Daily Journal: Day 25 of 365

New Year’s Eve, and I’m going to what I believe is my first ever New Year’s Eve party. I was thinking back about it, and I don’t think I’ve ever actually been to one before. Mostly I’ve just sat around the house and watched some of the crap on TV while getting sloshed. So, an enjoyable little social first in my life. The girlfriend is still getting ready, and we’re supposed to be there in about half an hour, so we may wind up being fashionably late. Oh well…

See more progress on: write in my journal daily for a year

Daily Journal: Day 24 of 365

Today was relatively uneventful. It started out cold, but the sun was bright and it warmed up fairly well by the end of the day. Because one of the morning drivers had the day off, I got called out of the file room twice to give people rides home. I deposited some checks in the bank at lunch. And I had a few rides to give in the evening. I was going to write something that I had learned or something interesting in here today, but I really haven’t learned much of anything, and not much interesting happened. Such is life…

See more progress on: write in my journal daily for a year

Daily Journal: Day 23 of 365

It was another snowy day today. Fortunately, I didn’t have any runs to do except for a bank run. Usually, I find myself hoping that I’ll have somewhere to go just to be doing something, but today I was quite happy to just sit around the office and cool my jets.

I brought a piece of brisket to work with me to give to Kaye, the lady who works in the rental office. She liked it and wants me to go ahead and get another one and smoke it for her. We’re actually going to split one, since she thinks the whole thing will be too much for her and her husband. So we’re going to have a whole lot of brisket here, and I might just have to try to get rid of some of the new one at work. Maybe that’ll have to be my new calling, although I doubt that I’d make it very far around here…

On the other plus side today, I got my car re-registered before it was past due. I’ve been procrastinating on that one for about two and a half months, since I got the letter saying it was due. I should really try to take care of things more quickly from now on. I should make that another one of my 2010 resolutions, but I probably won’t. Maybe I’ll do it later…

See more progress on: write in my journal daily for a year

Untitled

I got a new laptop way back in April. It originally had Windows Vista on it, but I decided that Vista sucked far worse than almost any operating system I’d used previously, and most of my hardware would not work with it. So I spent a while getting the beast downgraded to Windows XP, with no help whatsoever from Dell. While I was downgrading it, I divided the 300 GB hard drive into three partitions. I put 150 GB into a non-system data partition, 50 GB into the Windows XP partition, and I left 100 GB free with the idea that I would install Ubuntu Linux on it and create a dual-boot system. I downloaded what was then the latest and greatest version of Ubuntu, but I never burned the CD and did the installation. I really should get off my ass and just get it done. A project for the weekend, methinks…

See more progress on: Install Linux on the extra partition on my laptop

Too many clothes, too little room...

This is one of the goals I’ve serendipitously swiped from someone else’s list. The girlfriend and I were trying to pick up the holiday leftovers from the front of our respective closets, and I was also trying to put away my clothes folded clothes, which were sitting on top of the little wire drawer dresser thing I have in the closet. And both the girlfriend and I noticed that I have a whole lot more clothes now than I did when I moved down here. And I don’t have enough room for them all. The four-drawer wire basket thing I have doesn’t hold anywhere near all the clothes, and the girlfriend would actually like to have it back to use for her craft stuff. So, a set of shelves on the side seems like a good idea, and it shouldn’t be too terribly difficult to do. A good starter wood project, I think. And that’s my goal for the first week after the new year begins…

See more progress on: make a shelf for the closet

Daily Journal: Day 22 of 365

The concert last night was quite fun. We saw the Old 97s at the Sons of Hermann Hall in Dallas. The show began with Murry, the bass player, doing a solo set. He began sort of slow, and it seemed like he kind of lost a fair chunk of the crowd with a couple of ballads. He played a couple of songs people recognized, though, and managed to bring most of them back.

When Rhett came on stage and started playing his solo set, the crowd became really energized. He was all over the place, and as he mentioned himself, he didn’t have a single slow or quiet song in his set. It was all energy for the next half hour.

The whole band played for a couple of hours. They’re playing three more shows, and they said that they’re trying to not play any songs more than once except for “Time Bomb,” which is their set closer. So that means that this particular show wasn’t a “greatest hits” kind of thing, and I didn’t really know many of the songs. I’m sure I’ve heard a few of them before, but the only two I really knew were “Barrier Reef” and “Time Bomb.” Nevertheless, it was a really fun, really energetic show, and the girlfriend and I both had a lot of fun. It would have been nicer if the crowd wasn’t quite so close, but such is life.

The girlfriend was really happy with her birthday present, and that’s the thing that matters most…

See more progress on: write in my journal daily for a year

Weeks #4-6

Week #4: I didn’t really do a whole lot, but I did go to Hobby Lobby and picked up some stuff for my train layout.

Week #5: The girlfriend and I went to a hockey game, which the Stars managed to win. After the game, we went to a hobby store and to Ikea. We spent a bit more money at both than expected, but it was still worth it, I think.

Week #6: The weekend after Christmas. We did all the regular Christmas stuff on Thursday and Friday, which I kind of count as the weekend because it was time off work. In any case, we also went out and did a bunch of after-Christmas shopping on Saturday, although neither of us found as many good deals as we would have liked. And tonight, Sunday, we’re going to a concert down in Dallas for her birthday.

6 weeks in a row, and going strong…

See more progress on: Get out of the house and do something every weekend

Daily Journal: Day 21 of 365

It’s a cold, clear Sunday. For the most part, it’s been a lazy sort of day, but that’s not at all unusual for a weekend. The girlfriend’s friend Jason was here last night, but he left for home in Austin an hour or so ago. The girlfriend and I are going to the Old 97s concert in Dallas this evening. It’s one of her favorite bands, and it’ll be my first time seeing them. I’ll have to review the show tomorrow, because it will be well after midnight by the time we get home, despite the somewhat early start to the show. Right now I’m just watching football, nibbling on Christmas leftovers and sweets, and waiting for halftime, when I’m going to take a shower. I should do more today, but I’m just feeling lazy again. Sigh…

See more progress on: write in my journal daily for a year

Daily Journal: Day 20 of 365

It was cold again this morning, with snow still on the ground out in the back yard. Fortunately the roads were all pretty clear, though. There were just a couple of slick areas still left where the sun hasn’t hit for the past couple of days. It was fortunate because we were going to go do some shopping this morning.

