An update on two things

I have finished my 2 weeks of physical therapy on my wrist and tendon issue and there has definitely been an improvement. I wear a hard plastic split on my arm overnight and there is no more pain like I had before. Throughout the day it is less stiff and painful as well, so I am very happy.

I picked up the car from the mechanic last night. Turns out the idler pulley went bad and sort of exploded, shooting its bearings out which knocked the serpentine belt off. That would explain the racing noises I heard, which would have been the bearings going out. Then the clunk which was the idler pulley exploding. They said everything else looked fine, no damage was found. The repair was surprisingly inexpensive.

On the way home the power steering pump was making some bad noises so I checked the fluid level when I got home and it looked almost empty. There was some fluid that got sprayed around inside the engine compartment that I noticed before I had the car towed to the mechanic. I'll just add some more fluid and I'm pretty sure that will solve the problem.

It is still a pain in the butt to get a car repaired that is barely driven.

Really? Again?

My Ford Taurus started making some odd noises the past few times I've driven it. I had to run to the grocery store tonight and the noises were definitely louder, bit of a grinding, ball bearing sound. Well on the way back home the noise stopped, it squealed, then the battery light came on. THen a bunch more warning lights and I noticed the headlights dimming.

I lost power steering as well, luckily it stayed running long enough to get home. I was going to back it into the garage to make it easier to jump start if we had to. I flipped from drive to reverse and the engine died. I had no more battery power left so I just pushed the car into a parking spot on the street. I popped open the hood and saw that the serpentine belt was not looped around the alternator.

I pulled on the belt and it wasn't broken so it looks like it just came off somehow...which is rather odd. It was already quite dark outside so I didn't feel like messing with it. I may try and fix it myself, but I'm concerned at the rattling/grinding sound I heard. It is possible that some part of the tensioner pulley or something actually broke. If this is the case, I'd have no clue whatsoever on how to fix that.

My car knows I will be getting a tax refund when I do my taxes next month, so it fired a preemptive strike against that.

Yay Christmas was fun!

Its been busy around here, as I'm sure it has been for most people. Anna and I headed off to my Uncle Bob and Aunt Molly's house for the annual Christmas Eve get together which is always a great time. The food this year was several lasagnas, baguettes with pesto, bruschetta, plus many other sides, munchies, sweets, wine and booze. Good food, good company, can't really go wrong there.

We spent Christmas day at my parents house with my Grandma and Grandpa Harvey and that was also a great time. Consisted of more munchies and the main course of mom's homemade clam chowder which is ridiculously good. We had some of our favorite wine with it: Starling Castle Riesling, which is a nice German white wine.

We all exchanged gifts and the big gift from mom and dad for Anna and I was a portable GPS unit so we can finally go Geocaching properly. Its the perfect unit, good size, easy to use. Later that night at home, I was playing around with it and saw on their website they had some updates available for it. I ran them and they locked up, even after half an hour. I had to pull the power to the GPS, then it would not turn back on.

I didn't have it in me to troubleshoot it, so instead Anna and I watched an amazing documentary on coral reefs. It was originally filmed with IMAX cameras that play back on 10 story high screens, but it was converted to High Definition for watching at home. Let me say, the picture quality was the absolute most beautiful thing I'd ever seen featuring footage from Tahiti, French Polynesia, and Australia.

Then today, I managed to figure out a way to revive the dead GPS unit and it is now fully functional, which made me very happy!

Anna is up at her parents house this weekend to celebrate Christmas with family. I was unable to come with since I'm unable to get time off during this time of the year. I'm not too upset about it since thats just the way it is and thats the way it has been for years, so I'm used to not being able to travel over the holidays.

And to close out, the weather here today is crazy. Its been above freezing all day and a lot of the snow has melted. will be nice to get the roads a little more cleaned up. Its time for me to warm up some leftover clam chowder, I'm starving!

Busy Sunday

Anna and I slept in this morning until about 9am. The cats were meowing at us to come feed them, so we finally got up and gave them what they wanted. We sat around for a bit then went to dig out the massive snow drifts in our driveway. I made sure to put a pot of coffee on first, then when we got back in we made a delicious breakfast of homemade hash browns (shredded using our new food processor..yay!), bacon, eggs, and toast.

Dad came by around noon to pick Anna up to go back and make Christmas baked goods with Mom. I headed off to New Ulm for my only appointment for the day, which was a very simple printer problem. The wind was pretty strong and was blowing snow all over the place, which reduced visiblity to less than 100 feet. I foolishly snapped a few pictures with my cell phone to share.




I quickly finished up in New Ulm and headed back. Since that was my only appointment of the day, I stopped in at Mom and Dad's where the ladies were very busy in the kitchen. I helped Dad update his GPS unit to the 2009 maps, then helped decorate some of the cookies which was definitely fun.

We had a good dinner then Anna and I headed back home to relax. Definitely a good Sunday.

a new piece of hardware

My physical therapist fitted me today with a hard plastic split that immobilizes my wrist and thumb. I've been wearing it most of the day and it does seem to feel better. One downside is that it renders me unable to play video games while wearing it. Perhaps that is a good thing.

