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

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...

Finally back on my horse...

So, I haven’t updated anything on here for quite a long time, but I figured I’d crawl out from under my rock and get myself doing things again.

Last weekend, the girlfriend and I went to see the Dallas Stars play the New Jersey Devils down at American Airlines Center. It was a good game, although it was a bit more crowded than it has been when we’ve gone before. Dallas gave up the first goal, but then came storming back to a 3-1 first period lead. They gave up the lead over the subsequent two periods, but then scored two to end the game for a 5-3 victory.

On Sunday, we drove over to Tyler to see her dad, who unfortunately has to spend this Thanksgiving in the hospital because of a persistent leg infection. He’s doing better now, thankfully, but it will still be a while before he gets to come home. We’re hoping he’ll be out by Christmas.

This weekend, we have more social events on the schedule than we’ve had for the past couple of months combined. On Thanksgiving, we went down and spent the afternoon with the other side of her family. That was all right. A lot of people who I don’t really know all that well at all, and a few that I’ve never met before. But in general, it was a good meal and nice company, so I can’t complain.

Yesterday, I had to work on my birthday for the first time in almost 20 years. It was a boring day of work, but afterward we went to a party with some of her friends down in Dallas. There were even less people who I knew there than at the Thanksgiving dinner, but we had a good time anyway.

Tonight, we’re going to go celebrate the birthday of one of the members of our book club. We’re going out to eat at a tepanyaki (sp.?) restaurant down in Lewisville, and then go back to their place to play some Wii and enjoy some adult beverages. A good time will hopefully be had by all. We’ll see a bit later, though…

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

Just stuff and things...

I'm getting by still. It's been a fairly useless day, although I did send off a couple of applications that I found in the paper this morning. I haven't heard back from very many of the companies I've sent resumes to, and so far every one that I have heard back from has been a negative response. Either I'm not qualified enough, they have already filled the job, or I'm overqualified for the entry-level positions I've applied for. It sucks. Aside from that, the day was mostly spent copying data from my old desktop computer to the new laptop. I do hope to eventually get everything moved over onto here, so I can retire both of the old beasties, since I really don't use them any longer. Once I make sure I have everything off the old laptop, I do believe I'm going to load Ubuntu Linux onto it. I'm still not sure if I'm going to keep my career moving along the computer track, but at least I can kind of keep up with the whole Linux deal. It won't hurt, anyway...

I think I managed to kill my sourdough starter. I think I tried adding the tap water a little too early in the process, and it killed off the yeast. I guess I'm going to have to try it again, and this time I'll keep using the filtered water for the duration. I guess it really doesn't cost anything, so I might as well. Not sure why I really bothered using the tap water anyway. Live and learn, I suppose...

Hockey's on again tonight. Canada's last hope, the Canucks, got eliminated by Chicago last night, damn it. I just really don't think Chicago is going to be able to do very much against the Red Wings, and I have the feeling the Red Wings are going to close out their series against the Ducks tonight...

Because of all the hockey and playing with the new computer, I haven't had much chance to watch a lot of baseball lately. Oh well...

Sports report, 4/18...

I got to see the Montreal Canadiens play the Boston Bruins, but I almost wish I hadn't. Montreal looked just awful, and wound up losing the game 5-1, giving Boston a 2-0 lead in the series. They move to Canada for the next game, so maybe the Canadiens will be able to give them a bit of a challenge, but I'm really not feeling like they're going to make any kind of a serious comeback in the series. They just looked bad out there last game.

In other hockey playoff results, Detroit dominated Columbus with a 4-0 shutout, to bring their series lead to 2-0, too. The visiting Rangers shut out the Capitals 1-0, to bring that series to 2-0. New York has pretty much completely turned around the "home ice advantage," and the Capitals look like they're going to be in dire straits as they move the series to Madison Square Garden. And Chicago edged out Calgary, 3-2, to also take a 2-0 lead in that series.

In baseball, the Blue Jays outlasted the Oakland A's in Toronto. It took them 12 innings to finally outscore their visitors, 4-2. That win brings the Jays' record to 9-4. Everyone else in the AL West followed the A's lead: The Angels lost in Minnesota by a final of 9-2; the visiting Royals knocked off Texas, 2-0; and the Tigers also made themselves unwelcome guests in Seattle, knocking off the Mariners 2-0. That leaves the AL West standings pretty much the same as before: Seattle leads the division at 8-4, Oakland holds down the middle spot at 5-6, and Texas and the Angels pull up the rear at 4-7 each.

