I've got dial tone again! Yee Haw! So I've got DSL! Yipee!

And I've stopped puking up my guts! Hooray!

But now I've got to leave for work....

Crap.

Oh, well. Two out three ....

( But first some generalized whining about my life... )

So I'm in a rather grumpy, un-Christmas-like mood. Fortunately, Ray Davies of The Kinks was pissed off about Christmas way before I was. Therefore, I give to you the first song you won't hear at the mall this holiday season: Father Christmas by The Kinks*



*Disclamer: You actually might hear this song in certain parts of the mall this year. Specifically, the movie theater part. A pretty good cover of it by OK Go (of dancing on treadmills fame) is in the new movie Unaccompanied Minors. A good try, but the requisite "punkness" just isn't quite there for me. Maybe after a couple more hours on the treadmills, except in hot, wool Santa suits this time ....

Mmmmm ... I haven't had a Sunday off for a looong time. Of course, I had to beg ask for this one off, but that's OK.

So I slept in after my 11-hour shift (O_o urk!) yesterday, took a walk down by the river, spooked some deer, saw a bunch of Monarchs migrating south (You go, b-flys! Charge! Godspeed! See your grandchildren next year!), came home and took a nice, long, hot shower. Jake Shimabukuro is going to be on the Bob Edwards Weekend show later, so I can listen to him while I write to my landlady and tell her that not only am I not a month behind in my rent, I would be a month ahead except that she didn't bother to cash one of the payments I sent her, a fact I can document with the letter I got from my bank just yesterday. Oh, this is going to be a fun letter to write!

And on top of all of that, I get to spend a very enjoyable evening with Nancy tonight.

Sleeping in, a nice walk, animals cute and inspiring, being in the right and responsible, spending time with a good friend ... it's a good day!

Friendship marks a life even more deeply than love.

Elie Wiesel

Somehow, when I wasn't looking, I managed to grow a life. You know, with friends who you can talk to on the phone for an hour or two or go out with once in a while. I kinda feel like a kitten that just discovered it has a tail. It looks so enticing that I just want to spin in circles until I grab it as hard as I can, but I'm afraid that either I'll never catch it or if I do get my teeth into it, it'll hurt in the end! (sorry, bad joke, but I couldn't resist!)

I finally have two, =count 'em, two!=, unstructured days off coming up. In a row! In the recent past, this would have been nice, but I would have ended up mostly wasting them sleeping too much and surfing the 'net too much. This time I'm going out for dinner with Nancy on one of those days and to a movie with dj_jakki_glass and her fiancé David on the other. The only problem is that everybody is flexible with time and so they're leaving it up to me to make a decision as to which day for which people. Me? Make a decision?!?!?!?!? =Maniacal laughter ensues, followed by a short coughing fit=

It's a nice problem to have for a change. :-D

I really do have more to write about, but have to get ready for work, so that'll have to wait for tonight or tomorrow.

Well, I've been sick with a moderately bad virus for the last three days, but I think I'm going to live. Looking back, I have just one thing to say ... I'm really glad that polar bears can't get human viruses.

Borealis is well on his way to being real.

I called in sick to work this morning, which is something I never do. In fact, I spend so much time at work, I've had customers ask me if I work seven days a week. (Really!) Anyway, I wasn't there today, and I'm glad I took the day off. I really needed it.

Just a little while ago, I got a phone call from dj_jakki_glass and her house mate, Jodi, both of whom I work with. They were worried about me! Jakki said she looked around and said "Where's my Eudyptes?" (OK. So she didn't say "Eudyptes". So sue me!) Considering I don't really work with her since her (much deserved) promotion, and I only just met Jodi, it gave me a warm feeling to know people care.

It's nice to know that even one's temporary absence leaves a hole.

Well, today was pretty much a waste. I hate having a "split weekend" (one day off, work a day, another day off). I couldn't seem to wake up, barely got out at all, and didn't really do anything worthwhile.

7,041 / 3,313 / 33 min

I think I'm going back to sleep now. =sigh=

Damn! It's been so long since I felt this way I almost didn't recognize it.

Today started OK ... I did some laundry, a little housekeeping (not nearly enough!) and went out for a short walk. I got a pretty severe fatigue attack in the afternoon and had to take a nap for about an hour and a half. When I woke up, I remembered that I needed to walk to the grocery store to get a couple of things that couldn't wait until tomorrow, so I put my shoes on and dragged myself outside. The walk to the store woke me up some, so when I got back, I put the groceries away and went back out for another walk.

