Thunder of Wade

My room-mate and I have been talking for a while now about splitting the cost of an HD TV. After extensive – and I mean extensive – research for both of us, we finally decided on a 42 inch, 1080, Panasonic Viera Plasma tv. The price shopping was yet another research challenge, but it finally looked like Sears had the best deal.

So, we headed to Sears in my room-mate’s car, found the right department, got ignored by some sales people, found the TV anyway, and got someone’s attention to ring up the sale. After a check on my own finances earlier in the day, it was decided that I would pay for it and he would pay me his half later. Debit card in hand, I prepared to make the purchase.

And things got complicated. Low and behold – my room-mate has a Sears card! And with that we can get 10% off or 6 months same as cash!

okaaay.

Except it wasn’t that easy. My room-mate hadn’t used his sears card in a while and it was no longer valid. But no problem – he can get a new one! So, paperwork ensues and is signed. Meanwhile, I’m starting to wander around a bit, slightly bored now.

I overhear the salesman say something about 10 (mostly unintelligible) or 6 months same as (also mostly unintelligible). My room-mate choose the 6 months option.

Receipt in hand, we head back out to the car and to the loading dock. I take the receipt in, scan it at the kiosk, and by the time my room-mate has the car in position, they are bringing out the tv in a box.

But it won’t fit. The tv is not supposed to be laid down, so the trunk is out. And the backseat – while wide enough – isn’t tall enough. Thinking quickly, I suggest we get the van from my room-mate’s work. Which is right nearby. TV comes out of the car and back into the loading area and we head over to his work. Except, when we get there, the van is gone and in use.

Back to Sears, still in the car – thinking we might have to unbox it in the parking lot to get it back to the apartment. With some careful seat arrangement and the proper angle, we get the tv in the car – still in the box. It’s no longer a comfortable ride – but it gets the job done.

Back to the apartment and unload. We have issues with getting it out of the box and getting it onto the (finally) correctly assembled stand. The current living room TV goes to the video game room. This is when I incur minor injury #1 to my hand on the tv/door frame intersection.

(swearing interlude)

Game room TV in place, new HD is put in place. I read the instructions while my room-mate used the remote and you can imagine how well that went. We finally got a picture going and I was pretty much sick of all things HD as this point. Especially since I incurred minor injury #2 on the packaging for the HDMI cable – which we ended up not using yet since neither of us could bear the thought of facing all the cables behind the TV.

I decided instead to install the shower caddy that had also been purchased that evening. The removabl of the old, rusted caddy released a small flood of gray/black water. I’m thinking it was just from the end cap deteriorating, but it might have been mold or something. The new caddy is complicated enough that I considering reading the installation directions, but managed anyway.

There had also been a stop at Old Navy since I wanted to get some pants (soloman grundy want pants too!) and my room-mate had a coupon. My pants and shirt fit fine and I’m wearing them now. My room-mate got the wrong size on the pants he bought and managed to cut the shirt he got when trying to remove the tags.

A mixture of success and failure yesterday. And a very long day. Very long.

I hit the pool again today and did 32 laps. One of my co-workers was in the pool as well and though we weren’t “racing” – I still managed to lap him at least once and maybe twice. He held his own when doing the freestyle, but when he switched to breast stroke and side stroke, well, he didn’t stand a chance. Not that we were racing, as I said, but if we were…

Anyway, I stopped off at the student center for lunch as was relived that there was no line at the sandwich place. I went right to the front of the line – if there had been a line, which there wasn’t – and ordered my 1/4 combo with lettuce only. Transaction complete, I went to wait for and pick up my sandwich. From where I was standing I could see the “cook” – though I use the term loosely.

He was texting. Texting! He should have been paying more attention to the hamburger bun toaster, because half the bun was burned. Burned, I tell you! Much like my emotional state when I discovered this atrocity.

I ate the burger anyway when I got back to my desk, but had to discard half the bun resulting in some kind of weird-ass taco shaped burger. It was odd, but functional.

Finally, I noted – as I frequently do – the strange places I see people smoking on campus. Maybe not strange, but somewhat ironic. On the way back from the pool I noted people smoking outside the natatorium and the physical education building. Where, presumably, the people that frequent these places would be trying to get more healthy. I also saw someone smoking outside the college of nursing – where people could see inside someone’s lungs to witness the effects. Weird and dumb.

that’s it for now… later…

Update – no side effects to report from the Tension Tamer (plus catnip!) tea. A little disappointing – maybe it needed to be radioactive before it would “do” anything to me.

