camera, and i expected to bring it too.

on the subject of saturday, i called about my lightless car, and amazingly, they said they'd get me a loaner. how much simplier, so i need to getup slightly early as i said i'd have it there tomorrow at 10. suposedly my windshield washers aren't working either, and they ordered a part. somehow lacking lights and signals was more important then me testing that.

the manufacturing final went well, it was a full 3 hours, no one finished, i didn't do 20ish points out of 200 because i didn't know what i was supposed to do and didn't have time. i'm not especially worried.

on the upside of grades, i found out i have an 85% homework average in stat, which is 25% of my grade. that's much better then expected, as the mean is 80%. maybe i can actually get an A in it too. would be fun. anyway, i need sleep, i need to prepare to eat more random fridge stuff, need to have that cleaned out by the end of the week as well.

It was a generally unproductive weekend, especially with the car not really getting fixed, however after some extreme postponing of my homework, i got stat and compiled the paper both due tomorrow. all i have to do during the day is raise hell at the dealership and study for the final at 2:30, not an awful collection of stuff.

i figure the earlier i call the better, so i think i'll go to bed reasonably soon, as erin pointed out (even though i hate mornings and won't call at 7:30 when they open) waiting on something isn't positive. it is a bit annoying that i can't move to another dealer or anything, but with job luck, its what, 5 months in cleveland left?

not much else interesting to report, i got chinese food with mitch delivered today, it was reasonably good, though nothing groundbreaking. handy life's boring so they could deliver it in 30 minutes. i was amazed mitch didn't know about appending 'in bed' to fortune cookie fortunes. it was sad, i informed him. now i'm off to sleep, that's not quite as sad.

I'd like to point out I didn't miss a day per se, I just missed updating by 9 hours or so. Not especially bad, and it did generate comments. But i will try to be more effective in the future.

so i finally got the car back from getting the blower fixed, which happily seems to work. of course as i turned out of the dealership i realized the turn signals didn't work. then after leaving the mall with mitch, i realize none of the lights work. I fortunately have daytime running lights, but i couldn't see how fast i was going since the gauges were dark, and i drove by a cop with my foot lightly on the brake so i had some lights on in the back... i got a call at 9:30 that i missed from the dealer, i sure hope it was them saying oops we broke this and need to order the part, since it was so obvious.

i did get the rubber floor mats, they worked nicely, and i think they should be very happy when it snows again. i'll switch back to cloth in the spring.

dave called while i was out at panini's (at about 2..) he said he saw 5 minis running around san francisco. how sad, but hey there's not very many around here, and the dealer said they only expected 30-40 per month from now on, so that's at least good, now if only mine was working 100%... or i could get loaner cars...

i need to compile and write my section for the paper due monday afternoon. so much work. such a pain, even though it won't take very long. i also have all the reading for the semester in manufaturing to do. do'h, such things happen. i'm sure it will be a most exciting sunday, once i bother to wakeup that is.

I was just browsing my morning webpages when I realized I forgot to update. Oops. Anyway, Friday wasn't especially excitng besides the hassle of getting my car back which has been postponed until today, contingent on mitch or reefi giving me a ride out there.

The concert went reasonably well, however I missed way too many notes for my own good. I just had too many to play, and not enough rehearsal time, which was not very good at all. Hopefully next semester will work out better, too many thursdays got cancelled.

i really need to clean my room today and do laundry. decided backup on that, though i'm not sure how i'll fit it in as sat's a busy laundry day in theory, and i don't want to mess something up when i go to mentor which will take an hour. how problematic. not much else to report. it seems to be sunny out today, that's always a nice upside. should i start taking wagers on how much of the problems of my car are actually fixed? i think there were 4 things including the blower...

oh, i did get the parts stuff ordered yesterday, so in theory that's in my car. I got white side turn signals, an extra set of side vents which i expect to paint and rubber front floor mats in honor of the weather. i'll update that later when i get them. much appologies for forgetting.