I don't have time to go into the particulars, but I found another "nature path" very near where I live (behind/beside the Elementary school, for those of you who know the area here.) It's not anything spectacular, but I really needed the green therapy. By the time I got to the other end — and back to civilization — I was even less tired! I had seen another path branch off the one I was on and I thought I knew the street it would connect to, so I walked over to that street and I was right! So back into the woods. This was a much more "unofficial" path with lots of roots, rocks and rivulets (Alliteration rocks! Yeah!) By this time I walking very fast — not quite running — scaring the squirrels and two deer (!).

I finally came out of the woods close to where I live about an hour after I started and began to head back home ... and stopped. I just couldn't do it. So I turned around and went back out walking the residential streets near where I live for another hour! (It was too dark to go back into the woods at that point.)

When I finally did get back, I found that a new friend — dj_jakki_glass — had posted in her journal after a very long absence! And I managed to be the first one to comment! Score! (Sorry ... testosterone poisoning kicked in for a second!)

So this is what happy feels like.

From NPR: Mixed Signals blog:

Don't Miss: Not On My Time

In Indiana, time is relative. Now bear with me, because no one really understands this. Some Indiana counties observe Eastern Time, some are on Central, some recognize daylight-saving time and most don't. This weekend, for the first time, the whole state is supposed to change their clocks forward, and a couple of counties are being moved from Eastern to Central Time. This story explains it.

Got it? Good. Now forget it. Because one Indiana county, Pulaski, is refusing a state directive to move to Central Time. NPR's Melissa Block talks to the head of the Pulaski Chamber of Commerce, Rene Burton, who admits that they will soon become renegades. Burton says that if they don't stay on Eastern Time, kids who go to school in an adjoining county could get home before their parents. Sports schedules will be screwed up. A numerical apocalypse will ensue! So the folks of Pulaski are staying put in their corner of the time-space continuum. And if the state wants to stop them, well, they'll have to pry the watches from their cold dead fingers.

-- Robert Smith

(http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5251026)

I had a birdie land on my back fence! Well, Turkey Vultures are birdies too!

Sorry, but camera phone's the best I had available. I should be getting my camera back from sunnydale47 now that she found hers (can I say it?) on Wednesday. Too bad the pretty (?) birdie won't wait that long.

Update: The TV's back! And he/she brought a couple of American Crows along with him/her. I guess I'd better see if something/someone died back there.

Mmmmm, meat!

I am not a morning person by any stretch of the imagination, but after yesterday I felt so good — actually happy for a change (kinda scary to write that word; been a very long time) — that I managed to get up early enough to do something significant before noon! I had planned to go to church, but the service didn't sound terribly engaging and I really didn't want screw up a good mood. So instead, I borrowed my house-mate's car and went to the MPEA for a walk.

First of all, the trail is a lot shorter than I remember. Not really, but it seemed that way. Normally, I'm with someone else, often sunnydale47 and we're birding, which slows one down quite a bit. So, I'm used to a full circuit on the main trail taking a couple of hours, at least. Well, there's no birds there right now (OK, there's a few ... I heard one White Breasted Nuthatch, a couple of Downy Woodpeckers, and a few American Crows flying over. But that's it.) and I don't have any binoculars, so I couldn't see them if there were. Consequently, it took me a lot less time than I expected: 38 minutes, to be exact. I know this, because I finally got a new battery for my pedometer! More on that in a minute.

Second, they're doing some trail rehab and forestry work there. Near the first part of the trail, there's a lot of wood down. They've thinned out quite a bit of (presumably) dead trees and it looks as if they're still in the process of getting it cut up and hauled out. The woods aren't dramatically different or anything, but it should be a bit brighter on the forest floor this spring and summer, so maybe that'll encourage some more understory growth (besides the evil Multiflora Rose, I mean).

There's some nice, shiny new trail markers up. Marker 13 is back — the ground it had been on eroded away very rapidly after nearby development started and the original marker washed away down the river in a storm a year or so ago. There's been even more significant erosion near marker 13 though. A small, usually stagnant ox-bow pond has been partially reconnected to the main river, and a section of the trail between markers 12 and 13 will probably need to be moved soon, as significant bank erosion that had already been occurring looks to have gotten worse.

After I got back to the car, I thought about going to one of the nearby lakes and walking some more, but instead I went to the Columbia Mall, just to be around people for a little bit. The Discovery Store is gone :-(. But there will be an Apple store (as in computers and iPods) opening soon (Oh, joy. =rolling eyes=).