I had yesterday and today off work and I'm back to work on Saturday. A nice hectic day it looks to be as well. Hopefully the blowing snow won't be too much of an issue as I go from appointment to appointment. Anna and my mom are going to bake Christmas cookies and goodies on Sunday. I loves me some cookies!

Tuesday's gone....with the wind

...Skynyrd song lyric in case you didn't catch it.

So Ben, what did you do today?
I actually had a pretty busy work day. I rolled into the store about 10am today and got all 5 things on my to-do list done. I then hit the road to head over to Faribault, MN to clean up a virus/spyware issue on a computer. The client was very excited to have a working computer because before I got there, the computer would not even start up.

My next appointment was for the folks whose furnace stopped working yesterday. I had to make a return trip because their new internet service wasn't quite active yet when I was there. They were so excited when I was done, they gave me an African Horned Melon that they grew in their garden. They had a bunch of them laying around. The gentleman wanted to get a few pictures taken with me, his wife, and the Geekmobile. Now you might think this is weird, but honestly it would be the 5th time or so that a client has asked to take my picture with the Geekmobile. They also explained to me that they have owned 3 different Volkswagen Beetles together over the course of time.

I helped out one more repeat client of mine setting up her new computer then made my way back to Mankato from St. Peter. Anna had sent me a few text messages warning me of dangerous road conditions and a large accident involving multiple cars on Highway 169 near Highway 14. I opted to take Highway 22 back, which is my preferred route anyway. Everything went fine, I didn't slide around at all. I did see a couple cars in the ditches though.

I have physical therapy Wednesday, a full work day, then the next two days off to stay home and relax.

I can't help it!!

Ok ok, so I'm doing a blog post about the cold weather. Yeah I can't help it.

Chilly day here this morning. Woke up to about -10F but at least it was bright and sunny outside. I went to go get the cars started and driveway shoveled and surprisingly both cars started right up no problem. Of course the plow went by about one minute before Anna left and I was able to pull my car in the driveway, so it left a nice pile of snow around my car. Luckily I was able to move it out no problem after Anna left and even better, the plow driver made another sweep through my street to clear out the pile left by my car in the way.

Had my physical therapy again on my wrist and it seemed to make a bit of an improvement. Even tonight it isn't quite as sore as it has been. It could be just that I've been so cold all day that its being kept numb.

My first appointment at work today was in the town of St. Peter. When I arrived at the house, the clients warned me that their furnace has been down all day but someone was on the way to fix it. Needless to say, it was very cold in there, about 50 degrees (I saw the thermometer). They had space heaters and the oven door open just to keep the house from being frozen. The furnace guy finished up right as I was leaving. Turns out their problem was simply an exterior vent clogged with snow. Stupidly simple, but was enough to keep their furnace off.

My second appointment was at a house in rural North Mankato. The computer room was quite cold and the client made sure to point out to me several times that she can't wait to remodel that room and duct in more heat.

I didn't take my coat off at all today while at work, and I work inside! I feel so sorry for the people that have to do road construction, deliver mail, fix utilities, etc in this cold cold weather.

Topic? awww dammit

It would be cliché for me to complain about the blizzard conditions right now, so I won’t do that. I’ve also been complaining about my wrist issue lately so I won’t anymore either. Hmm, what’s left to talk about then?

Anna and I watched a couple movies tonight, including the 1981 cult-classic animated movie Heavy Metal. We’ve never seen it and we both found the film very interesting. It was a collection of short stories all tied together by a theme. Some parts were trippy, others were funny, and others were downright ridiculous, but overall enjoyable.

Pets

Our male cat Simon hasn’t seemed to happy lately.  We were pretty sure he doesn’t like the food we give him, it seems too hard for him to chew so he usually just swallows it whole, which doesn’t make him feel good.  We picked up some canned cat food for them and he seems much more happy now.  Yay Simon!

The pet store also had some cats there from one of the county’s Humane Society on hand for adoption, so we played with a couple orange little kittens for awhile.  They were very cute and well behaved.  We both wanted to take one home, but now is not a good time for that.

I had a good day at work and put on over 150 miles today.  I really don’t mind the long drives, its actually pretty relaxing since I don’t have to travel through any metropolitan areas or anything.

It would appear that retail stores here in Mankato are doing just fine.  Everyone has packed parking lots and there were cars everywhere today.  Its good to see people out spending money.

Physical Therapy

I had my first of 7 visits to the physical therapist. They decided to apply some type of drug to an electrode and attach it to my wrist where the inflammation resides. For the next 10 minutes, it delivers the drug through my skin, then they take an ultrasound device to it for a few minutes which further drives it in deep.

Apparently this is desire over giving an actual injection. Seems like a lot of work for a sore wrist, but hey they are the experts.

I also have some stretching and massaging exercises to do to my wrist twice daily. At least I go 3 times a week for the visits so it will be done with in 2 weeks. I just hope this fixes it. I'll be pissed if I still have to receive an injection after all of this. I have nothing against injections whatsoever, but if it turns out I needed one anyway it would have been nice to just get it from the start.