The girlfriend had a whole little list of stores we wanted to go to. We started at Hobby Lobby, mostly so she could look for good deals on wrapping paper and such, which we figured they’d likely have at very good prices. Unfortunately, things seem to have been picked over pretty well already, so she just got a few little things. I didn’t find anything I really wanted. There were actually quite a few things I wouldn’t have minded getting, but I just figured that I could live without more kitchen stuff. We already have a shortage of cabinet space, and I should use more of the stuff I already have without buying more.

After Hobby Lobby, it was off to the mall. She had a bunch of stores to go to, but I just headed off to Barnes & Noble, so I didn’t throw off her shopping mojo. They had a lot of stuff in the discount section of B&N, but I once again decided that most of the stuff I could live without. I did buy the unabridged Conan the Barbarian, which includes most of the short stories originally done by Robert E. Howard. It doesn’t have most of the novel series, which were completed by other authors from notes and manuscripts begun by Howard but left incomplete at his death. I probably could have lived without that, too, but I gave away all of my Conan novels when I moved down here to Texas, and I sometimes miss the shallow swordplay-and-sorcery fantasy that I used to have in my collection.

Next stop was Hastings, where we found a couple of DVD collections of Christmas shows at steep discounts. She got the Charlie Brown holiday collection, and I got a collection of the old animated classics including Frosty the Snowman, Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer, and Santa Claus is Coming to Town. We’ll definitely have Christmas shows to watch next year. I also got a Christmas swing CD, which wound up being only 25 cents. We thought about going back and getting more once we found out how cheap things were, but we decided to move on.

Old Navy had jeans on sale for $15, but I couldn’t find a pair that fit me and didn’t look way too big. So I settled for getting a few T-shirts, also on sale, and the girlfriend got some sweaters and some wrapping paper. We cut the trip short after that because we were both tired and hungry.

Once at home, I turned on the brisket, filling the house with a lovely smoky beefy aroma. It took a while to finish, but it was well worth the wait. Her friend Jason came up for her birthday, and we had dinner and watched some TV with him. Now he’s off to bed, and I’m about to head the same way…

See more progress on: write in my journal daily for a year

Christmas presents...

It's the day after Christmas, and what sort of things did I get? My mom sent me The Civil War: A Narrative, by Shelby Foote. It's a trilogy totaling close to 3000 pages, so that should keep me busy reading for a little while. Irene and Bryan sent a package of homemade sweets for my sweetie and I, as well as a bracelet which my sister made for the girlfriend. There was some cinnamon biscotti, a peanut-brittle kind of candy made with Golden Grahams cereal, and some chocolate nut clusters. My sweetie got me a new pair of gloves, since my old pair was getting pretty bad. And she got me a pedometer. It's not a hint that I should get in better shape or anything; I actually had meant to get myself one earlier in the year, but never got around to it.

The girlfriend's mom got me a Rome: Engineering an Empire, which was a DVD on my Amazon wish-list. She also picked me up some excellent chicharrones, which they were apparently making up fresh at Cabela's when she went there to pick up something else for someone. She also got me a bottle of brisket rub as a stocking stuffer. That's handy, because I'm making the girlfriend a brisket for her birthday.

The girlfriend's brother and sister-in-law got me a couple of DVDs off of my wish-list. I got Rush: Working Men, which it turns out is mostly re-releases of videos that I already have. And I also got Ladyhawke, which might be a cheesy 80s movie, but I kind of like it. I haven't watched any of the DVDs, and I haven't actually watched most of the movies I've received or purchased in the past year or so. Guess I should really do that one of these days.

Anyway, I try not to get too caught up in the material things, but I just thought I'd document all the new stuff on the shelves. Thanks to everyone.

Daily Journal: Day 19 of 365

It’s Christmas Day. I just finished smoking a brisket for the girlfriend’s birthday tomorrow. The smoking process didn’t go as well as I would have liked, but I think I got enough of the smoke flavor into the beast. We’re going to pour some cola over it and bake it low and slow in the oven tomorrow to finish cooking it. Hopefully it’ll come out tasting delicious, but I guess we’ll see…

We got up a little later than we wanted this morning, which seems to be a pretty familiar situation for us. The girlfriend made corn casserole and cookies to take over to her aunt and uncle’s place for Christmas. She didn’t want to roll out the cookie dough in the fridge, mostly because of the hassle of rolling them out, cutting them, and trying to get the cut out dough off the counter without demolishing the shapes. So she made some cookies with chocolate, peanut butter, and butterscotch chips as well as pecans and almonds. They were pretty good, but we wound up leaving most of them over at her aunt and uncle’s.

The drive over was much less harrowing than the drive home last night. There were still a few slick spots, but for the most part, the sun had burned off most of the ice. Between the drive home last night and the drive to Plano this morning, I counted at least 10 accidents or cars off the road. I’m quite sure there were plenty more that we didn’t see. It’ll be a busy day at the body shop on Monday, I’m guessing.

The actual Christmas lunch was fun. Most of the girlfriend’s family was there, as well as a few extended in-law type people who I met for the first time. I don’t remember most of the names, but that’s not really unusual, and I doubt that I’ll see most of those folks again for another year or more anyway. But the company was nice, and the food was good. We brought home a bit of food, but for the most part we decided to pass on leftovers.

On the drive home, we actually watched an accident happen. Two or three cars continued through an intersection right in front of us after our light turned green, and when traffic on our side started going, one lady who was turning across traffic was pretty much forced to stop in the intersection and the car behind her hit her from the rear at a fairly decent clip. The girlfriend thought there must be something wrong with the traffic signal or something, because too many cars were continuing to turn after our light turned green. I’m not so sure, but we’ll never find out. We weren’t effected and were already pretty well turned onto the freeway frontage road by the time the accident happened. It seemed like no one was really injured, and there were plenty of other people around, so we headed on down the road.

Tomorrow, we’re going to do a bunch of shopping. Looks from the girlfriend’s list like it’s probably going to be nearly all day, so I should probably go get some sleep now…

See more progress on: write in my journal daily for a year

Daily Journal: Day 18 of 365

Christmas Eve. We went down to the girlfriend’s mom’s house and had dinner with that half of her family. Actually, not the full extended family. It was her mom and stepfather and her brother and sister-in-law and their three sons. Overall, it was a fun time and everyone enjoyed dinner and the gifts they received. It was snowing most of the day, and it was frozen solid on the roads by the time we were leaving, so it took us nearly an hour to get back home, when it usually takes about 15 minutes. It’s pretty late now, and I’ve been up since about six this morning, since the girlfriend had to open at work and then I had to work a half day, too. So, I think it’s just about time for me to head off to sleep. More details on the presents I got and such tomorrow, as well as some snow pictures once I get them off the camera…

See more progress on: write in my journal daily for a year

It's been a year and a half, and then some...

