Well, to start, besides not posting anything on here in days, I spent most of the entire weekend in bed doing nothing. Though I was sick, I'm still calling it slacking.

I did manage to make it to sears and got the belt for the snowblower, which I installed, and seems to be working. But in the process of this repair, I've lost some of the nuts and bolts, so those need to get replaced and then I hope/think everything should be in order. I'll claim they were rusting anyway, and thus in need of replacement.

Otherwise an uneventful weekend. It didn't snow more, that's good, and that's about it to report. Its time for another fun week of work. But this time its the end of January, so that's exciting.

I noticed Turbo tax is giving a discount if you file your taxes (the web version) before Feb 14th I think. I'm going to try to do that. Then its only $20 or something to file. Not a bad deal, and way easier then using the forms. Just some un-requested tax suggestions from me.

Ok. Time to get to work. Late as usual.

Yeah. I should have left by now. Oops.

So I took apart the snowblower again yesterday, but since it was all of 33 or so and light out, I'm convinced the belt is messed up. So Hopefully I'll get a new one on saturday and then maybe it will all be happier. Or maybe not. But I don't think I'm going to bid on the ones I've found on ebay, I can wait until next week for that.

Besides that, not much to report... I got my W-2. I feel like I should hurry up and do my taxes now. Of course I probably will slack on that, but I'm just putting it out there that I should/can do them.

Avid readers may recall the excitement of the lawnmower breaking. This week's activitiy is the snowblower breaking.

It no longer actually does anything, because while it usually starts and runs happily, you can't engage the auger part, so it just kinda is there as a large lawn ornament. I tried to take it apart yesterday to attempt to fix things, and noticed that the drive belt was off the pulley, so I put it back. Of course then after everything was all connected back up, and I started it, the belt fell off again. I think that means the belt is a sympton, not a problem. Do'h. I'm not sure when I'll have time to look at it again, hopefully the snow I didn't get to deal with will melt, but its not looking promising. Maybe I'll find a wonderful used one in the newspaper on sunday. I tried calling last week to one, but they never called me back, so it seems as if they had already sold it. How annoying.

I needed to wake up extra early today and tomorrow, as I have training at 7:30, so I need to be there a bit before then to allow time for everything. Yech. And it snowed yesterday, so I need time to clear off the car and all that other fun stuff.

I did plan ahead and clean the driveway though, but that caused the snowblower to decide to nearly die, so I think its time to go looking for another one. So many decisions. I'm hoping it doesn't snow again the entire winter, but sadly I feel as though that is unlikely, so I should get something that doesn't stall 10 times during the process of doing the driveway, and then have the auger fail while doing the sidewalk.

That's life I suppose, another fun and exciting weekend. Now off to work before I fall asleep, which is really what I want to do at the moment.

So I'm going to the restroom yesterday at work, when I notice that I can't seem to find the button for my pants. I get confused for a bit. Then I notice the button decides to go swimming. Needless to say I was glad I had a belt on. Stupid pants with weak buttons. Its not even like the stitching broke, the button broke. I think. Not like I was going to go digging for it. I'm sure its in the lake by now.

Now I need to get to work. But I double checked the button strength on todays pants and we look ok.

technically, I had mt-blacklist installed first, which was a few months ago. Its also only been recently it got a little more stringent. Its toned down now. Of course the main problem is it doesn't know the difference between a url and normal text. It should be easy to block .us domains, because how often is there a period and a us, but it seems to actually just block the letter combination us, which is reasonably common. So its a work in progress and feedback is welcome.

Beyond that, yesterday was my 1st anniversary at work. It was rather busy so no one did anything, but that's ok. I still get paid tomorrow, which is a fine present by itself.

Not much else to report, in the delayed hannukah present category, we got around to replacing and installing a towel warming rack. Its very nice, and my towel was nice and dry this morning, and that was only after like 10 hours of drying. Of course I'll need to remember to put it on there and such, but that shouldn't be too hard.

I'm a slacker. I'll get to installing MT-blacklist tonight. That's the plan.

Anyway, so now besides jen wanting an ipod shuffle, I've been pondering the mac mini. once I realized I don't do anything besides blogging and web browsing with my computer, what's the point of an ultra-super-extra fast computer, besides costing 3x as much. Of course I feel I should wait until 10.4 comes out, so I don't buy a $600 computer and then have to spend $130 to upgrade the OS in 2 months. Maybe its just time to think about it.

Random work story. So our lab coats sit outside the lab. (with our names magic markered in them, its very summer campy) But sometimes people borrow them. The hint someone borrows yours is sometimes obvious. Like when I went to use mine yesterday and found the sleeves were rolled up like 6". Ugh, if you're going to borrow one, at least borrow one the right size, or just put it back the way you found it. I don't need a short sleeved coat because someone decided the sleeves were too long on mine.

I don't know why sleep continues to be the topic. Maybe its something about the season and general lack of light. In any event, I've managed to wakeup on time, this is of course big news. I'm not sure how it falls in relation to cheez-it twisters, but somewhere there's a cheez-it - sleep contiuum, and well, when I find it, I'll map everything out.

Half the reason I wokeup early is its icing and other such not niceities out, so I need to get going to go deal with that. But oh well, such is life in winter I suppose. I do prefer the hockey type icing, its a better deal then real icing. Maybe I should get some Barons tickets... need to get to work on that then.

Getting back to the grind is a giant pain. Its much like coming back to school after summer vacation. Generally yech. I even went to bed early yesterday and still didn't feel like waking up at all, and I'm trying to be good and get up on time and everything, its just rather annoying.

Cheez-it twisters are good. They are aparently twisted cracker things of 'cheddar' and 'more cheddar' i don't know which is which, one is more yellow and one is more orange. We'll ignore the logic of such oddities, because of goodness. Mmm, goodness.

Ok, well I need to attempt to get to work on time, so I must be leaving now. I can get told by more people to wear a jacket, since aparently the 30 foot walk from car to door at work I'll catch hypothermia if I'm not wearing a jacket. Good everyone is still looking out for me.

So amusingly enough, one of the oddities of trader joes, is that for however cheap or unique most of their stuff is, some of it is just plain overpriced. I went to the market on Friday, since I had the day off, and they were closed Saturday. Anyway, so while TJs seems to always sell bananas for $.19 each, they ranged from 4lbs/$1 to 5lbs/$1 at the market. go figure. I guess supply and demand says people will pay more for bananas.

I'm going to take my 15 or whatever bananas I bought for a total of $1 and go to work. Hopefully on time too, so I need to get going. Well only 1 or 2 bananas today, more tomorrow.