On the way back to the car, I heard a clatter at my feet as if I had dropped something. I had. The belt clip on my pedometer snapped off. So much for the new battery! =sigh= The pedometer wasn't damaged and I have the clip part that broke off, so I'll probably try duct taping it back on, or something. Glue never holds in a situation like this; too much mechanical stress. Maybe I can get it to hold together until I can afford the replacement pedometer that I really want!

Time for a rest and a nap, then maybe another walk.

I went geocaching with woofiegrrl today and all I can say is that I never thought looking for Tupperware® could be so much fun! Although, it's possible the company I was with had something to do with that! ;-)

woofiegrrl had been geocaching before, so she did the research and found several pretty close to where I live.

We stopped at the nearby rest stop on I-95 to start and found the cache hidden there pretty easily. After that, things got more interesting....

The rest of the caches we went looking for -- and found! -- were in Savage Park off the Wincopin Neck trails. The thing about geocaching is that it can be reasonably easy to get to the general location, but then finding a small plastic box that's somewhere near you, but may be under branches, in a hole in a tree or anyplace else that isn't obviouscan be more difficult than it sounds. We found one hidden next to a tree concealed by branches, a second in a fallen tree, a third under a rock pointed to by another rock (that one should have been easier to find, except because we weren't getting very good GPS signals, North kept jumping around!), and a final one under a cairn of stones.

By the time we had gotten back to the car, we'd both gotten in a nice walk and had a lot of fun (at least I did!) I was really surprised how fast time went. We took time for lunch before woofiegrrl had to head home.

The only disappointing part was seeing the crap that some people leave in the caches. If you take something out of the cache, you're supposed to leave something of equal value. These are all trinkets — nothing of any real monetary value. But, come on ... golf balls? A very faded Santa Pez dispenser? A bumper sticker for a "family-friendly" radio station? woofiegrrl did find a nice Tai-Shan keychain and a little wooden "geocoin" with no obvious means of tracking it (i.e. no number, website, etc.). It did have the initials of W.F. (I think) on it on one side and an image of Maryland with the geocaching symbol stamped over it (the symbol is used for the letter "G" in the mdgps.org site). She left some stuffed NeoPets in trade. Unfortunately, I didn't see anything that really interested me, so the only souvenir I have is the mud on my boots.

But that's OK, 'cause I had enough fun to make up for the lack of any tchotchkes!

I went for a walk today ... and thanks to Google and MapMyRun.com you can go along with me! Just go to:
http://www.mapmyrun.com/view_run.php?r=5561cc398bbb52a7e04d92abeff3080d

Let me know if the link doesn't work. I haven't tried saving "runs" with this site before, so I don't know how well it works.

According to Google, the path I took is 4.32 miles. I walked a little longer than that because I walked around downtown Laurel some too. Part of the path I took is on a pathway that I had seen from the bridge over the river, but I didn't know how to get to. Turns out, you get to it down pretty much any of the side streets off Main Street. They all seem to have some type of access to the pathway. It's a nice path. Nothing to get too excited about, but nice. Kinda short, though.

I did find one interesting thing on my walk:

The studios of Soundprint! Soundprint is a show that I sometimes listen to on public radio if I happen to be awake; it's on where I live at 7:30am Saturday mornings and 12:30am Monday mornings on WAMU. I knew the studios were in town, I just didn't know where. Now I do!

I found out one other thing today. I really need some new shoes. My feet hurt.

Apparently, posting pictures like the one in my last post will do the job for some. Someone cruising along felt that it was necessary to inform me in a (now deleted) comment that this was "old news". I hope he notifies Fox News that this is "old news". That way they won't have to air the interview they just did with Dick Cheney, or if it's too late for that, they at least won't have to re-air it tonight.

Oh, and the reason I deleted the three word comment? He got my name wrong. Seems he thought it started with the letter "f" and ended "tard". I'll leave the rest to your imagination. It's sad to see today's kids graduating with such poor reading and spelling ability. Not to mention humor impairment.

Seriously, I just switched my journal from allowing anybody to comment to "registered users only". I'd like to switch it back, because I've gotten a few nice comments from random strangers and I'd hate to let a "drive-by hater" close that down.

So, I'd appreciate knowing what others think. If you're reading this, do you allow anonymous comments? If so, have you ever regretted it? If don't allow them, why not?