I moved down here to Texas last April, that would be April of 2008, and I’ve been paying $65 per month for the storage unit since then. I already have most of the stuff I use regularly out of it, but there’s still a bunch of old computer equipment and musical equipment, as well as just an odd assortment of stuff that I should mostly get rid of. I’ve decided that one of my resolutions for 2010 is to get at least one item out of the unit every month when I go down to pay the bill. It may not clear out the unit by the end of the year, but at least it’ll get me closer…

See more progress on: Get everything out of the storage unit

Daily Journal: Day 17 of 365

So, snack day went all right at the dealership. Someone asked for the recipe for my stuffed Brussels sprouts, despite the fact that I didn’t think they turned out as well as they did last time. And my sausage bread thing didn’t come out looking like a pinwheel at all, but I sliced it up and it was consumed, mostly by the techs, I think. They’ll eat pretty much anything you put in front of them, it seems.

I had one interesting run today, picking up a lady here in Denton. I didn’t call first, since she had just called the dealership. I was stopped at a guard station when I got to the location. They had me wait while they called the lady. I asked her what kind of place it was, and she just said that it was a government building and that they were a little particular over who comes and goes. I didn’t press her any further about what the place was, and she didn’t offer any more information. The girlfriend thinks that it might be the FEMA office, or it might be some other government agency using the proximity of FEMA as a front. We’re not sure, and there sure wasn’t any kind of plaque or anything advertising what agency ran the place.

I got presents shipped off today, but it doesn’t seem likely that they’ll make it there by Christmas. And, from what the guy at FedEx said, it looks like they don’t have Saturday delivery at Mom’s place, so stuff probably won’t get there until after Irene and Bryan have gone back home. As the girlfriend said, next year we’ll have to make it a priority to get stuff sent off earlier.

Anyway, that’s about all that’s happened today that’s really of a lot of interest. It’s about time to head off to bed. Got up early today to do the final touches on food, so now I’m pretty tired. Should be a short day tomorrow, but it’s still up in the air as far as when they’re going to shut down at work. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see…

See more progress on: write in my journal daily for a year

Daily Journal: Day 16 of 365

Tomorrow is the snack day in the service department at work. I wish I’d done more work on things yesterday or over the weekend, but I actually was busy doing other stuff, so everything got pushed to the last minute. And accordingly, just about everything came out much worse than I would have liked. I gave up on the cookies, since doing them with the cookie cutters is such a major hassle. I think if I do the same ones next time, I’m going to skip the step of chilling them and use the spritz gun instead. Rolled cookies are just a pain the the ass, really. Then the stuffed broccoli didn’t turn out anywhere near as well as it did the last time I did it. I tried a little experiment with the bacon, which I saw on TV a while back. I tried boiling it for a while to cook it, then seeing if I could get it to crisp up in the oven. Unfortunately, boiling makes it much less elastic, which makes it much harder to wrap around the broccoli. So, next time I know to go back to raw bacon. And the final thing, which is still in the oven, was supposed to be sausage and cheese pinwheels. Instead, it looks like they’re going to be something more like a sausage and cheese bread loaf, cut into slices. I think it should still taste all right, but it’s certainly not going to be as pretty as I would have liked. Hopefully it’ll still get eaten tomorrow. I feel like my cooking and baking skills are at a low ebb. But the second loaf will be out soon, and then I can just sleep it off…

See more progress on: write in my journal daily for a year

Didn't make it in time for Christmas...

So, I failed the challenge of trying to get the project done in time to send to her for Christmas, but I still want to get it done as soon as I can. Maybe I’ll be able to send it to her for Mother’s Day. Anyway, in consequence of failing the challenge I’d set for myself, I’m not going to drink in 2010. That should help out the budget a little, at least…

See more progress on: Finish Mom's cross stitch project

Daily Journal: Day 15 of 365

Today was pretty much the average Monday at work. I expected there to be a ton of pick-ups, since there was an entire sheet of take-homes when I got there, but instead it was an almost dead day. The girlfriend’s friend Jason and his new girlfriend got to the apartment while we were still at work. His girlfriend April is a nice young lady, quite smart. She’s a biologist. I’m guessing that she’s going to the University of Texas, but I’m not sure of that. She’s catching the bus back home to Minnesota for Christmas.

The girlfriend made potato and cheese soup for dinner, so no cooking for me today. And, since we had company, I also didn’t do any cookie baking today. I guess I’d better do a bunch of stuff tomorrow, though, because I told all the people at the service department that I was going to make my stuffed Brussels sprouts, cookies, and sausage pinwheels. That’s plenty, methinks.

For now, though, it’s off to bed with me…

See more progress on: write in my journal daily for a year

Daily Journal: Day 14 of 365

Today was mostly a cleaning day around the old apartment. I did make a batch of cookie dough, too, but it wound up being a type of dough that needs to be chilled for a couple of hours, and by the time the chilling was done, I really didn’t feel like rolling out the cookies and baking them and such. So now I have a batch of cookie dough in the fridge, which I should roll out and cut tomorrow. I also made dinner tonight. It was pretty simple. I sauteed some scallops in butter and garlic and served them with some Uncle Ben’s rice. It wasn’t bad, and took only about ten minutes.

I managed to get all of the stuff upstairs from the living room, and I even managed to weed through about half a dozen boxes, sorting out the tools and writing utensils and cross stitch stuff from all the rest of the crap. Of course, all the rest of the crap went back into the same boxes, and I still haven’t weeded through all of that. It’s definitely going to be an ongoing process. Who the hell knows how long I’ll be digging through boxes of cables?...

See more progress on: write in my journal daily for a year

Daily Journal: Day 13 of 365

Another one of those days when I’ve technically missed the date, but I’m still considering myself to be within the spirit of the thing. I’ve been moving stuff back upstairs in preparation for one of the girlfriend’s friends, who is going to be staying with us on Monday night. He’s bringing his girlfriend, so my girlfriend wants to make sure the place is spic and span. And there’s no time like the present to try to sort through all my boxes of crap and try to get a bit more organized.

We went to the hockey game today. The Stars managed to pull out a 4-3 win against the Red Wings, which I wasn’t expecting at all. We purchased our tickets as part of a special deal, where we get tickets to another game for each game that the Stars win out of the five we bought, so we’re going to have tickets to at least one more game than we were really expecting. That’s kind of a nice little bonus for the day.

After the hockey game, we ate at Chili’s, since I had a gift card for there and we got a coupon for free chips and salsa because Dallas scored more than three goals in the game. The food was decent. I had the pulled pork sandwich. It certainly wasn’t the best I’ve ever had, but it wasn’t horrific, either. The girlfriend was quite happy with her burger, and we both thought the chips and salsa were pretty good.