Doctor visit results

I saw the orthopedic surgeon today and he deduced that I have De Quervain's Tenosynovitis. Don't ask me to pronounce it because there is no way I can. It sounds like it is nothing serious and can be fixed with just physical therapy instead of surgery. I'll be going to one on Friday, hopefully it isn't something I have to go in for weekly or anything since those office visits get expensive after awhile.

Going to the doctor

I don't think I've written about this yet. For the last few weeks, I've been experiencing some pretty crazy pain in my left wrist and thumb. It wakes me up at night and when I try and pull the covers up it is a ridiculous amount of pain. I made an appointment to see an orthopedic surgeon and I finally get to see him Thursday the 11th.

Hopefully something can be done because it is definitely impacting me, sometimes it is painful to lift things up, and waking up during the night due to pain isn't very cool. I do have the next 2 days off so I can relax in case they do something to my wrist that requires rest.

Kitty!

My client today had a very nice Bengal cat. Anna and I both love the look of a Bengal, very wild looking with the spots of a leopard, but very tame and social. This cat was very playful and really enjoyed watching me hook up her owner's computer. The cat loved to be pet and played with and I was kind of sad I finished up with the work quickly and had to go.

I've been wanting to get another cat lately and it would be awesome to find a Bengal cat, but its probably not very likely we'll find one at the Humane Society to adopt. I know I could get one from a pet store or a breeder, but they are expensive cats so I wouldn't go that route.

Here are a few pictures I found of Bengal cats.

ITS GOING TO SNOW!!!!

Apparently southern Minnesota is about to get hit with 4-6" of snow shortly. YAY!

This video is related to the subject of snow and makes me laugh out loud every time I watch it. Thanks to Tony Doll for sending it to me!

Whoops, halloween pics

I realized today while going through pictures that I did not post Anna and I dressed up for Halloween. These are our Renaissance Festival outfits that we ordered online this summer. As always, click the photos for a larger view.

One thing leads to many

Anna and I purchased a Nintendo Wii video game system a little over a year ago and at first we played it all the time. Now it just sits there and never gets used. It did however, develop a video glitch that would make the picture on the TV go fuzzy. Luckily, I bought it from Best Buy with the 2 year replacement plan on it. I took it in and got store credit for the original purchase price, since we didn't want another Wii.

I proceeded to browse around the store for at least an hour trying to figure out what to spend the store credit on. I have been wanting a wireless keyboard and mouse to replace the stock ones that came with my computer. Finding a set that would fit my needs and also be Mac-compatible was actually rather difficult. I ended up having to return the first set because there was a glitch with the mouse that prevented a Mac computer from ever entering sleep-mode to conserve power.

I ended up getting this fantastic ergonomic set from the Logitech company, and I am completely satisfied with it.
We have both been wanting a food processor for at least a couple years now but never got around to buying one. Luckily this time of the year, Best Buy carries a larger assortment of small appliances, so I picked up a KitchenAid food processor that was just the perfect size and matches our KitchenAid stand mixer as well.



There is still some money left over on the store credit so we'll have to find a few little things to pick up sometime. Nothing like going on a free shopping spree! Well, not exactly free since I paid for the original Nintendo Wii in the first place, but over a year ago so that money is written off.

Storm Chasers

Anna and I are finding ourselves watching HDTV programming almost exclusively now that we have a pretty large TV. One of the shows we have started watching is Storm Chasers on the Discovery Channel. Fantastic and beautiful show documenting a team of people that hunt down and study tornadoes in the midwest United States. These people are pretty crazy and also ridiculously smart.

One thing I noticed though: there is some definite male sexual tension in the TornadoVideos.net vehicle between Joel and Reed. I'm pretty sure these guys get sexually excited when they are approaching a large tornado on the ground. Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against this lifestyle, but at times these guys are pretty silly.

The show overall is very good though, very entertaining and thrilling. A must-watch if you have an HDTV.

Christmas is here!

Anna and I put up the tree and ornaments tonight. Its always a good time doing that, going through all the ornaments and the memories they bring back. She was able to get Christmas weekend off to head back home to spend Christmas with her family. I'm not allowed to take time off during November and December so I don't get to come with. I'm not too bummed out since I'm used to not being able to take off on holidays.

I'm such a geek

And not just because I work for Geek Squad. Last night, I had a very long dream about owning the Apple iPhone. Yes thats right, I could have dreamt about winning the lottery, living on a private island in the Caribbean, or having magical powers. No, I dreamt I had an iPhone.

And I'm almost ashamed to admit that I enjoyed the dream.

I blame my wife

Anna showed me several kitty videos on Youtube today. Now I want a kitty! We already have 2, but I'd like a little kitten now too.

At work, they are changing our cell phone carrier from Sprint to AT&T. This change makes me nervous since Sprint has phenomenal coverage in my area and AT&T is questionable. I got the new phone and it should be active in a few days so we'll see how well it performs around the area. The phone is a slightly different model and it does feel a bit more refined and solid.