Well, that's what we were calling it tonight at work. With the emphasis on the flakes, cause they were all out grocery shopping tonight! The store I work at now has (really ... I'm not exaggerating) no milk, no egg, no bananas, virtually no bread, no ground beef, no Prell shampoo (probably not because of the impending snow, but at least one customer was complaining about the lack of his favorite shampoo in the same breath as complaining about the lack of bananas ... I guess he only washes his hair when it snows) and I don't know what else. We had to turn half the lights in the store out in order to get a couple of shoppers to leave. And this was after three announcements that the store was closing.

And talk about weird! People kept bringing a bunch of stuff to the counter that they then decided they didn't want, usually after I'd already rung it up. One woman brought up ice cream (a lot of the stuff they didn't want was frozen, unfortunately) let me ring it up, said she didn't want it, let me start voiding it, decided that she did want it after all, waited while I finished the void, and then stopped me before I re-rang it because she'd changed her mind again! Arrrrrgggghhhhh!!!!!

However, I guess I must be pretty good at being a cashier. (Wonderful. I find my niche in life and it's as a grocery store cashier. Whoopee.) I've been offered tips at least five times in 2 1/2 weeks — I haven't been able to find any other cashier that's been offered a tip even once! We can't take them, and since there are cameras watching, we really can't take them. Of course, all the people who have offered me tips have been female. Maybe they're so attracted by my "extreme good looks" that they can't help themselves.

Bwahahahahahahahahahahah!!!!!! Sorry about that! I must've lost my mind for a minute.

Tonight was really weird though. (Of course.) An older woman (older than me, at least) apologized, saying she didn't usually ask people things like this, but "was I a minister?" Because I had such a "serene" look on my face, she thought I was a minister or a priest (!) working a second job. I was good — I didn't tell her I was a High-priest of Lucifer or anything like that. I did tell her that I come from a long line of ministers (which is true). What that has to do with scanning pickles, I don't know.

I think she was confusing "exhaustion" with "serenity".

Hooray! The Heat Man just left and I've got heat again! All praise be to the Heat Man!

Response from Tom Piwowar (tjp@tjpa.com) to COMPUTERGUYS-L:

You have not seen much of me on the List in recent weeks because I have been taking care of affairs for my sick Mother. This has severely limited my regular activities. Now with one hand tied behind my back I seem to have gotten ambushed.

Since Caryn Mathes, General Manager of WAMU, has chosen to make this announcement I think I owe you some explanation. However I will limit what I write in the hope that the impasse can still be resolved.

The announcement you read is a unilateral action by WAMU. Something like the unions call a "lockout." I would have continued to do the show under the previously existing conditions for a long, long time.

The problems at issue are not about money. WAMU wants me to sign an agreement. My objections to signing are essentially ethical. The agreement is full of poison pills that I think would threaten the integrity of the program. I think it is totally inappropriate. I won't sign, so they won't let me do the show.

Thank you for your concern and all the nice things you wrote. I would appreciate if you would go back to your previous posts and forward a copy directly to Caryn Mathes at cmathes@wamu.org so that she can see the reaction of the community. Thanks again for your support. Maybe all is not lost. Keep writing!

Tom

I thought that WAMU had taken care of its management issues. Obviously not.

The Computer Guys is a radio call in show WAMU. Or at least it used to be. I got this on The Computer Guys email list tonight:

Regrettably, I must report that contract negotiations between WAMU American University and Tom Piwowar -- one half of the duo "The Computer Guys", a long-running feature of The Kojo Nnamdi Show -- have broken down.

Effective January 31, 2006, Mr. Piwowar will no longer be a part of "The Computer Guys" segment.

We are grateful for Tom's 15-year commitment to "The Computer Guys" segment as "The Mac Guy," and we thank him.

"Computer Guy" John Gilroy will continue to appear on the first Tuesday of every month and WAMU is assessing various options for maintaining "The Computer Guys" segment as a vital part of The Kojo Nnamdi Show's Tech Tuesday lineup.

Caryn G. Mathes
General Manager, WAMU

Tech Tuesday, Tuesdays at Noon on The Kojo Nnamdi Show

Unfortunately, John Gilroy is a horse's-ass. All he does is giggle uncontrollably at his own lame jokes and puns and give advice that is either overly simplistic — leaving out important details — or way over the heads of the caller. Tom Piwowar — ostensibly the Mac guy — gave much better advice about Windows machines than John Gilroy ever did.

=sigh=

This is mostly a placeholder and reminder for me to post about the people that came through my line yesterday. I was going to write about them this morning, but I woke up with a pretty bad toothache and it's too hard to think. I took some Tylenol (generic) but I'm just about out of it; one more thing to worry about. =sigh=