We stopped at Hobbytown USA, mostly because we were at least in the general vicinity. I spent far more money than I should have. I picked up one of each EZ-Track piece that they had which Hobby Lobby doesn’t carry, and it came to about $132 with tax. I should probably cut back a bit on the spending and start working on getting an actual layout planned and built.

After Hobbytown, we headed up to Ikea. We weren’t really expecting to spend much there, but we found that they were clearing out a really nice looking bookshelf that matched our TV table. We also found a bunch of other little things, which added up to a fair amount of money. When we got down to the area where we pick up the furniture, we found out that the bookshelf was apparently sold out, which was a disappointment in one way. Namely, we’re still not going to have that storage for books and such. But, on the other hand, it was nearly $300 that we didn’t spend.

From Ikea, we headed back toward home along the tollway, which we don’t usually take. The girlfriend noticed the Christmas lights on one building blinking in a kind of rhythmic fashion, and she wanted to go see what was up. It turns out that the city of Frisco has a Christmas light show in their square, complete with music on FM radio. Traffic was a mess, but we found a parking place and sat and watched for half an hour or so. I took a bit of video with my camera, but I can’t currently find the cable to download it to the computer and post it. In any case, it was pretty fun, despite nearly being smacked by a car on the way in.

From there, it was home and to work trying to get the place in order. And now, it’s off to get some sleep, because I think I have about thirty more trips up and down the stairs tomorrow…

See more progress on: write in my journal daily for a year

Daily Journal: Day 12 of 365

It’s the weekend! We have a hockey game to see tomorrow, and we’re probably going to go to Ikea and Hobbytown USA after the game is over. I stopped at Hobby Lobby today after work and picked up a couple of packs of EZ-Track, since they still had all the train stuff 30% off. After I got home, I went upstairs and snapped almost all the track I have together in the currently vacant bedroom up there. I have two train sets now, both the sort of bargain type. One of them is an old steam engine, the other a modern freight train. I was trying to get the steam train working, but it seems to want to derail at the turnouts, but I had better luck with the freight. I didn’t bother to set up any of the other scenery or anything. I’m going to wait until I get some of the foam insulation sheets from Home Depot after Christmas, then I’ll start really trying to set up a small modular layout. I’m not sure how detailed I’ll get, but I’d like to spend an hour or so every week working on it. We’ll see how it goes…

See more progress on: write in my journal daily for a year

Daily Journal: Day 11 of 365

We went shopping on the way home from work today and wound up spending a whole lot more than we’d really expected. It’s about the first time I can recall having a really full shopping cart for nearly a year. The girlfriend is going to make Chex mix, so there were supplies for that, and I’m going to make some snacks for the department’s snack day at work next week, and we just generally wound up getting a bunch of stuff that looked good or was on sale. In fact, we nearly filled the freezer beyond capacity, so it looks like the next week or so should be an interesting week for cooking. Probably have more on that later, but for now, it’s about time to see if I can get some sleep. It’s been a long, long day…

See more progress on: write in my journal daily for a year

Daily Journal: Day 10 of 365

Yes, technically it’s past midnight, so I missed the day, but I was working on getting stuff from the upstairs bedrooms down into the living room so the carpet cleaners can do their magic on the upstairs rooms. They were originally supposed to be here on Friday, but the landlord had a doctor’s appointment, so we moved it up a day. During the furniture-moving phase of the operation, the girlfriend pulled a muscle in her back, so I got to finish up moving the bed and most of the rest of the stuff myself, but that’s all right. At least it’s all done now. Not sure how moving it back upstairs is going to go, since we have to do that by Monday night, when we’ll have company coming to stay. Maybe I’ll have to see if someone from work will help out or something. But for now, it’s off to sleep, methinks…

See more progress on: write in my journal daily for a year

Daily Journal: Day 9 of 365

Today wasn’t too bad a day. Work in the morning was pretty routine. When the girlfriend and I got home for lunch, we found that there was a carpet cleaner’s van out front. And, sure enough, there were a bunch of hoses and stuff leading into our living room. So, did the carpet look “as good as new”? No, not really, but it did look an order of magnitude better than it ever has since I’ve lived here.

While we were talking with the carpet guys, the new landlord came by. He had already looked at the leaky garbage disposal and figured out that we needed a new one. He’d also already fixed the countertop which was separating from the cupboards beneath it. And he had purchased a deadbolt for the back door, although he had to do some drilling to get the thing installed. He said that the chimney was actually clean, but the flue was really hard to get open, so maybe we can start using the fireplace tomorrow. We also showed him the lighting problems with the outside lights, and he said he’d get an electrician out to look at it and see if we can get a switch or something.

As we were leaving, he also showed us where he’s going to put a section of fence to give us some privacy on our back patio. And he said that he’d repair the screens and get them re-hung. That means we’ll finally be able to open the windows without flies getting in and the cat getting out. That’ll be nice.

The afternoon at work was pretty good, too. I had enough driving that I stayed busy most of the shift, but not a lot of really difficult-to-find addresses. Between that and pulling up a few cars for customers, it kept me pretty active all shift. And that’s a good day…

See more progress on: write in my journal daily for a year

Daily Journal: Day 8 of 365

Today, I started baking Christmas cookies. The batch today only wound up being a couple of dozen, and the girlfriend is going to decorate them tomorrow. I’m not sure that I’ll make any more tomorrow, since the landlord’s carpet guy is supposed to be over during the day to fix the carpet, and who knows how long all that crap is going to take. I need to pick up some more stuff and take apart the TV system so he can do whatever he’s going to do to make the carpet “good as new”.

While driving back to the dealership with an older couple this afternoon, I was reminded again why I should never talk about religion. I really didn’t bring it up at all, and I tried to sort of change the subject, but it wound up with me being invited to their church and them telling me how wonderful it is and how there are all kinds of groups of people there. I really wanted to just tell them to shut up about it because I wasn’t interested in the least, but I didn’t think that would be all that appropriate a thing to say to customers. Oh well…

See more progress on: write in my journal daily for a year

Daily Journal: Day 7 of 365

Today was at least a borderline productive day, even though I didn’t get everything done that I wanted to. I woke up fairly early for a weekend and checked the e-mail and such this morning while having my morning coffee. After that, I started taking some boxes upstairs to clear out the living room so the new landlord’s carpet guy can do his magic on Tuesday. I still have a few things that need to go up, and I need to take apart the electronics and get those put away tomorrow, but it’s a lot better than it was.