We got a little bit of snow today and both of us would definitely like more. I think we will also set up our Christmas tree and decorations on Monday. So far, I'm not too grumpy about the holidays. Some years I can't wait for it to be over with and other years it is no big deal.

Ho ho ho

Geocaching, Dad's turn

Dad finally got his handheld GPS unit so he could go Geocaching. For those that don't remember, geocaching, as defined by Wikipedia is:

Geocaching is an outdoor treasure-hunting game in which the participants use a Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver or other navigational techniques to hide and seek containers (called "geocaches" or "caches") anywhere in the world. A typical cache is a small waterproof container containing a logbook and "treasure," usually toys or trinkets of little value. Today, well over 800,000 geocaches are registered on various websites devoted to the pastime. Geocaches are currently placed in over 100 countries around the world and on all seven continents, including Antarctica.

I went over to their place so Dad and I could figure out the new GPS unit and how to download the Geocaching stuff into it. After about an hour we had it set and we were off towards a cache that was about 2 miles from their house. It was down a minimum maintenance road and thankfully we were in Dad's Ford Expedition with 4WD. Without that we most likely couldn't have made it in there. Dad was able to zero in on it pretty easily and we signed the log book and took photos.

Getting his bearings

It led us to this suspicious pile of rocks

I think he's onto something

What's this barrel here?

Hey what's that?!

Dad and I taking a look at what we found

Dad signing the logbook

Panorama I made of the site. Its pretty big, you might have to scroll from left to right to see it all

My new car

My 2004 Volkswagen Geekmobile has been retired and replaced with a brand-new 2009 with 6 miles on it. Needless to say, I was pretty excited to get my first new car! Granted, its not exactly my car, but I'm the only one that drives it and my personal car gets maybe 2 miles a week put on it, if even.

Sorry about the poor quality, I didn't have my digital camera with me when I picked it up so I had to use my cell phone camera.



Its been a very enjoyable experience so far with the new car. Some of the highlights I really like about it: Heated seats, very nice especially since it is getting cold now. It has a jack that I can plug my iPod into and listen to my music and stuff. In the last car, I had to hook it up to this FM transmitter thing and tune in to a certain station to listen to it which had a ton of static. Now it is crystal clear.

Somehow, it has slightly less legroom up front now but it isn't too big of a deal. I've already driven it 40-50 miles one way to an appointment and it is very comfortable.

Whoops

Looking back at my last post, it probably wasn't a good idea to have such a long delay in posting to here again. No, I did not suffer any brain damage or physical harm from my bout of insomnia.

Not much to report here lately. It is coming up on the busy season at work so the stress levels are rising a bit. They wouldn't be so high, but one of the supervisors at the store quit so they have me doing some of the responsibilities. Its been pretty good at work lately though, I've had lots of appointments so I've been out on the road quite a bit.

For some reason I had an appointment in Eden Prairie which is about an hour and a half drive for me but I made it up there no problem. It was a difficult computer issue for a business but I was able to recover the guy's files and get him up and running again. He was incredibly excited since he had quite a few documents and presentations he'd been working on for months. At some point it looked like he wanted to give me a high five but I wasn't sure so I stuck my hand out for a handshake so I didn't look like a complete idiot.

Saturday is my good friend Andy's birthday. He and his girlfriend Holly will be in town so we're going out for dinner and drinks with them. Its always a good time hanging out with them, a shame they live in Burnsville so its tough to meet up as often as we'd like. Its been over a month since we've all met up so we have lots of catching up to do. At least we can keep in contact via the internet so we're not completely isolated.

HAHAHA your drugs have no effect on me!

As I blogged yesterday, I had a 6am meeting today at work. Neither of us were very tired and didn't get to bed until shortly after midnight. I laid down, got comfortable, and after a few minutes I realized that I wasn't tired and there was no way I was going to fall asleep.

The music of Bob Marley always relaxes me and puts me in a calm mood, so I tried listening to his music in my head, but to no avail. I got up, took a swig of Nyquil and watched the History Channel for an hour. This combination is deadly for me, as Nyquil or History Channel by itself can lull me to sleep within 30 minutes. Don't get me wrong, I love the History Channel, but the guy that narrates the show Modern Marvels has such a soothing voice, it puts me right out.

I started feeling a bit drowsy after an hour of being subjected to a show about swords, axes, and knives, so back to bed I went. 20 minutes later I was not asleep and didn't feel any sign of it coming, so I said to myself, "Screw it, I'll just stay up!"

By this time it was around 2:30am and I had a 5am wake-up time, so I just decided to play some video games until I had to go to work. Had a full day, 6am to 2:15pm, and I got through it just fine. Here it is, almost 30 hours since I last slept, and I really don't feel any more sleepy than I normally would in the evening after a full day of work.