Ichiro was hitless in the Seattle game, striking out twice in four at-bats. As usual with a goose-egg performance, he had no RBIs. Surprisingly, he also had a throwing error in the game. I know it's not realistic to think he'll go completely without an error all season, but it's still kind of surprising to see it on the stat sheet. He's now 4-for-17 for the season, stuck at 5 RBIs.

And, not that it really matters to my AL West standings, but the final score in that Yankees game wound up being 22-4. That's just really got to make the people with their spendy season Yankees tickets feel great about paying for that new stadium. Heh...

Sports report...

In hockey action last night, Carolina managed to wrest home ice advantage from New Jersey in a 2-1 overtime win, while Pittsburgh held serve with a 3-2 overtime win over the Flyers. And Vancouver had little trouble taking a 2-0 lead over the Blues, shutting them out 3-0 in a testy, physical sort of game.

In baseball, a double negative for my teams happened in Toronto, where the A's knocked off the Jays, 8-5. That drops the Blue Jays to an 8-4 record, still at the top of the AL East. Texas knocked out three solo home runs in their game against Kansas City, but that was their only scoring. The Royals, on the other hand, pounded out 19 hits while scoring 12 runs to knock off the Rangers in Arlington. The loss knocked Texas down to a tie for third in the AL West with the Angels, who lost a high-scoring game in Minnesota. The Twins just nipped them, 11-9.

Meanwhile, up in the beautiful Pacific Northwest, Ichiro went 1-for-4 with one RBI, putting his overall batting for the season at 4-for-13, and his RBI total goes up to 5. That was in the course of a 6-3 win by the Mariners over the Tigers, despite the fact that that Tigers outhit them 9-8. Combined with the Toronto loss, that result gives the Mariners the top record in the American League, and tied for the second best overall in the Major Leagues, after the Marlins, who are burning it up at 9-1.

In the AL West, the standings are:
Seattle, 8-3
Oakland, 5-5
LA Angels, 4-6
Texas, 4-6

Yesterday's sporting news...

Texas and Oakland didn't play baseball yesterday. Toronto spanked the Twins 9-2 behind a 7-run 7th inning, bringing them to an 8-3 record. The Angels beat the Mariners 5-1. Ichiro went 1-for-4 with a single. That puts him 3-for-9 for the season, with 4 RBI still from the grand slam yesterday. He also set the record for most hits by a Japanese player, with 3086. The loss still leaves Seattle in first place in the AL West, with a 7-3 record. Everyone else in the division is tied at 2.5 games behind at 4-5. It's still very early in the season, of course, but it's a promising start...

Hockey didn't have a whole lot of good results for me last night. Boston beat Montreal 4-2. That was one of the games I really would have liked to see, but of course that was the only game that Versus didn't have any coverage of last night. Looks like it was probably a pretty good, if somewhat testy, game, too. Detroit beat Columbus 4-1. That was pretty expected, being a battle of #2 vs. #7. But then, in the #1 vs. #8 opener, Anaheim managed to beat San Jose to take the home ice advantage away from the President's Trophy winners. And, in the only overtime game of the night, Chicago beat the Flames by a final of 3-2, scoring about 12 seconds into the first overtime. And more hockey will be played tonight, of course...

More sports than news...

In baseball yesterday, Boston beat Oakland 8-2 after the Red Sox lit up Oakland's bullpen with 6 runs in the 8th. Baltimore started strong in their game in Texas, but things fell apart for the O's starting around the 3rd. They gave up 8 runs in the 4th, and wound up losing the game 6-19. Ian Kinsler managed to bat around and went 6-for-6 in the game, becoming the first player to accomplish that task since 1894. Toronto bounced back from their extra innings loss by pummeling the Twins 12-2. 4 of the Blue Jays hit homers, and they had pretty solid scoring all through the game. Their record improved to 7-3 with the win.

Seattle beat the visiting Angels 11-3 in a game that had some historic hits. Ken Griffey, Jr., hit his 400th home run in a Mariners uniform. Also, Ichiro returned to the Seattle lineup after spending the first 8 games of the season on the DL. He hit a grand slam in the 7th to tie the record for the most professional hits by a Japanese player, with 3085. That includes a single he hit earlier in the game. He's well on his way toward that typical 200 hits per season record, going 2-for-5 in the game.