I also cleaned out Kala’s litter box, which really needed it. Unfortunately, I think all the dust from the kitty litter may have aggravated the girlfriend’s allergies, but her sneezing and snuffling settled down a little once she medicated herself.

On the computer and blogging front, I downloaded a new free HTML editor to use for creating my 2010 New Year’s resolutions page. It’s called PageBreeze, and it seems to be a fairly decent piece of software, although it does seem to be pretty advertising heavy. The company has some commercial software and hosts a system for creating online forms and retrieving the data, so it makes sense that they’d have this kind of adware. It doesn’t detract from the use of the free software, though. I used it to create a page for the resolutions and to revise my homepage and a couple of other pages on the website, to make them look a little sharper, I think.

We made pork chops on the grill for dinner. We haven’t used the grill for a few months now, and the girlfriend was saying that maybe it was kind of a wasted purchase. We just need to find more friends and invite them over more often. Maybe once the repairs are done on the place, or whenever we find a new place to live, we’ll be able to become a bit more sociable…

See more progress on: write in my journal daily for a year

Another challenge I'm going to lose...

Looks like there’s no way on earth I’m going to manage to get this thing done in time to get it framed and sent off to Mom for Christmas. Maybe I’ll make it in time for Mother’s Day, though. Just got to keep plugging away on it…

See more progress on: Finish Mom's cross stitch project in time for Christmas

How many left to go?

I started ripping a bunch of my CDs before the girlfriend and I went on our road trip last month, so we had a little more music to listen to in the car. I’m not sure exactly how close I came to being done, but I’m pretty sure there are at least a couple hundred more CDs left to go, mostly the classical stuff. I accidentally filled the hard drive when I did the bunch before we left, and had to move those off onto the portable. But there’s still plenty of room there, so I guess I’ll try to pull off a CD or two every week until they’re done…

See more progress on: Rip the rest of my CD collection to my computer

I'm a silly travel geek...

My girlfriend finds it funny that when we go out traveling around, I usually buy souvenir shot glasses and/or spoons at the typical tourist destinations. Usually it’s spoons, but I probably have around a dozen shot glasses now. Since we almost never use shot glasses, they’re currently just sitting in stacks in the spare bedroom upstairs. I’d like to actually display them, and I’d like to get started doing a little more woodworking, so it’s about time for me to try to build a little rack for them…

See more progress on: Build a rack to house my souvenir shot glasses

It's been about two years now...

I wrote this song for my girlfriend after we’d been talking on the web for a while, and I recorded all of the instrumental parts pretty quickly. Unfortunately, though, I’m very self-conscious about how my voice sounds, so I never got around to recording the vocal part(s). It’s been sitting up on one of my MySpace pages for a while, and I have the original recordings and such on one of my other computers, but I really should get down to it and just record the rest of it. I do wish it wasn’t so noisy around this apartment, though, because I really don’t want to have to go down to some project studio and embarrass myself in front of other people…

See more progress on: Finish recording the song I wrote for my girlfriend

Daily Journal: Day 6 of 365

Today I went out and spent a bunch more money than I should have. I went down to Hobby Lobby, expecting to buy a small something for my prospective future train layout, as well as possibly getting some Poly-Fil for the girlfriend’s craft projects if the price wasn’t too bad. When I got there, though, I found out that they had all of their train and diorama supplies on sale. So instead of buying a piece or two of track or something of that nature, I wound up buying another basic train set, a turnout, and three or four pieces of landscaping supplies. On the plus side, I did get the Poly-Fil and a sketch book, for my New Year’s resolution of working my way through my book on drawing. Just a little more money spent than expected was all…

See more progress on: write in my journal daily for a year

12/12/2009: Bourbon Chicken

I got this recipe from a recipe mailing list on Yahoo. The girlfriend had to work today, and she asked if I’d mind making dinner. Since this had just been mailed to me, and since I had all the ingredients on hand, this was the choice for the night. I found it rather odd that it was called Bourbon Chicken when it didn’t have any bourbon in it. Not sure where the name came from…

Bourbon Chicken

35 min | 15 min prep

SERVES 4

2 lbs boneless chicken breasts, cut into bite-size pieces
1-2 tablespoon olive oil
1 garlic clove, crushed
1/4 teaspoon ginger
3/4 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
1/4 cup apple juice
1/3 cup light brown sugar
2 tablespoons ketchup
1 tablespoon cider vinegar
1/2 cup water
1/3 cup soy sauce

Heat oil in a large skillet.
Add chicken pieces and cook until lightly browned.
Remove chicken.
Add remaining ingredients, heating over medium Heat until well mixed and dissolved.
Add chicken and bring to a hard boil.
Reduce heat and simmer for 20 minutes.
Serve over hot rice and ENJOY.

The girlfriend and I rated it a B-. It’s not a dish we’re likely to make again, but it wasn’t bad. Had kind of a Chinese sort of flavor to it. Almost, but not quite, a sweet and sour flavor, but with some heat from the red chili flakes.

See more progress on: Try a new recipe each week

More surplus junk to get rid of...

Years ago, when I was playing in a band, we played a lot of bar gigs. Several of us noticed that people (especially in the front rows) seemed to stare in an almost hypnotized fashion at all the little lights and such bouncing around in our rack, showing the various levels on the compressors and signal processors and the like. At the time, my employer was a company that manufactured commercial antennas. They decided to have a “garage sale” to clean out some of the surplus equipment from the engineering department, and I thought that the oscilloscopes they had would make interesting additions to our impromptu light show. I bid on them and got them for about $30, if I recall correctly.

Shortly thereafter, the band broke up, and I had a pair of oscilloscopes sitting down in my storage unit. Since I haven’t played in a band for years now, and since I have no other use for these things, I think it’s just about time to part with them. It’s hard for me to part with things, being the pack rat that I am, but I’ve got to draw the line somewhere…

See more progress on: Sell my old oscilloscopes

Daily journal: Day 5 of 365

It was another very quiet day at work. I had one ride, picking up a lady from about three miles away. And today I didn’t even have as many cars to bring up as I had yesterday. So, I wound up spending most of the evening working on creating my list of New Year’s resolutions and getting them organized. Now I just need to get them all typed in, figure out some way of displaying my progress in some kind of organized way, and post the result to the website.

After work, my sweetie and I carpooled home. I did the dishes before she made something for dinner. It was supposed to be sort of a shrimp scampi kind of dish, but it wound up being a sort of thick fish stew with shrimp in it. She didn’t like it very much, but I had my whole bowl. I thought it was pretty decent tasting, although the texture certainly left something to be desired. After having dinner, I vacuumed the bedroom, so hopefully her allergies won’t have so much effect on her.