Also, today marks the successful use of the flexible bowls I got from ThinkGeek. I used the big one for my oatmeal this morning and then later (after washing it out) for my tea.

That is all… you may resume your day.

I’ve got a stuffed Flash figure in the back of my car – belted in and just along for the ride. My car is red, the Flash is red – the Flash is fast, my car is… an appropriate speed based on local traffic laws and weather conditions. Anyway, he’s usually in charge of the backseat unless a human being gets in there. A couple of weeks ago, I was driving a couple of co-workers to Chipotle and one of them flipped the Flash over and hung him from the seat pull-down strap by his ankle.

I left the Flash that way because I was sure I’d seen that somewhere before – I recently figured it out. It’s the same pose as the Hanged Man (Traitor) in the tarot cards. Freaky.

I swam today – and mixed it up a bit by making the math more complicated than it needed to be.
A set of 10, 2 sets of 2, a set of 10, a set of 6, 2 sets of 3 and a set of 4. So, 40 laps in all. Hey, what else am I going to do? I also did some planning on next year’s costume. I can see it in my head, but it’s going to require learning some new skills.

Finally, I was enjoying some mixed fruit last night and started to choke on a piece of pineapple. Part of the chunk flew out of my mouth onto the floor and the rest slammed into my soft pallet and tried to go up by nose from the inside. It’s a little funny now, but it was pretty intense when it happened.

Finally – part 2. One of my co-workers just gave me some tea to try – called Tension Tamer. Not that I’m really all that tense right now – but one of the ingredients is catnip. So, of course, I have to give it a whirl. I’ll report on the effects later.

that’s it for now…

My room-mate called East of Chicago for pizza this evening & got the total and the estimated time it would be ready. I waited until the appropriate time, then got in my car to go pick it up. There were no other cars in the lot and I could see in the window of the store. The clerk saw me as well and was setting two pizza boxes on the counter. I got a couple sodas from the cooler and approached the counter – and then was surprise when he gave the last name and when I nodded – gave the total, including the sodas that I had not yet even set down. I paid the obviously psychic pizza maker and went on my way.

Now, my arrival was exactly on the target time-wise; but they must have been really slow to have been waiting for me like that.

In other news… my webcam is apparently not Vista compatible. I even tried to find the drivers online – Vista mocked my attempts with some harsh error messages. Wankers. So, I guess I need to go out and get a new, Vista compatible, webcam tomorrow.

The reason I need a webcam? I wanted to take my own picture for Facebook. Yes, you read that right, I’m finally going to start maintaining my facebook page. Now I’ll have the guilt of not maintaining two web sites. Yea. Still, a lot of my friends are on there and it might be a good way to get back in touch. I’m still not getting a cell phone and there’s no way in hell that I’m going to start twittering.

In still more news… I gave directions to someone today. Now, those that know me know that this is not a good thing. I’m terrible with directions – I mean, really really bad. I’m okay if I’ve got a map, but otherwise, I can’t really be trusted to find my way to the bathroom in the middle of the night. In this case, I was walking to my car in the target parking lot and got stopped by a guy in a truck. The truck was about 600 years old – and I think the guy was older by a factor of two. Both were on their last legs, but the guy wanted to know where the flea market was.

I didn’t have a clue and told him so -but guessed if there was one in the area, it would be at the Tadmor Shrine. So, I gave him simple directions there. No idea if it was really there, but frankly that kind of lack of planning deserves a bit of being lost.

I was at target to buy a new toilet seat – which I then installed this afternoon. Never done that before, but it was really easy. I kept thinking I must have been missing a step – but since it works, I must have been on the right track.

Well, guess it’s time to head on over to facebook and see what I can do there.

later…

I got in 30 laps today – I think. I had a lot of difficulty keeping count for some reason.
So, call it 30 +/- 1.5

It’s really warm in the building again today – I’m in short-sleeves and getting sleepy from the heat. The temp gauge in my co-workers cubicle reads in at 84.2 degrees. Annoying.

I picked up a copy of the student paper today – it has several stories on the home page about the election as I expected, but at the bottom of the front page it has an advertisement. The ad has an attractive young woman surrounded by rose petals and it’s for a local plastic surgery center. It lists their website, their services, and a tag-line of “It’s time to love yourself a little more,”

How screwed up is that? As if college girls don’t have enough to deal with – now they have an ad on the front page of the school newspaper implying that they could love themselves more (and presumably other people would love them more too) – if only they got a little plastic surgery.