I really have no idea how my body rejected the coma-inducing effects of Nyquil and the hypnotic narration on the History Channel. Perhaps my body was going into overtime processing the massive amount of Taco Bell I had for lunch yesterday and it was not done when it was bedtime. Perhaps this experiment should be tested again under more controlled circumstances.

I just know I'm going to read this post after a good night's sleep and realize that right now as I write this, I am stark raving mad!

Back to the grind

I had a very nice relaxing day off today. Simon (one of our cats) woke me up today at about 8:30 and wanted some food. I obliged him and got some laundry started before catching up on the day's news. A few hours go by and I'm absolutely starving so I made a run to Taco Bell. I swear that is some of the most delicious food on the planet.

Of course I got sleepy after eating this delicious food, so I took a nice nap which is incredibly rare for me. I got the long awaited Fable 2 video game this afternoon in the mail, so I had a go at that for awhile. Anna offered to cook dinner tonight and I was more than willing to surrender control of the kitchen so I could keep playing my game. heheh

Back to work tomorrow though, starting with a 6am meeting, then a couple of service calls. It shouldn't be too late of a day, and I could even be home before 2pm. I should probably go to bed since I have to get up in about 5 hours. Goodnight!

When it rains, it pours

Why does everything happen at the same time? We've managed to rack up quite the debt in the past month. First Anna had her sleep test and subsequent CPAP machine to allow her to get good sleep, totally worth it. Then her laptop died and needed to be replaced. My car needed work so it would run this winter, and then we had to put new headlights and a battery in Anna's car. Plus insurance on my car and license plate tabs are due on her car now.

Seriously, this stuff couldn't have spaced itself out a little more? I think I'll save money by shredding up old bills and junk mail and boil it for dinner. I wonder how much a kidney goes for on the black market? I have 2 of them, I'm sure I can get by with just one.

Other ways I could make money:

- Get into bank robbery on the side.
- Part-time treasure hunter.
- Get a loan for $50,000 and use it to buy 50,000 Powerball tickets. You'd have to at least break even with that many, right?
- Become a heroin dealer. People need heroin!
- Marry a rich old woman on the verge of death and get into her will.
- Figure out what kind of paintbrush Pablo Picasso used, buy one, and create million dollar paintings
- Blackmail. The person knows who they are. *glares*
- Sell off the 75 gold bricks I have in my basement. I don't think I really need them
- I've had this idea of making a website where people could sell stuff, in the form of an online auction. I'm pretty sure no one has thought of that yet.
- Travel back through time and purchase lots of shares in Apple, Google, and Microsoft
- Stop buying those cute little pony figurines by the dozens
- Those 3 Van Gogh paintings that nobody knows I have...they might be worth something.

There be snow here!

I stumbled out of bed to find this today:







I was definitely surprised but it rather pretty. My assignment for today is to get a new battery installed in Anna's VW. It hasn't been starting as easily in the morning and our favorite repair shop said that it is just the battery. I'm going to call around and see if I can just get prices on a battery since it really shouldn't be hard to do it myself at all.

Rain? really?

I was hoping for non-rainy weather today or tomorrow so we could have a fire in the backyard with some of the new wood that my parents brought over. Anna and I like to make dinner and go eat by the campfire. It is always nice and relaxing, eating under the stars with a warm fire going.

I realized I haven't actually commented with words about the elections here. Anna and I were both shocked, amazed, and overjoyed that Barack Obama will be our next president. Wasn't as pleased that most of the Senate/Congress spots went to Republicans, but I guess you can't win them all. We're still waiting on the results of Al Franken vs. Norm Coleman. It looks like Coleman has won by just a few hundred votes, out of almost 3 million votes cast. That is just crazy close and I really dont plan on hearing the official results for a few weeks.

It is definitely a relief that the election is finally over, we can all rest easy now and not have to deal with all the TV commercials, mailings, emails. Speaking of campaign mailings, it really did get ridiculous the amount of ads we would get in the mailbox every day. A few days there were over 10 of them, but we never read a single one that got sent to us. It didn't matter who they endorsed, I am not basing my voting decision off what is basically propaganda.

So this will probably be the last political blog post in awhile from me. Hopefully, haha

Yes we can

The Big Day

Tuesday is election day here in the USA. It is ALMOST HERE!! I will be able to vote in less than 10 hours from now. This campaign season has lasted almost 2 years and I have to admit, I am exhausted.

I'm hoping everything goes smoothly with the elections across the country. I've been reading reports about states that have early voting and I am concerned. There have been problems with many of the electronic voting systems either not registering the vote at all or switching the vote to the opposite of what they voted for. Very scary stuff!

Happy Halloween!

Yaarrrrrr I be a pirate!

Its ALIVE!

Anna and I decided it was probably a good idea to bring in our old '96 Ford Taurus to the shop to get it fixed. It was Anna's car when she was still in high school, and I use it to drive to work and back since its barely a 2 mile drive. It hasn't been running very well for many months now: jerky acceleration, hard shifting, backfiring sometimes.