Now I’m just sitting watching hockey. The Stars just tied their game against the Sharks. We’ll be going to see the Stars play live next weekend, which is nice. If they win, we’ll get tickets to another game. It was kind of a special deal that the Stars had going on. We are at least going to five more games this season, and if they win all five, we could theoretically be going to a total of ten more games. That’d be cool…

See more progress on: write in my journal daily for a year

Daily Journal: Day 4 of 365

Today the girlfriend and I watched Julie and Julia, one of the movies on our infamous list. It wound up being a very cute movie. Meryl Streep does an incredibly good job playing Julia Child. I wondered, while watching the movie, how many new food blogs were created by people after watching it. Generally, it’s one of those two thumbs up sorts of movies in our opinion. Well worth the four bucks to rent the DVD, as well as being worth the half hour to get the damned DVD player working with the new TV. First DVD played after getting the hi-def…

See more progress on: write in my journal daily for a year

Daily Journal: Day 3 of 365

Today was another bitterly cold day, barely reaching 40 degrees. At least it was sunny, though. Driving at work was fairly uneventful today. I had one short run into Denton and one longer one out to Justin, and that was about it. The lady on the first (Denton) run works at an accounting firm, and I was talking to her about going into the accounting field. I’m still just not really sure what I want to be when I grow up, but I’m seriously looking at accounting. Other options include getting a degree in library science, getting my certification as a DBA and getting back into the computer geek biz, or heading toward a culinary career. I’m just still really uncertain, though. I guess trying to go back to college would be a good starting point, and it would keep the girlfriend from griping at me about not taking any classes this term. That would be a serious bonus…

See more progress on: write in my journal daily for a year

Why I shouldn't bother getting warranties...

Yesterday was again mostly cold and foggy. No real rain, but pretty much mist falling all day long. The morning was uneventful, as far as actual work went. I brought the car in for its oil change. While it was there anyway, I asked them to look at the brakes, which were squealing a little more than I thought they should, and at the shift indicator, which was sticking a bit. Since I have the VehicleOne warranty I bought with the car, I figured things like that would be covered. Well, I was told right up front that the brakes wouldn't be covered because those are consumable items, and to get rid of squeal and such would probably involve replacing the pads and rotors, at a cost of probably about a hundred bucks a wheel. That kind of sucked, but the service advisor told me he would have the tech at least inspect them and see how much life was left on the pads and such. I thanked him and wandered back to my cave to do the filing.

A while later, I got the call back that they had looked at the shift indicator to diagnose the problem, but that the warranty wouldn't pay for that, either. Turns out that the indicator is simply a "trim item." So, basically not knowing what gear your car is in is just a cosmetic issue. I told them to just leave it and I'd live with it, but then I was told that there usually was a diagnostic fee, but that he'd talk to the manager to see if we could waive it, since I'm an employee. Turns out that the charge to fix the damned thing would only be about $20 more than the diagnostic fee, so I told him to never mind and just go ahead and do it.

I got my car back around lunch time. About $140 down the tubes, including the oil change and such. Turns out the brakes probably have about 10,000 miles of life left in the pads, which is about 4 years at the rate I've been driving the beast since I bought it. The diagnosis of the shift indicator was that it was sticking because of a spill in the center console. I know I haven't spilled anything there, but I'm guessing it's just the accumulation of little crumbs and oil and general crap into the slots and such. I'm not exactly a very clean driver. I should really vacuum the little beast out one of these days.

Anyway, I guess the result of the whole thing is that next time, I'm probably just going to start a savings account whenever I get a new car and put the money that would go to the warranty payment into that account. That way, I can earn a tiny little bit of interest on it and have it sitting there waiting for when I need some repair done or something. And, in case of an absolute emergency, I can always take it out for something else. Live and learn, yet again...

93 drafts to finish

Sometimes, I get to be too much of a perfectionist. Instead of just writing a bit of what’s on my mind and setting it free into the ether, I feel like I have to write a full-blown narrative. And I often get interrupted or distracted and don’t finish the whole entry. So now there are 93 drafts sitting incomplete on Blogger. My goal for the next few months is to try to finish at least one draft per day…

See more progress on: Finish all of the draft entries I've partially written on my blog

Daily Journal: Day 2 of 365

I decided earlier today that I’m going to create another list of resolutions for 2010. I’ve done this too many times in the past and not bothered to follow up on things past about a week. With any luck, this time will be a little better. I’m planning to do three lists: daily, weekly, and monthly items. Actually, there might be a fourth list for bi-weekly items, too. Then I’m going to do the whole thing as a set of HTML tables and post them to my website. My goal for the rest of this year is to get that list created and the HTML generated and posted to the website…

See more progress on: write in my journal daily for a year

Daily writing: Day 1 of 365

The girlfriend and I slept in later than we should have this morning, and we barely made it to work on time. It was cold and foggy and a generally dreary sort of winter day. It reminded me a lot of winter in Oregon. I don’t think it got over 40 degrees today.

The morning shift was uneventful. I didn’t have much filing to do, and I had everything done about two hours into my 4-1/2 hour shift. Fortunately I had a little list of orders to try to find during the middle, so I wasn’t totally bored all morning.

We drove home for lunch, which was pretty uneventful. Back to work, and it was pretty much right onto the road. I had a total of three runs today, one take-home and two pick-ups. The first was just to the north end of Denton, but the second was a bit of a pain. It was a pick-up in Flower Mound, so I took the little back route that Art, the morning driver, had shown me on my second day. That all was fine until I got about halfway there, and the road was closed to through traffic. So I wound up detouring about 20 minutes out of the way from where I would have been. And there was more construction on the way, so after picking the lady up, I had to head south and head through downtown Lewisville to make it to the freeway. By the time I’d hit the freeway, it was just about rush hour, and it took about 45 minutes to get back to the dealership. The lady wasn’t upset or anything, but it was kind of a pain nevertheless. Fortunately, the last run was just down the road about five minutes from the dealership. That lady seemed like she would have been kind of fun to go to a party with. She was older, but seemed like the sort who always has fun wherever she goes.

After the last run, I just had to hang out about half an hour before it was time to head home. Some lady called to say that she’d be there to pick up her rental a little after 7:00, but fortunately I don’t have to deal with that. It became even more fortunate when the lady called back again at about 6:50 and said that she was still half an hour away. Hopefully she finally made it. I know that Vickie, the gal who was running rentals tonight, was pretty pissed about the whole issue.