I was going to title this sleep good, however i already used that, and i'm not creative. life's amusing that way.

anyway, so i had a joyus time at the mem holiday party, which ended with 3 1/2 hours of talking to dr. flowers, not the most productive time, but he has some interesting things to say, and he reiterated how they'd really like to have 100% placement by graduation. we'll have to see how that works.

i ended the evening with 4 hours at buffalo wild wings, it was wingtastic. i drove mitch's car home. amusing to see how old other cars feel now (91 mazda...) and that i kept looking at the heater vents in the middle to see how fast we were going. such is the price of minidom.

speaking of the car, i called at noon and it was 'next in line' to be worked on. i sure hope its ready tomorrow sometime easy to pickup. i have a rehearsal at 4 and then a concert at 7:30, need to squeeze it in sometime. nothing else amusing to report, i need to sort out some papers and other stuff this weekend, but hey, life's working out reasonably, and i'm not working too hard, so i shouldn't complain. i'll have plenty of other days to complain during.

These aren't really related, nor can I figure out why my neck hurts, but i bet sleep will at least postpone it for a few hours.

yay for people still reading. now i won't bug you again to be sure you're reading until january or so. its like credit card bills, they're only annoying once a month as long as you pay on time.

so in theory the car is scheduled to get its blower replaced tomorrow. i asked about it at about 11:30, wayne (mr service idiot) said he could do it thursday or friday. i said i didn't know if i could get the car in time, i'd have to call him back. i called him back at 2:30, and left a message to say call me and say its ok. he didn't. i figure the best bet is to drop off the car anyway, so i did. hopefully he didn't schedule something else tomorrow, so i can be heated and happier by the afternoon.

my neck still hurts, so i think i'll cut this short. its like skirt hems, ever shorter, but not necessarily a bad thing.

go to http://www.mini.co.uk click on skip intro, then go to see MINI being built. Its awsome. well worth staying up until nearly 3 for.

someone must have something interesting to say damnit! leave comments. or at least aknowledge you're reading this. now back to regularly scheduled babbling.

i have pneumothorax on the brain. our project for BIOMEC is a detector for it (it being a collapsed lung for the non-technical people) and i've now learned too much about it. i think the only relevant part is you cure it with a chest tube, which would hurt like hell, since its a trauma thing and they almost never do it with anesthesia in surgery. yowch.

my bed's a mess. this is annoying. my car's skidding happily on snow, so i guess i need to fork over some cash and buy snow tires, and some wheels, so i can save the pain + expense of changing them over.

i'm counting down the amount of work left, 1 presentation, 2 papers and then 4 finals. i think that's reasonable, and it'll be over with quickly enough. dave said the transmission warranty was actually 100 days, and it took him 135 to break it, fortunately mr. junkyard guy replaced it anyway, from another car with 3500 miles before it got stuffed (iirc the first replacement was from one with 800 miles). there was also a wrx wagon with 300 miles that got smacked on all 4 corners and then landed hard enough to break the suspension, as well as somehow cracking the engine. i guess test drives can be dangerous if you do that to a car. maybe that's why salesmen don't go on test drives, they're afraid you'll do that. (junkyard guy paid all of $500 for the crunched wagon)

i don't think anything else exciting is happening. i went shopping. i found eggnog again, there's like 10 different brands, many of which have light and flavoured versions. its confusing! i bought 3 to try this time (yeah it may be excessive, but i was bored, i only spent $33 total shopping). land 'o' lakes wins this round. but there's a huge variety, its very odd to have the same product have so many options and such a different taste. anyway, sleepisgood. so are spaces, so i'll use some of them too.

well my bed's cleared off and i brushed my teeth, so i'm nearly asleep. a quick weekend update. i went out to dinner at some south indian place in san jose. it was really good. i had no idea what i was eating, but as it was all vegeterian i didn't care. odd feeling really, since i always seem to worry about what i'm eating.