Turns out it just needed new spark plugs, wires, a tuneup. I had the oil changed while I was at it. It was still kind of expensive but much cheaper than having to buy a replacement car. It drives wonderfully now, the best I ever remember it running. Kudos to the guys at Car-X here in Mankato. I really don't know if they are expensive compared to other places in town, but they have always done quality work for us.

How important is a witty title? Very.

The weekend came and went rather quickly. Granted, I work on the weekend so those days are nothing special to me. I did manage to finally get a haircut on Saturday after work. For a couple days after I get it cut, my head kind of looks blocky until the haircut blends in a bit.

We're preparing for the cold season here at the Meyer house, pulling up the tomato plants, raking leaves constantly. We washed all our winter blankets so we can snuggle up with fresh blankets now.

Anna and I finally had dinner at the Hunan Garden restaurant in North Mankato. Good Asian food there, but the place itself was pretty ghetto. You could tell they are trying to get by as cheaply as possible in there. All the plates and silverware were plastic disposable and very cheap low quality at that along with the smallest cheapest napkins I'd ever seen. The decor was half-assed at best, but there is something kind of fun about eating at a trashy joint. The portions were gigantic, even I wouldn't finish my meal and took half of it home.

We were going to just have it delivered but they only accept cash for delivery payments. Who keeps cash around nowadays? We sure don't, so we told them we would just eat in. We could have picked it up and brought it home to eat, but were already driving there, we may as well eat there and see how it is.

Anna said it would be fun for her to pick up some food for dinner on her way home from work, since it is kind of on the way home for her. She has about 3 different routes she can take, and that is one of them. So we may do the Chinese food takeout thing from time to time.

A disappointment

As I previously blogged, I received my Star Wars video game, which I proceeded to play all the way through to completion in just 3 sittings in 2 days. While it was a very fun game, I'm rather disappointed at how short of a game it was. At least I didn't pay the normal $60 that they sell for. I'm a member of Gamefly.com, which is an online video game rental service. I get to have 2 games out at a time for as long as I want. When I mail one back, they send me the next one in my queue, all for a low monthly fee. Very similar to how Netflix does movies.

I figure I have saved hundreds if not thousands of dollars by renting games via Gamefly versus flat out buying them for $60 a pop. And I'm all about getting a deal and saving money on things.

ahhh the weekend

And today marks the start of my weekend, since I have Thursdays and Fridays off from work. I should be stocked up and ready to go: I stopped a the store and picked up some beer and a bottle of bourbon. I should also be getting a new video game in the mail tomorrow: Star Wars: The Force Unleashed. Should be a good weekend.

Out with the old...

I finally made it up to JC Penny to spend my birthday gift certificate. I have this special gift to know when they have a killer sale, and this time was no different. I picked up some long-needed new jeans and some shirts. I also replaced my wallet. I've had the same wallet for probably close to 17 years. It was beat to hell and falling apart. Anna helped me pick out a very stylish new one and it it is about half the thickness of the old one. Its going to take some getting used to the new one as I'd gotten to used to the last one. I knew exactly where everything was in it, not that there was ever actually money in it.

In other news, I've been very busy at work, full days and tough appointments. Some of the appointments felt like I was just banging my head on the desk for several hours trying to get the computer fixed, but thats the way it goes somedays.

An update

I believe I am over my caffeine addiction now. I'm not suffering from headaches and as far as I know, the grumpiness associated with caffeine withdrawal is gone. The nice thing about not having coffee in the morning is not having to go pee 4 times before noon now.

In other news, I have a very busy day at work this saturday. I just plotted out my course and I will be driving over 250 miles to get to my 3 appointments. Half of my work day will just be spent in the car, which isn't all that bad since I'm getting paid while I drive and the VW Beetle is a comfortable car to drive. I know I'll be exhausted by the time I get home, which I'm guessing if I start my day at 7:45am I should get home around 7pm at the latest.

I've also learned that my cable company will be adding the Food Network to their list of High Definition channels. This is going to look fantastic on our new 50" plasma HDTV.

Oh, I didn't blog about the new TV did I? Here's the story on that! My laptop had to go in for servicing several times and under the Best Buy service plan policy if it requires a 4th repair, they will replace it. They added a new option where if you can't find an acceptable model for replacement or if you didn't want the same type of product that you could just get store credit. I really didn't use my laptop all that much, most of the time it just sat there being unused so I opted to get store credit.

The laptop I bought was fairly high end at the time so it was rather expensive. With the store credit, I was able to get a 50" Panasonic plasma TV literally at no cost, pretty much just sales tax. It happened that my laptop was worth what a huge TV now sells for. We got rid of our older TV and entertainment center and it is now a very nice smaller TV stand with the big TV on top. It actually gave us more room in the living room and the TV looks amazing. Anna and I are both very happy with it.

Fun times!

Lots of fun can be had with a webcam:










Be sure to click them to get the full size picture.

Houses! Houses for sale!

There are three houses for sale on my block. That is a significant percentage of houses, do they know something about this block that I don't? Is the apocalypse going to start on this block? Is an asteroid going to crash into the street?

