Aparently, unlike college, where I hung around the same people, and going out consisted of going to restaurants with the same people or wegmans with the same people, the real world switches people, as they go home to their families. And actually see other people.

The point of this, is they all bring germs. Lots of them. Little annoying germs.

The point of this, is that yet again I have an annoying cold. Pending Jen's keeping track of this, this is the 3rd one this season, which is the most I can ever remember. Of course this makes sense when most of the people I work with also get sick, and have kids that get sick, and everything is just plain old filled with germs. Blech. I skipped out on Conversion Class today, and ate chinese food (mostly to get the egg drop soup to make me feel better) My sweet and sour chicken tasted as if I was eating stryofoam. I need to get better quickly, this is not good.

I did however play some more Pikmin 2, which is good, but I'm getting a bit bored of it. I suppose its good I didn't buy it for $50 and instead rented it for $5 for a week.

So in other news, I called the Bankrupt, but now up for auction and soon to be bought by someone else cable company, and took advantage of their $5 a month for digital cable + 1 premium channel thing. I suppose its a good deal, but these entertainment things are getting expensive. I'm just going to complain and hope when someone buys adelphia they have more sane packages, so I don't need to pay so much to get tons of channels I never watch (I'm looking at you, useless sports channels).

Oh, they tried to sell me their new 'premium' internet service, which is up to 4 megs download speed (I think its 3 by default) for only $.56 a day or something. $18/month. I wanted to point out a. my internet is insanely fast because no one in mulletville uses it, and b. $18/month is how much it used to cost for normal dial-up, what happened to prices going down for technology? And that's nearly 50% more for 33% more speed. Go figure.

Continuing on (has anyone actually read this far? I suppose this justifies why I don't post much, I'm too busy doing other things, though over the next few weeks stuff will start ending.. so it should get saner, at least until the wedding).

Oh right. So we're ordering the Wedding bands now. Which is hilarious, because the woman who calls us to update on delivery time and such is incapable of speaking quickly. See, the answering machine (I'm scared of Vonage's voice mail, so I have a normal (well 5.8Ghz (it took me like 3 years to realize WiFi kept hosing the 2.4Ghz phone... go engineer)) phone) where was i? Oh, yeah, answering machine only records for 60 seconds. So she'll be umm, yeah this is, ok. so your rings are.. BEEP!. Unfortunately, she called On saturday, and then was off Sunday for Easter (aka holiday I'd like to go shopping on but everything's closed) and monday and tuesday, but her message got cut off so I didn't get all the details. So I called on wednesday and asked her to update me. She left a message later in the day, and got cut off. So called back. So then got cut off again. It took her 3 minutes to say she didn't have any info on my ring because the person she was talking to was on vacation. Hey, at least she's friendly. Its pretty funny though in any case, but you do need to hear the messages to get the full effect.

Finally. I'm pissed off at Fedex Ground. Some of you may recall how I had to drive to their not very well organized hub, because Apple sent the keyboard signature required, so I couldn't even sign the slip, and they couldn't deliver it on saturday. That wasn't awful as we went for steak afterwars since we were in the neighborhood). I actually planned in advance, and ordered one of Jen's Bday presents from bean, like 2 weeks ago. It was suppposed to arrive Tuesday, only it didn't. A randon box that says 'Fragile' arrived, which was addressed to someone like 4 blocks away. I called Fedex, they said uhh, oops. We'll call the Depot and get back to you, give us a #, because they just put us on hold. I didn't get a call back, but left the incorrect package on the steps so it could get picked up when I left for work on Wednesday(mind you, mine says it was delivered according to fedex, so I don't know who actually has it, but it was left on the side porch according to tracking). I came home yesterday to find it still there. So I called fedex back. They said oh, we didn't know anything was wrong. We'll put in a call. Of course Fedex is aparently only open until 8. So they said well, it could take 24-48 hours to get information. But I called at 10 last night, when I got home. Which means 48 hours is friday night. They claim they do something on saturday. I got mad, they were useless and called bean. At least bean admitted it was bad, and felt sorry for me, and were nice. Of course they can't do anything else until fedex goes looking for the package, if they can't find it by friday they said they'll send it again.

Its not that I expect people to be insanely nice, but when they screw up, and it has absolutely nothing to do with me, and is only their fault, at least have some vague admittance that you're at fault and I'm not and try to make up for it. Oh sorry, fedex is closed after 8 is a pretty stupid answer, not to mention ignoring my first request, and saying you can only put in 1 phone #, so you can't call me at work from 8-5 and at home after that. Brilliant.