That leaves the AL West standings as follows:
Seattle 7-2
Oakland 4-5
Texas 4-5
LA Angels 3-5

Hockey playoffs started yesterday. I watched most of the two games that were on. Aside from the fact that I like Montreal and I want Detroit to lose, I don't really have a whole lot of teams I'm really following this year. I guess I'll go for Vancouver in the West, since I think it would be kind of cool to have an all-Canadian Stanley Cup final.

Anyway, Pittsburgh beat Philly 4-1, and New Jersey beat Carolina by the same score. The Rangers edged Washington 4-3, and Vancouver beat St. Louis 2-1. Of those, the Rangers were the only road team to win. The remaining series begin tonight, and of course the game I'd really like to see (Montreal vs. Boston) isn't going to be televised. Damn it...

The girlfriend and I watched the new episode of Mythbusters last night as something of an interlude to the hockey games. It was the second Alaska special, and they oddly only did two myths this time around. Usually they manage to get in at least three, but I guess these were larger ones than usual. The "kids" did the myth of a car that hit a parked snowplow directly on the point of its wedge-shaped plow. This supposedly split the car in two, and the passenger and driver both walked away unharmed. While the second crash, at 70 MPH into a reinforced and sharpened snowplow, was incredibly dramatic to watch, there ain't no way that anyone would have walked away from it unharmed. Probably not at all. It was almost disturbing, actually.

And the main myth was about the substance called Pykrete. During World War II, a British engineer named Pyke (I forget his first name) came up with the idea of creating some aircraft carriers out of a substance he named for himself, Pykrete. Basically, it's sawdust mixed with water and then frozen. Apparently, according to the tests done by Adam and Jamie, the stuff is much stronger than regular ice. A one-inch thick slab secured by clamps at one end held approximately 350 pounds of weight and still took a few hits with a hammer to break, as opposed to a similar piece of ice which broke after only 40 pounds. And bullet tests showed that the Pykrete was seriously bullet resistant, losing a conical chunk an inch or so deep to a point-blank 45-caliber shot, compared to a piece of ice which pretty much just turned into a snow cone when hit with the bullet. The Pykrete also took significantly longer to melt than regular ice. Jamie made a serious improvement to several of these properties by substituting newspaper for the sawdust in Pykrete. This made it less like particle board and more like plywood.

For their main experiment, the two went to Ketchikan, Alaska, and got a group of lucky high school students to soak a bunch of newspaper in water. This was then layered into a plywood mold and frozen solid in a freezer truck. A motor and steering were mounted to it, and it scooted along the bay quite well before melting down too much to remain structurally sound. So, the myth was considered plausible, but impractical.

Now, my complaints, or comments, at least. One was that they commented that this was the first boat like that made, but I think they actually did make a demo model of such a boat in Canada during World War II. I'll look for the details, but I seem to remember seeing something about them making a demo version but finally deciding that it wouldn't be ready in time to be very useful. I don't recall if that's the whole reason, but I think it was most of it. And the second comment, made by Jamie, was that a carrier made of this stuff wouldn't work very well because it would melt in the tropics. But that wasn't the original intent of the idea. It wasn't supposed to be an all-purpose carrier that would go anywhere. It was originally intended to be a nearly stationary platform which would close the gap in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean where U-boats roamed at will because of the limited range of Allied patrol and antisubmarine aircraft. And the carriers would also be much larger than their little boat, plus it wouldn't be traveling through the water at much speed. Thus, for a particular purpose, namely being a fairly stationary base in the middle of the North Atlantic, they would have been quite feasible.

In addition to watching Mythbusters, we watched Toy Story before going to bed. I hadn't seen it before. Kind of a cute story, and it seems to have actually held up pretty well in the twelve or so years since it was made. Certainly not something I'm going to watch over and over, but I'd definitely recommend it to someone with a little kid...

And now, I need to get off my ass and go fill out some more applications. Damn it...

The daily rundown, May 4

The girlfriend and I slept in a little later than usual, since it's her day off. We finally got ourselves in gear in the early afternoon and decided to go do the laundry. We stopped at Walgreen's and so I could get the Sunday newspapers and I also picked up a science sort of magazine that looked interesting. When we got there, the parking lot at laundromat was packed, so we guessed we weren't going to find any open washers and just headed back home. Cory was going to rinse out his ice chest and the bottle recycling container, so I also dragged out my ice chest and got it rinsed at the same time. It had been sitting back there for nearly three weeks since I got here, so it was just about time to get it done. While I was outside, I also took pictures of the car ramps I want to sell on Craigslist, but haven't put up the ads or anything.