i had my multiplier thing 'confiscated' by some dipwad transportation security administration member. he seemed to think i could take apart 'an aircraft carrier' with it. i noted while being extremely bored and uncomfortable in my non-exit row seat (with aforementioned stinky guy) that there weren't any screws exposed in the entire aircraft except for dumb places like in the overhead luggage bins. i like how they ask 'do you have anyone you can hand this to' right, so as if dropping someone off with the don't wait more then 10 seconds rule isn't a pain enough, they should park and wait for you to get through security too? just stupid. and related to oddball presents, like the gallieo thermometer which looked very weird (i'm sure they though it was something a bit more phallic until they opened it, as its about 14" long and 2" in diamater) but without that i wouldn't have had the damn bag looked through, etc, etc.

anyway, nothing else amazing to report, i was very glad to be back here after all the flying and riding and such, so i think i'll be even happier to be asleep. sleep is good, its like the anti-plane thing. i really do need to get enough money to fly first class, or perfect my exit row seating, i think 3 of 4 flights was good, but the one time i didn't have it it was sooooo cramped. i think delta's management must be midgets hence they pack the seats so close.

ok, so i slept like 4 hours last night on the plane with this annoying guy next to me who stunk horribly of sweat, who would doze off and hit his head against my shoulder. that's made me really tired. i nearly fell asleep and started snoring during manufacturing. i was saved. it was slightly better then bad.

i have lots of other stuff to mention about the trip, but i'm too tired to deal with it. i have to write a paper of some sort sometime this week for a group project, and then have another presentation on wednesday. blah! but its not so bad. nothing else amazingly interesting, maybe i'll update in 10 minutes once my bed's clean.

I was hungry, so i got sidetracked snacking on dry roasted peanuts. i forgot i actually like them. not very newsworthy though, since i've continued to think that there's very few things i'll eat that i dislike. (mostly random veggies, but anyone who doesn't know can discuss the list with me at their leisure)

i decided it was simplier to type on the couch then lying on my elbows. after 5 lines i have proved myself correct.

we were going to go out to dinner tonight, but that got cancelled when 50 feet from the restaurant the car crunched and made very bad noises. the general guesstimate is second gear actually broke, and threw parts of itself into various places in the transmission. funny of course since the transmission was replaced about 3 months ago for those of you keeping track. some people have suggested dave get one of the 9th one free cards. (assuming it is the transmission which seems the only logical thing, it is actually still under warranty, so its not a huge issue except for finding a rental car and such while the subie is being fixed)

nothing else amazing to report. the gallileo thermometer showed up. its kinda cool, though i'm not sure why mommie + klaus thought i would like the balloon one instead of the normal one. some things just don't make sense.

oh, i'll have to apologize early for not updating tomorrow, since my flight's at 10something pacific, i won't have time, but i figure i'll give a minute by minute update of sitting in a tin tube when i'm back in ohio monday morning.

nothing else useful to report, though i think i won't be having turkey for a while. not necessarily a bad thing, the chickens of the world need support too. (not ducks, as i don't like duck because it tastes like oddball fatty dark chicken. i'm not a huge fan of froie gras either, as dave got a sample of it from his cheeseguy at dean + deluca today and handed it to me, i went blah and threw 90% of it in the garbage).

we went to 3 wineries, (not counting heitz, which failed to yield much progress on returning the oddball 1977 magnum which tastes funny dave got for himself that's been postponed). Today's selection was ZD, Mumm (which has very cute sparkling splits for only $5 or $6. they'd be useful if i had a use for sparkling wine) and then Caymus. nothing too exciting, though $136/bottle cabernet isn't amazingly interesting its just very approachable and not offensive. (i sorta knew this from other times having 'expensive' wine though, but it reminded me) since i'm sure everyone was wondering why you'd spend that much on rotten grapes, it is easier to appreciate then $20 or $30. (not that its better or worth the money though)