At least we are very happy with our house. We have been very fortunate in the 2 years we've been in it, no issues nothing has fallen down or crumbled apart. Looking at the market now, we paid too much for the house, but it was in the perfect location, had almost exactly what we wanted, and it was a pretty fair price to start with.

On a completely unrelated topic, Taco Bell is the most delicious food you can possibly have. Especially when its night time and you are absolutely starving. $6 got me a ridiculous amount of food and a large drink last night and I was so very satisfied. After a couple drinks and you start getting the munchies, Taco Bell can be the perfect answer to that problem.

Have you hugged a tree today?

I'm becoming more and more aware of how wasteful our society is with materials. I try my hardest to not only recycle everything that I can, but also purchase items that use less packaging or packaging that is recyclable.

At work today I had a few hours to kill before the store opened, so I went through and cleaned out the old forms, invoices, brochures, and other promotional crap that we had laying around. It was all expired so I started piling it up to take it back to the recycling box for paper that we finally have in. I quickly realized I was going to need a shopping cart to hold it all and by the time I was done, the cart was half full of paper. I was glad that we now have our paper recycled but still kind of bummed me out a bit that so much paper was created, never used, and had to be recycled into something else.

Even though all this paper will be recycled, it is still incredibly wasteful. The process to both create and recycle paper consumes quite a bit of other resources like water and wood, and to create paper can sometimes require harmful chemicals. You would think working for Best Buy's Geek Squad, a very high tech company, we could figure out a way to not need to use so much paper, but apparently it is the opposite.

This isn't supposed to happen!

I did laundry today and since the forecast was for clear skies, I hung 4 loads of laundry outside. Was sunny, a slight breeze, perfect for drying clothes the natural and environmentally friendly way. They were outside for around 3-4 hours and were probably dry, then I heard thunder. At first I thought it was just from the road construction a block away but then I heard it again and softly said "Oh Sh&@", since Anna was napping.

I ran out with laundry baskets in tow and started pulling the laundry off. Just a few droplets of rain, no big deal, I'll be fine....WTF its POURING NOW! I was getting soaked and so were the clothes. I frantically got everything pulled off and brought it inside where I surveyed the damage. The clothes weren't all that wet but I will have to run them through the dryer to get the dry again.

Damn you mother nature...DAMN YOUUUUUU!

Emergency meeting

On my way to an appointment yesterday around 3pm, I got a phone call from work saying that the general manager of the store wanted to meet with me and the other Double Agent at work. He wanted to meet with him at 6am and me at 6:30. I immediately had a bad feeling about this, since we have not had that many appointments lately. I was concerned that he was going to fire or demote one of us.

I got pretty anxious for awhile, got to my appointment and forgot all about it. Soon after leaving I remembered it again and got anxious. I let Anna know about what happened and we talked about it for a bit. We were both worried, but after a little while we were fine.

I woke up at 5am this morning, got ready to head over. I got there a bit early so I waited while they were in the meeting. When they came out, it was my turn to go in. The store manager sat me down and started in his speech, which sounded like a "You're being demoted" speech.

Turns out, my job is safe but the other guy is being demoted to just working in the store, acting as a trainer to get the store's performance back up to where it used to be. He does have the option to get his spot back if business deems it necessary.

Needless to say, I was incredibly relieved that it wasn't me since I absolutely love to work out in the field. I feel bad for the other guy since he'd been in that position longer than I have, but my hard work and performance level assured me the spot. I'm also glad that neither of us were let go or anything like that.

Overall, my meeting was good, the store manager had many good things to say about me, so I'm happy. And my stress level immediately went down after he said that I wasn't being demoted. One plus side of this is I will be the only Double Agent for the Geek Squad here in Mankato (for those that don't know, I do on-site computer repair/setup/maintenence, wireless networking, etc) so all the appointments will go to me, keeping me busier and probably opportunity for overtime.

I've got a bad feeling about this

For quite awhile, I had coffee in the morning. Two, maybe three cups, then I would go to work and that would be all the caffeine for the day. For a few weeks now, I have been starting to get headaches in the later afternoon and evening and I would usually wake up with one too. I get a very specific kind of headache if I haven't had caffeine in awhile and it is certainly not pleasant.

I don't like this reaction my body has, and I dont want to have to be consuming caffeinated products throughout the day, so I have quit caffeine more or less. Its been 3 days since I've had any morning coffee and I've had just a few Diet Cokes.

I haven't been doing too bad, but I do have a pretty decent headache going on right now. I took 800mg of ibuprofen about half an hour ago but there hasn't been much change. I dont feel too grumpy yet but I'm sure it will happen since that is also a symptom of caffeine withdrawl for me.

I would say by Tuesday or Wednesday I should be doing just fine. Its sure going to be a fun ride there and I apologize in advance if I'm mean to you.

My stance

My new bumper sticker is here! Took long enough, jeez.



The 2nd debate between Senators John McCain and Barack Obama are on tonight, but I'm not really sure if I'm going to watch it or not. I've known for a long time that I would be voting for Obama and I really don't need any more convincing, nor have I seen anything that would sway me from this decision.