Later in the afternoon, the girlfriend wanted to go to Target, so I offered to drive. We took a little bit different route than my usual way of getting there, which is nice. It's handy for me to learn my way around the town a little better. We spent a little while at Target shopping for some Mother's Day presents and such mostly for her mom, stepmother, and sister-in-law, although I did pick up a card and a pair of earrings for Mom. We chatted a little with the girl at the checkstand as though we were a bunch of old friends, and then it was out the door and back toward home. On the way, I was getting a bit hungry, so I asked the girlfriend if she wanted to stop and get something to eat, and she said that would be nice.

We had a couple of possible alternatives, including one place called Garibaldi's that's right down the road from her house. We took a different route back home than they way we went. I actually have taken the way before when I visited here last year, but it's nice to reacquaint myself with that part of town, too. When we were nearly back to her house, before stopping to eat, she remembered that there was a hockey game on, so we turned back to her place to watch that and she said she'd just make something quick to eat. Instead, we wound up ordering pizza from Papa John's. She got a smokehouse bacon chicken thing, and I got the Sicilian classic, which was Italian sausage, pepperoni, and some other Italian meat on a thin crust. It wasn't bad. Certainly not the best pizza ever, but what chain pizza really ever is?

We stayed up way too late watching the hockey. It went to four overtimes before the Stars managed to knock the Sharks out of the playoffs. So I guess now, since my Canadiens and Sharks have both fallen, I'll pull for the home team and be a Stars fan for the rest of the playoffs. I don't know how they'll do against Detroit, though. The Wings look pretty damned good this year. It was nearly three by the time we got to bed. Not good for her, since she had to go to work the next day.

The daily rundown, May 1

I got up fairly early again. I fed the little bratling and then browsed through some of the e-mail backlog. I wrote back to the guy from the dance band, telling him I might be out of the area tomorrow, but would be back for the weekend. I also wrote to another guy who I'd contacted before leaving Oregon. He is a drummer who was seeking musicians. Unfortunately, he replied and said that he was really mostly looking for a band which needed a drummer, not to start a new band, so I told him that I'd keep his address and if I got into a band situation and we needed a drummer, I'd drop him a line. I also sent off a note to another one of the earlier musicians I'd talked to, a guitarist seeking others to jam with, but I haven't heard back from him yet. He probably has a job or something.

I checked through some of the papers for jobs, but, once again, I haven't applied to any of them yet. Most of the morning was e-mailing the musicians and looking through the papers. I went downstairs and watched a baseball game around noon or so. The girlfriend came home for lunch, but she wasn't in a really great mood and went upstairs to have some alone time while I sat and watched more of the game. Unfortunately, the rest of the afternoon and the evening were very uneventful and I didn't really get very much of anything done. Watched some hockey, got a little more caught up on my e-mail, but that's just about the extent of things. I was going to go do the laundry, again, but wound up just being pretty much lazy for most of the day and didn't really accomplish anything useful that I was supposed to do. The girlfriend, Cory (the roommate), and I decided to go watch Iron Man at the theater they have here in town on Friday evening. It's called the Move Tavern, and they evidently serve beer and such there. No hard liquor, but they apparently do have some flavored alcohols that taste something like real booze. Hopefully it will be a decent movie and we'll all have a fun time. Danielle (the friend who came to the Jazz Festival with us) is probably going to be there, too, and I might even get the chance to meet Ashley, who is Cory's sister and a friend of the girlfriend.

After the hockey and a few drinks on my part, the girlfriend and I wandered off to bed, trying to make it at least something of an early night...

The daily rundown, April 30

I got up pretty early, when the girlfriend was getting up to go to work. I got my laundry kind of organized, sorted, and ready to go, and went through the paper to see if there were any good jobs available. Of course there were, but I was too lazy to really call or send out resumes. Idiot. I scooped out the litter box, but didn't really do too much else with the morning. I did get caught up on e-mail, at least. Oh, and I tried to get my music keyboard set up again, but it turns out I bought the wrong size power adapter at Radio Shack, so I guess I'll have to go back and get a different one, because who knows when I'm going to manage to dig the one out of my storage unit.

My girlfriend came home for lunch, like usual, and she was in a better mood than she had been recently. She wanted to see if we could do laundry together in the evening, which was fine with me. She also asked me to empty the dishwasher and bake a loaf of the bread mix she had in the cupboard, both of which were also fine with me.

