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!