We stopped and got gas on the way home. I didn’t realize I had the 10-cent per gallon bonus at Kroger, but I was pleasantly surprised that the gas was going to be cheaper than I’d expected. We decided not to stop at the grocery store for coffee, since I already have enough for tomorrow. Instead, we just drove home and the girlfriend started making spaghetti for dinner. I started watching Monday Night Football. Dinner was good, the game was decent, and now it’s about time to call it a night…

See more progress on: write in my journal daily for a year

More Christmas shopping...

I stayed up way too late last night watching college football. The last game was in Hawaii, which means that it didn't even start until almost 10 PM here. I got up late this morning and finally got out to do more Christmas shopping at around two in the afternoon with the girlfriend.

We went to Petsmart first and got some cat food and a little kitty toy stocking. I wasn't going to do anything like that, getting the cute little pet present, but they had a pre-made stocking with 22 cat toys for about $8, so I couldn't resist getting some new toys for her. She's almost out of mice anyway. At least mice which she hasn't chewed the tails from.

After that, we went to Old Navy and picked up a few things, including a few more long sleeved shirts for me to wear under my uniform shirt at work. Then it was down to Michael's, since I had a coupon there. I didn't find anything that I really wanted, but I did get some polymer clay for my sister for Christmas. I think I've just about got enough to make her a nice little package, so now I really need to start working on trying to find something for her husband. I never have the faintest idea of what I should get him. I think I might call my mom and see if she has any ideas.

The girlfriend and I were getting a little hungry by then, since neither of us had any breakfast before we left this morning. Since we were right there, we went to Fuddrucker's and had their bacon cheddar half-pound burgers. They were pretty good, and I'm still definitely not hungry about five hours later. There were some little girls sitting with their father at the booth next to us, and the little one was pretty priceless. The restaurant had a bunch of celebrity pictures on the walls, and she asked her dad, "Are all of those people dead? Are their pictures on the wall because they're dead?" Later, she told her sister that the girl with her pictures on the wall near them must have been a singer. She pointed out the picture which proved it. It was Marilyn Monroe at a USO concert. In itself not that funny, but I just found the different point of view amusing, that this little girl hadn't the faintest idea who Marilyn was.

After Fuddrucker's, we were kind of trying to decide where to go next, but we were both feeling rather lazy and lethargic, so we just wound up coming back home. I think it was a decent shopping day in any case. Since then, I've just been watching football and playing around on the computer. Guess I should try to do something useful with the rest of the evening, but I'm not sure what...

This is hard for me...

I’ve never been the most social person in the world, and now that I’m not in school any more and I don’t work with people a whole lot, I hardly know where to begin making friends. I’m not a church-going person, and I don’t really belong to any sort of social clubs or anything of that nature, so most of the people I meet are just kind of one-time deals, either the folks who I give rides to at work or servers at restaurants and the like. And it’s just really tough to walk up to someone you don’t really even know and try to get friendly with them. So, I guess I’ll keep plugging along trying to get the band thing going and see if I can meet other musicians through Craisglist and such, and maybe I’ll get more friends that way…

See more progress on: Make new friends

Week #3

This is the third weekend since I kind of re-entered the 43Things universe. And yes, I did get out of the house and do something today. I went down to the city landfill and dropped off the old TV which quit working a while ago, and then the girlfriend and I did a bunch of shopping.

We stopped at Hobby Lobby, where I picked up an N-scale railroad turnout and some beading stuff for my sister for Christmas. Then to the mall. I got some new shoes and some long-sleeved shirts for work. The girlfriend found a couple of things to get for Christmas presents for her sister in law, so we got those. And then I got a couple of books at Barnes & Noble with the gift card which the girlfriend’s mom got me for my birthday. I got a Mapsco atlas of the county, which is also mostly for work use, and the two-volume complete Sherlock Holmes. The girlfriend was wondering if I had any Sherlock Holmes after reading a new Holmes story which was authorized by Doyle’s estate. I didn’t previously have much except on my computer, but now I do.

After the mall, we went across the street to Party City to try to find something for her nephews. She’s got one, Oliver, who simply loves to dress up in costumes. When we went over to their place a month or so ago, he must have changed outfits three or four times in the couple of hours we were there. There was a ninja costume and his karate outfit, as well as the regular clothes he was wearing when we showed up. So, the girlfriend wanted to get him something else to mix it up a little. She was looking for a pirate outfit, and we found one for his little brother, but not really anything for him. But when we talked to the checkers, one of the young ladies said we could go back to the storeroom where they keep all the old Halloween costumes from last season and she would show us some of the costumes they had there. We found a neat little Star Wars outfit for him. It’s Jango Fett, complete with mask, and we’re pretty sure he’s going to dig it.

After Party City, we were going to head to Petsmart and Michael’s, but I wanted to eat first. I was thinking Mexican food, but we discussed it and decided that we’d just go to the Long John Silver’s that reopened recently on the Loop. So, we went there and got our greasy food at the drive-through, but by the time we were done with that, we were pretty much getting tired and decided to head back home. We’re going to probably go back out tomorrow and continue the Christmas shopping…

See more progress on: Get out of the house and do something every weekend

Shut out!

I had no runs at all today at work. It was about the most boring couple of hours that I can really recall. Yesterday, I wound up having two runs after the bank run. The first was just up to the State School, maybe a five-minute run from the dealership. Of course, it was right about at five, which is just about the time that most of the workers leave there. So it wound up taking about half an hour to get back the mile or so to the dealership because of all the traffic backed up in the school's driveway. The lady who I picked up was a bit wacky, but she seemed nice enough. When we got back to the dealership, I found out that she had an old Corvette which she was getting looked at. The driver's side window wouldn't work, though, so one of the porters had to duct tape it closed for her while she held it up from the inside. It was a pretty funny scene, and it would have looked pretty messed up if someone had been driving in to the service area right then. "So, do you do all of your repairs with duct tape?"

After that run, it was pretty much waiting most of the evening. A car got towed in at about 6:30, and I guessed that I'd probably wind up kind of getting screwed on that deal. And sure enough, that's what happened. The lady who owned the car was stranded with no one to come and get her, so despite the fact that I'm not usually supposed to head out after 6:30, I headed out to take her home at about 6:45. She was upset that the dealership didn't have any loaner cars or anything that she could use to get to a test she had to take at 8:00 this morning, and I just tried to explain to her that we did have rental cars, but there's a waiting list and we had all of them rented at the time. She still just kept complaining most of the time. She also wasn't exactly the best at giving directions, waiting until I was pretty much at each intersection before she told me which way I was supposed to turn. I finally got her dropped off and got back to work after pretty much everyone had left. Only the shop foreman was still there waiting for me. Hopefully that won't happen very much again.