After she went back to work, I emptied the dishwasher, and got the paper recycling brought out to my car, along with the laundry. I started watching a baseball game and nearly forgot all about the bread, which I was kneading as she came home. Once she changed and I had the bread dough rising in a bowl, we headed out into the world. We had to stop at her work first, because she'd forgotten her phone there. That was no problem, and apparently she doesn't mind my driving, even though I think I don't do a really outstanding job on the roads around here. After getting her phone, we headed to the laundromat. It's a good thing that I hadn't decided to go by myself earlier, because the laundry that we'd gone to when I visited last year is closed now, and I didn't know that or where the new one she goes to is located. When we got there, the washers were pretty much all taken, so we decided to head home and try later. She asked if we could go by her bank first, and the recycle place was on the way there. So we stopped there, but it turns out that the recycling dumpster for paper is completely full, and when she called the number on it, it just rang, so the office was probably closed. But we did get to her bank and get out the money so she could pay her rent. So we really went out for two things, and we did accomplish two things, but neither of the things we accomplished were the things we'd originally set out to do. Oh well.

We came back home and I punched down the dough and put it into a loaf pan to rise. I then sat down and watched the tail end of the Canadiens losing to Philly. I remembered to put the bread in the oven after that, and then I sat and watched the Sharks managed to stay alive, just barely, by beating the Stars to force a game 5. Between the games, the girlfriend headed out into the world and paid her rent. She also picked me up the three main newspapers for the area so I can look for more job openings, despite the fact that she seems to think that I have the inside track on the job at her work. Hopefully I'll get that one, but I really do need to start sending out more resumes and such just in case I don't. Can't get work when no one even knows that you're looking, after all.

After the hockey was over, I wandered upstairs, checked my mail to find the usual stuff, nothing much of huge interest. I brought the girlfriend up a slice of bread with butter on one half and peanut butter on the other. Personally, I didn't think the sourdough bread went well with peanut butter, but she seemed to like it. I had a slice myself, but with just butter on it. I read through a few e-mails and then we watched part of the Daily Show before heading off to sleep.

The daily rundown, April 28

I got up a little before nine, got the little beastie fed, and checked the e-mail. Nothing hugely interesting. There was a comment on one of my 43Things postings, and while I was reading through the mail, I got a message from one of my friends on StumbleUpon, but the majority of the remaining mail was just the usual kind of mailing list stuff. I still need to get caught up on the backlog, though, because I have hundreds of e-mails left to read. A little at a time, I guess.

I had all kinds of high hopes for getting stuff done with the day, but I wound up for the most part just sitting around playing on the computer more than I should have. I did get my application mostly filled out for the I/T job at the girlfriend's workplace. One of the problems I had with that, though, was that they wanted three references who were not previous employers, and one of the ones I put down on my resume was my former boss. I thought that was something of a gray area, so I wanted to find someone else who definitely wasn't a previous supervisor or anything. I wrote to one of the ladies in customer service who I usually had a pretty good relationship with, but I haven't heard anything back from her yet. I wonder if my e-mails are being blocked by the company now or something, although it's always possible that she's just on vacation or that the one particular e-mail got stuck in her junk mail folder or something. I don't know. But I really do need to write back to some more of the people there at the old work, just to keep the bridges still standing. I lose so many friends that it's unreal, and I'd really like to quit doing that, because I don't really know how many new friends I'm going to be able to make at this stage of the game...

I did write back to the guy who was looking for the bass player for the dance band. I just told him that I'd gone down to the jazz festival with my girlfriend and that I hadn't really had a whole lot of time over the weekend. I told him to go ahead and send me back an e-mail or something if I hadn't already totally pissed them off. Haven't heard anything back since then, but I don't know the situation, so not a huge deal at the moment.

I was supposed to go close the bank account today, but I just was feeling terribly unambitious. In addition to that, I also saw that there was still one outstanding payment on the account, for my Allstate motor club membership, and I wasn't sure what to do about that aside from just waiting for it to close out. So I basically wound up doing nothing as far as that was concerned. And, in general, I wound up doing very little with the day at all. I did wind up going downstairs and watching the hockey game that was on, but that was about the extend of my mobility, if you want to call it that. Never even got out of the house for the rest of the day. Typical laziness on my part...

The daily rundown, April 25

So I've decided to write a little daily entry on here, in addition to my updates on some of the 43Things.com goals that I do, and possible other entries as I see fit. So, what's happened over the past 24 hours that's really of any interest, even to me?