(sigh)

Well, at least the day is almost over. It’s been a really long week and I’m tired. It’s also entirely possible that the highlight of my weekend might be buying a new shower curtain – and that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

later…

Pretty much my entire day – with the blissful exception of Chipotle – has been a steady-stream of people trying to make things more complicated than they need to be.

Is the world not as terrible as they think it needs to be?

Are their jobs not challenging enough?

I mean, seriously, people – chill out and work towards solutions. I’m still fighting the good fight and trying to be helpful and pleasant, but I’m running out of patience.

It doesn’t help that the heat is on full blast over here. I think it’s around 84 degrees in the building now. Some weird thing where they set the building temp based on time of year instead of actual outside temp.

A building full of over-heated and cranky geeks. It’s a good thing we’ve sworn to use our powers for good.

Enough complaining for now.

later…

I feel a little bad for people that had to stand in really long lines to vote – my experience was really easy today.

I left work at 3:30 and I was at the polling place in about 15 minutes. There were no problems with parking and there were signs directing people to the entrance.

I was in line for maybe a couple of minutes before I was able to get checked in – and the check-in took maybe two minutes.

I had my checklist so the voting process was easy. I tore off the stubs for the ballot and only waited a minute before I was able to feed them into the machine. I got my sticker and headed out – I was home by 4:00

There was a bit of drama in line behind me – one guy couldn’t vote because the records said that an absentee ballot had been sent to his address. He claimed he had never requested one – but they had no way of knowing if he had sent it in or not. So, he had to cast a provisional ballot.

Otherwise, pretty uneventful.

later…

It’s November. The leaves are still falling and Halloween is done for another year. I had a really great time with my costume on campus and I think the people I visited had fun too. I got a few screams and lots of laughter – and a surprising dose of awe that I’d made the mask myself. That was pretty cool. I sometimes wonder if I should keep doing this – but I got such great feedback this year that I’m encouraged to keep going.

Election day is tomorrow and I’m planning on leaving work a little early to get to the voting place. I’ve got my notes and my map and a good book picked out – should be fine. I’m not expecting any problems, but woe be it to anyone who challenges my right to vote.

I heard a news story about a woman who refused to give out candy to children – or presumably their parents – who didn’t support McCain. What kind of a wanker would bring their political views into Halloween treats with kids? How fair is that? I would have lied to her about my political affiliation to get extra candy – then egged and TPd her house just for spite.

I went to give blood today and the drive was doing some kind of time survey on a little card that you carried from station to station where they noted the time. So, I thought I’d play along to see how it was going. Here’s what I had – and I actually had to correct one guy (more on him later) since he filled in the wrong boxes at his station.

Arrive at blood drive location: 4:03 PM (my appointment was for 4:30 – not that it matters)
Enter the history area: 4:35 PM (already we’ve got a problem)
Leave the history area: 4:56 PM (I had a trainee)
On the table: 5:04 PM
Start the prep work: 5:16 PM (the other table had a problem and no one came to help the staff person)
Needle in: 5:26 PM
Off the table: 5:36 PM

At first glance, it would seems like today was not a good day for them to be checking the time it takes to process a donation. With a little thought, however, maybe it was a good day. These times are an indication that they were understaffed – though I actually thought they had enough people, they just weren’t being utilized well. Maybe next time they’ll have more than enough people to make up for the times and things will go quicker.

So, let’s talk about the trainee. It’s fortunate that I’m an old hat with blood donations – he would have scared me off otherwise. He had to repeat the steps a few times, had trouble with the finger stick, got some of the info wrong, had trouble with the blood pressure/pulse and just generally made me nervous with his manner. I know a lot of that comes from practice, but a little more ‘non-donor’ practice would have suited me fine. I got through it, but it could have gone smoother. How to I keep ending up with the trainees? Seems like the law of averages would help me out sooner or later. Or maybe it’s for the best since I’m not going to get scared off and they can practice on me for the new donors.

In other news… I swam a mile today and that – along with my blood donation – should help me sleep well tonight. My arm was still bleeding with I took off the bandage – which is a little worrisome. So, I put it back on and I’ll keep it covered for the rest of the night.

I guess that’s it for now… already getting sleepy.

(yawn) later….

On Friday, I did my annual walk-around on campus and had a blast. This year:

Cthulhu

I had a blast with this. Scared some people, got some laughs, visited some friends. And won first prize at a costume contest!

I’m still recovering… and already starting to think about next year.

later…