I'm getting incredibly tired and a bit sickened at the extreme negativity of the McCain campain and the Republican party in general. I think there are a lot of people that would greatly prefer that the candidates stick to the issues and their stance on things, not making up rumors, spreading false information, and downright lying about their opponent. Unfortunately, the McCain campain cannot seem to do this. I guess McCain's "experience" also means he knows how to run a dirty campain, and he's certainly proven he has experience in this aspect.

So there it is, there's my political rant.

Monday

Anna and I are very easily amused. Case in point: grocery shopping. It takes us about an hour to do and we actually find it to be fun. What isn't fun about going to the meat counter, picking out the perfect steaks while imagining how delicious they will be.

One bad part about the grocery store is the wide variety of coffee available for purchase. We got fancy and started buying the "gourmet" coffee in the bags in the whole bean variety. We have to grind it ourselves at home, which really isn't a big deal because we both agree that it is a much more tasty cup of coffee. The bad part about that is we are spoiled now. The cheap stuff really does not taste nearly as good, so we're stuck getting the expensive stuff now. Lesson learned: it's sometimes ok to settle for mediocrity if you don't realize that is what you've done.

Monday nights are also enjoyable because 3 of our favorite TV shows are on. Heroes, Chuck, and How I Met Your Mother. All are great shows and have something unique that appeal to us. Very glad we have a Tivo box that can record 2 programs at once for us, plus we can watch a program that has already been recorded. If not for Tivo, we would not be able to watch all 3 programs since some of them overlap.

One more down

We had a great time celebrating my birthday last night. Anna and I went out for dinner with our friends Andy and Holly, had a delicious dinner and good drinks. Of course the staff had to come and sing happy birthday to me but I got a free dessert out of the deal!

Afterward, we all headed back to our house. Holly hadn't seen our house yet, so we took her on the grand tour and ended up in the basement where we played a few games of pool. Then it was out to the backyard where we had a nice fire, enjoyed drinks, and told stories and joked around. A good time was had by all.

Was a good birthday, I didn't have to endure too many "don't break your hip" jokes from friends and coworkers. Not that I mind anyway since I don't plan on acting like a grown-up for many years yet.

Saturday night's alright for fightin

I suppose I should acknowledge that today is my 30th birthday. I've really had 30 of these things already? As long as it doesn't mean I have to stop giggling at fart jokes and silly hand gestures, then I'm fine with it.

Anna and I will be going out to celebrate with some friends this evening, which is always a good time. Nothing like steak and overpriced cocktails to celebrate any occasion, such as someone's birthday, the stock market going up, or just the simple fact that the sky is blue. Yay! The sky is blue! Lets have steak and cocktails!

Its me?

Its not that I wasn't writing in here; I was abducted by aliens and was temporarily unavailable. But I'm back now so everything is back to normal.

I had to pick up a few essentials today: ground pork, hair gel, and coffee beans. These are going to be used independently of each other, not some crazy mad-chef concoction. The bored checkout girl asked the normal "paper or plastic" and I answered my normal "Paper, please."

I prefer paper bags since they are recyclable and will actually break down if they actually make it to a landfill, unlike plastic bags which will be around for hundreds if not thousands of years.

Here is my paper bag from the grocery store:

And this is what was inside. One bag of coffee beans, and whats this? 2 plastic bags? What on earth?


Now, wrapping the ground pork in a plastic bag sort of makes sense, just in case the sealed package was leaking (which they never do from my experience). But why on earth did she need to put the hair gel in a whole separate bag? Did it need to be protected from the sealed back of coffee beans? Is having the plastic hair gel container pressed up against a paper bag recipe for disaster?

You have to wonder how many plastic bags are wasted this way. I'm going to guess its in the tens of thousands every day in this fine country of ours.

I'm apparently not that interesting.

I don't have much new to report on. I am over my cold, which is a relief. Work has been keeping me quite busy which is nice.

Hmm, I really can't think of anything else to share, so goodnight!

( )

I've been battling a cold for the past couple of days and it is starting to gain the upper hand. I don't have much of a voice right now so I sound pretty pathetic when I try to talk or even laugh. At least I have the weekend off to recuperate before going back to work on Monday.

In other news, Anna and I have almost narrowed down what we will be getting for our Renaissance Festival outfits. Its pretty exciting and we are both looking forward to it next month.

Home sweet home

I got back in town Friday evening, completely exhausted from both the intense training and the long nights out on the town with the other Agents there from the training. Our group did exceptionally well, the average grade on the exam for the group was 93%. I only missed one question and got a 98%.

We had a great time there, learned a ridiculous amount of information about troubleshooting and repairing Apple Macintosh computers. At the end of all the training, we got a great tour of the Best Buy corporate headquarters, sticking mostly to the Geek Squad-related areas. The founder of Geek Squad wasn't in the office when we went there, but they let us in to poke around and take pictures.




Our whole group went out to the parking garage where many Geekmobiles are kept along side the Geek Squad limo behind us. Click the picture to get a better view.