Yesterday was mostly just a stay-at-home day. After the girlfriend* went to work, I checked my e-mail and such. Nothing very interesting going on. I was going to head up to the market and get a copy of the Denton Record-Chronicle to look through the ads, but I wasn't feeling all that ambitious about it. I did update my resume and such on the WorkInTexas.com website, and it wound up giving me a match for a Systems Admin job in Corinth. I checked the "how to apply" section and it was just an e-mail in your resume type deal. So I wrote a little cover e-mail and sent it to the appropriate address. I probably should have spent a little more time on the intro e-mail, because I think I kind of downplayed my skills and concentrated too much on my shortcomings relative to their job requirements. But, what the hell. The worst they can do is turn me down for the job, which isn't necessarily that horrible.

In between adding stuff on that website and sending off my C.V., I also read through a few days' backlog of e-mail and finished organizing my 43Things.com list. I moved a bunch of stuff down on the list that I'm not going to be able to do right now because the necessary items are stuck somewhere at the back of my storage unit, and it's going to take me a while to dig them out. Also, I moved down some of the long term goals and some of the things that are just going to take money. Can't throw money at any of the goals until I actually have a job, after all.

I did a little bit of organization around the computer room here, but not all that much. I did dig out my cross stitch stuff and did a little work on the 4th day of Christmas, which I'm now way behind schedule on. I don't really know if I'm ever going to be able to get myself caught up on that kind of thing now, but I at least managed to get a little bit of stitching done. I also posted messages to the cross stitch list on Tribe.net and my own little cross stitch forum on StumbleUpon. Thus far, however, no replies to either of those messages. While I was on Tribe, I also updated my profile to indicate my new residence and all.

One thing I found while organizing the room was that I actually did have the battery charger for my camera sitting in one of the boxes over in the closet. I thought that was one of the numerous things buried down in the storage unit, so I wound up ordering one from Amazon.com a few days ago after my camera started telling me the battery was low. Now I either need to deal with having an extra or I need to return the one I ordered. Decisions, decisions... It is nice that I'll be able to take pictures sooner than I expected, though.

As it started getting toward evening, I wandered downstairs and had myself some leftover turkey curry for a lunch/dinner sort of thing, and I turned on the hockey game, Montreal vs. Philadelphia. That was pretty much the end of any productivity for the whole evening for me. My girlfriend got home from work and after changing her clothes joined me to watch hockey and Battlestar Galactica, which is sort of a Friday tradition in the house. Her roommate was sleeping, though, and the friend who usually comes over had an important paper to finish, so it was just the two of us. We finished the evening watching the Stars beat the Sharks in overtime. I'm pulling for the Sharks, because they've always been one of my favorites. Of course, the Stars are the hometown team around here, so I'm sort of the outsider, but that's all right. However this series goes, I'll wind up rooting for the winner to go the rest of the way in the West, at least. If Montreal wins the East, I'll have to go with them to win the Cup, as they've been my favorites for as long as I've been watching hockey.

After the game, we came upstairs and I figured I'd check my e-mail before retiring for the evening. There was one message of particular interest to me. It was from my ex-wife. She had written this: "You need you to close out the joint checking account at [the bank]. As per our divorce agreement we were supposed to close all joint accounts. I think I have given you plenty of time since I discussed this with you. As I am authorized to close this on my own, I am asking you to do this within two weeks or I will do it. I am still liable for this account and would like to remove all ties I have to you. So if I haven't seen evidence of this by May 9th, 2008, I will go to [the bank] and close out that account."

I find it rather interesting that she didn't seem to think that the specifics of our divorce settlement were all that critical when our house sold for over a hundred thousand dollars less than we anticipated and I let her keep 90% of the portion of the profits that I was entitled to by that same settlement. And she didn't seem to feel that need to remove "all ties" to me when she asked me to give that reference so she could get into her new apartment, or when she needed to have some free work done on her computer. But, she is technically right that I should have closed the account earlier. I didn't because it was the account that I had all of my automatic bill deductions linked to, and to which my direct deposit paychecks were posted. But, since I'm now between jobs and such, it seems like it's a good time to do it anyway. And, since she's choosing to be a pissy little bitch, it's a good time to do just like she wants and cut all the ties to her. So, I sent her a similarly terse message saying that I'd do it on Monday, then I sat here and drank a bit before heading off to bed. Not the best night ever, but life goes on...

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* I refer to my girlfriend by that sort of impersonal sounding term not because I feel impersonal, but because she doesn't have her name posted on all of her websites and such like I do. So I don't really think it's my place to go spreading her actual name over the internet. Just so you know...