This morning on the way to work, the girlfriend and I stopped at the Unicorn Lake Diner and Bakery, or Bakery and Diner. I don't remember which it's called, and I'm too lazy to look it up. One of the ladies I work with said that she'd had a very good lunch there, so we figured we'd go ahead and give them a try. I had an apple turnover. It wasn't bad, but it certainly wasn't the best I've ever had. The girlfriend said hers was also not the best she's ever tasted, but we're going to go ahead and give them another chance for lunch sometime. Maybe their "diner" side is a bit better than their "bakery" side.

On the way home from work, we ate at the Cafe China, right around the corner from the bakery/diner. It was your basic Chinese restaurant. The service was fairly quick, and the food was decent. It's certainly not something that I'd really shout about one way or the other, but it's convenient to the movie theater, so we may stop in once in a while if we go to the movies. There are a few other Chinese restaurants here in town that I'd prefer if the location is no issue...

Plugging along...

Unfortunately, I still have quite a bit to go, and it’s a very large piece of work. My mom really likes ancient Egypt, so I’m doing a design I found of King Tut’s mask. It was originally going to be a birthday present (Nov. 2), but that came and went, and now I’m just hoping for Christmas. Guess I’d best step it up…

See more progress on: Finish Mom's cross stitch project in time for Christmas

Another slow day at work...

Looks like it's going to be another slow day here at work, doing the driving. I had a bank run when I first got here, and that's been it so far. Don't have any runs scheduled for later or anything, so I guess it's pretty much just sit and try to kill time until I can call it a night.

The girlfriend and I headed home around the same time for lunch, even though we didn't carpool today. When I got home, Rick, the new landlord, was waiting outside. He came in and talked to us for a bit about what he plans to do around the place to try to keep us happy. It seems like he's in a little over his head, and even he commented that he should have talked to us before he purchased the property. He said he has a really good carpet guy who claims that he can make the crappy old carpet as good as new. I tried to make it as clear as possible that we really don't want to have a bunch of mildew and stuff growing under the carpet, and he said that he understood. He also told us he's going to try to get a bunch of the other things done, although he obviously can't just wave a magic wand and get everything done. The girlfriend and I are going to give him a couple of months, as we're still on a month-to-month lease. If it looks like things are getting better at a reasonable rate, we'll sign a new lease and stay on. Otherwise, we're probably going to start saving and try to find a better place to live...

Oops, I have a run to make, so off to it...

So, yesterday was pretty dull for the most part. The new landlord didn't show up by 3, and the girlfriend called and mentioned that we'd taken extra time off work to meet him and wondered where he was. He called back a bit later and said that his carpet guy had a busted radiator and couldn't show up until an hour or so later, but there was no way we could wait that long. So it's not a real auspicious start for the new management.

Once I got back to work, I had someone to drop off down in Lewisville, so it was pretty much right onto the road. I ended up picking up four other people total, so the night was pretty much continuous driving with very little time to get bored. I like it when it's like that. Two of the people I picked up were ladies who I'd driven home during the past week. One of them gave me my first tip. Not sure if I'm even supposed to take tips when offered, but I figured that she could probably afford the two bucks, considering that she's driving a new Cadillac Escalade, living in a McMansion out in Lake Dallas, and evidently hubby drives a newer-model Corvette. Nevertheless, she's a pretty nice lady, and I appreciate the gesture.

That same lady and I were talking about New Orleans both when I drove her home and when I picked her up. She's originally from New Orleans. Sounds like October will probably be the best time to visit down there, so I guess we'll have to schedule that for our fall road trip next year. I'm thinking that our spring road trip might have to be the journey up to the northern midwest. Or if we don't have all that much money or vacation time saved up, maybe we can see more of Arkansas and Tennessee, as well as visiting Kentucky and West Virginia. Guess we'll just have to wait and see.

I made enchiladas for dinner after work yesterday. Some were cheese and some were beef and cheese. I thought we had regular enchilada sauce in the cupboard, but we evidently used it already, so I wound up making a pretty basic cheese sauce to go on top. I didn't think they came out all that well, but the girlfriend said they tasted good, and that's most of the battle right there. We ate them while we watched the new episode of Mythbusters.

Well, it's about time to head back to work, so off I go...

White stuff on the ground...

We had snow on the ground this morning when we got up. I'm glad that it seems to have pretty much all melted off now. I really don't feel like driving around this area in the snow, trying to find people at addresses I've never been near before. Tomorrow is supposed to just be cloudy, but they're expecting more snow showers after midnight tomorrow night, and then more into Friday. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that it will either not stick or will melt before my driving shift. Not dreaming of a white Christmas, damn it...

It was freezing cold in the file room today, and my hands are like little ice cubes. I took my lunch early to come home and wait for the new landlord, who is supposed to be here between 1 and 3 to inspect the place and look over all the repairs and such which we e-mailed him about on Monday. There was a van parked outside between the two apartment buildings when I got here, but I don't know if one of those is him or not. In any case, the girlfriend should be home for her lunch in half an hour or so, and then she can take over the waiting duties. It won't be a good sign if he just doesn't bother to show up at all. Might be getting near time to start getting ready to move out...

Another day, another dollar...

I had three pickups and a drop-off on a cold, wet day of driving at work. I was a bit annoyed this morning. We carpooled in today. Yesterday, I walked over to the reception area to pick up the girlfriend for lunch just a little earlier than I had planned, at about 2:20 instead of 2:30-2:45. She was kind of annoyed at that. So today I had a couple of things to do in the file room, so I was busy until about 2:30. And she calls me to find out where I'm at, because Kathy, the other receptionist, wants to leave early. If that kind of thing is going to happen regularly, I guess the whole carpooling thing might not be such a good idea. I guess we'll find out as time goes along, though.

Before leaving for work this morning, I got a reply back from the new landlord. He's going to come by tomorrow and take a look at all the things that we've told him we'd like fixed in the apartment. I doubt that everything will be taken care of, but maybe we'll at least get some of the major stuff done.

Got home from work and watched a hockey game while eating leftover curry for dinner. The game was the Blackhawks hosting the Blue Jackets, and it was a pretty good game. Went through overtime at 3-3, and it took them 11 rounds of a shootout to determine the winner. Wish I had the luck to see a game like that live. Now I'm watching How the Earth Was Made on the History Channel. I suppose I should probably head off to bed now. It's getting late, I'm getting tired, and I still have to do the dishes tomorrow morning so we have the house a little cleaner for the landlord...