On the subject of brilliant, and my fault. I was running late this morning, but hungry. So stopped at burger king, for their new super ultra mega omlette. It was cheap. And their coffee was adequate. But umm, yeah. If you don't get it with bacon and sausage (yay for porktastic) its pretty much like eating nothing. And I didn't even have any pepper or salt to add to it. And while I can't taste anything, I'm pretty sure it was bad enough to not try it again when I can taste something, it was more like a roll with a yellow marshmallow on it. (Vasty different from the sweet + sour styrofoam mind you)

Ok, that was really long. But I'll say it makes up for one or two missed days. And I'm sure it killed time for anyone who read it to avoid doing something else they didn't want to do.

in the last week, I have managed to violate several cell phone rules. In a public service, I'll attempt to recount them so maybe they won't happen again:
Leaving phone in car overnight
Letting phone battery go dead and not noticing
noticing battery is dead, so leaving phone in other room while charging
leaving phone on silent and not noticing rings.

I think there may be a few more, but those are the only ones I've thought of at the moment. I have to leave now, so I can go get my phone that I left in the car. Oops.

So last night we went to the purim service. Nothing interesting, except the goal is to get dressed up, much like halloween, only in march. (though its sometimes in february).

The interesting logic of me wearing the cheesehead and a yellow shirt (incidently from Tony Packo's as it was the only yellow shirt I could find) is that like 30 little kids, plus some adults commented on it. Including various discussions of wisconsin and the packers. Sadly, jen's mouse ears, to go along with the cheese, didn't get as much attention.

I also wore the green plaid converse. I got comments on those too, since of course all stars are now fashionable amongst the avril lavigne crowd. Some 14 year old asked me where I got them, i said some discount store like 10 years ago. I'm not sure if that makes me cool, or just admits that I'm old. Such a dilemma really. Ok time for work. I'm hoping for little traffic due to good friday. I hope that hope is accurate.

so the dumb thing of the week? volunteering to drive someone to work (who lives a few minutes from work, so its on my way) but then saying I'd pick them up at 7:20. Which means I really, need to leave on time. Yech. Its like getting up early and all that other horribly annoying stuff.

Sorry about the slacking, I'll try and be a bit more up to date. There's only 3 more weeks of band, and then I have mondays free. Of course there's like 7 weeks of jewish class on thursday and who knows how many weeks of hebrew. But that's at least something on the horizon for being less busy. Ok. need to go to not be late.

I generally (never?) don't post results of quiz things, but besides messing it up so I can't post the official link, I felt obligated to take this one that TOWM had taken/linked.

Bacardi 151
Congratulations! You're 146 proof, with specific scores in beer (120) , wine (133), and liquor (121).
All right. No more messing around. Your knowledge of alcohol is so high that you have drinking and getting plastered down to a science. Sure, you could get wasted drinking beer, but who needs all those trips to the bathroom? You head straight for the bar and pick up that which is most efficient.

The Alcohol Knowledge Test
http://www.okcupid.com/tests/take?testid=16336235046633759176

My test tracked 4 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender:

You scored higher than 80% on proof

You scored higher than 97% on beer index

You scored higher than 99% on wine index

You scored higher than 98% on liquor index

Thanks for all the birthday support. I've been oddly busy, with odd stuff like snow. We're in the running for the snowiest winter ever here on the North Coast.

In other news, I got a survey call about the mac mini. They wanted to know all sorts off stuff, the most amusing I thought was what I wanted it to have. I said more ram. They asked if I'd prefer that, or a keyboard or a mouse. I don't see how I'd prefer not to get $70 worth of ram vs a $30 mouse or a $30 keyboard. hrm...

I also got a survey on the '02 MINI (i guess its a mini survey week) from JD Powers. I had filled one out a while ago. This one is on servicing stuff. I'm not sure if I'm going to fill it out. I'll have to dig up the post discussing the last one, but I suppose I should. Discuss all the fun problems it had.

Ok. I need to get going. Support my morning motivation by going off to work. I really need to find a job working 2nd shift.

Have your birthday on a wednesday isn't so good. Its pretty much like every other day of the week. Oh well. I suppose the weekend will be better. I still need to decide if I want to bring donuts or something to work. of course I didn't get up exactly early, so I don't have time to do that, but maybe I'll still stop by just because. I can't really get in trouble for being late on my birthday can I?

So it was decided that we should clean the lab today at work. This is fine. But of course no one wants to do this in business casual. So it was suggested either we wear jeans, or those zip up suits. I think that meant the white tyvek ones. Whatever, the invitation in outlook said wear jeans or prison suits.

As I don't have a prison suit I'm wearing jeans. Of course this is a pain, because its a friday, so I need to have some vaguely ok looking clothes to go to synagogue with. I suppose its not that difficult. As long as no one notices I've packed the same pants and sweater I wore yesterday into my gym bag. Hopefully they won't.

I should be updating these things. But its just been an unexpected week. Got home yesterday after the wedding planning meeting thing to find out that the 2" of snow had managed to pile up on one side of the driveway to be more like 1 1/2' of snow. Thus making it difficult to drive the car more then halfway up the driveway. I'm hoping that it will blow the other way today, so I don't need to deal with it when I get home.

In other news, not much is happening. I am however waiting for spring to occur, so if that could hurry up and do that, it'd be helpful. Just a small request really.

Ok. must get going now into the white yonder. damn white yonder.