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.