Tried to post this yesterday

Screwed up my sleep again so I'm all kind of messed up. On Tuesday I stayed up until 2 AM and got up around 8:15 am. Got up early to see if my buddy needed help at the comic store. My other buddy was there so I ended up heading done to hang out with them and found that a third friend was there too. Then a fourth friend showed up later in the morning. So it was a good time - new comics and hanging with friends - do some work too.

Left a little after noon, paid my house insurance down payment (was blind sided by this bill - completely forgot about house insurance), went home, and read one comic in the bright sunshine while sitting on my lawn during the beautiful fall day. I then passed out around 2:20 pm and woke up around 5:15pm. This was bad. I ended up not being able to get to sleep last night and was up until sometime after 3 am. Ugh! Forced myself from bed at 10:15 am this morning so that I would be awake from something like noon today until 9am tomorrow. I'll be taking a nap before work for 90 minutes or so.

I was actually happy to get my credit card bill. A bit insane but I've been working at getting it pretty low so I don't have to pay a big minimum fee. I'm pretty good with my credit and bills so a big credit card bill for me is $1500. I also try to treat my credit card like an American Express card - pay off whatever I've recently purchsed with it. So I've got the money for the monitor I just put on the card and another $150 to knock off older purchses. Between the combined amount my credit card should have around $460 for a balance. I'm quite proud of that and should have it down to $300 after next month's payment. I just noticed during the week of Christmas that I should have a 60 hour week (my normal 48 and Christmas holiday pay) so that should take of any linger holiday bills that I might put on my card. But considering I like to pay for almost everything in cash a big credit card bill may not be a reality.

Looking to splurge a little and buy some Halloween props. My brother bought this funny thing for my parents' house. It's a coffin where if you press the button it opens and a skeleton sits up and says some words while music plays and some lights flash. It's fairly amusing and is about 15 inches long. I'm only looking to spend around $40 on stuff though. It's gets expensive fast. My friend Sara would probably like my parents house. My mom bought this fake blood that adheres to the window so the front door of the house has all this blood seeping down from the top of the window frame. My brother also bought some other things like these puppet things that hang from the ceiling, a spider about the size of a man's hand that drops from the ceiling after a loud noise and then climbs back up it's web line, a witch's head in a sphere that lights up, laughs and moves around in the sphere. the sphere is about the size of a basketball. And there are lots of other props and such all about the house for added decoration. And I mustent forget the real dirt cellar. It's been reworked a ton but I still don't like going into it at night.

Pay day tonight at work!

We also have the supervisor switch deal going on. The supervisor from the other crew likes to write people up to make himself look good to the higher up's. He's also the one that got one of our people fired. The guy did break the rules and probably deserved it but this supervisor doesn't hold his own crew to the same tough restrictions.

I think I had this dude semi-bad mouth me at work. Myself and another co-worker will probably be training people on this thing called the auto-degator. Because of the way rotation works our trainees (other co-workers) get some time with this other fellow "C". So C gets some time auto-degating with Marie who I've known for 10+ years. And if I understood Marie correctly, C was asking her what she knew about the machine and felt that someone wasn't showing her the correct way to run the auto-degator. Since the other trainer was out sick, this pretty much narrows it down to just me. So C decided to educate Marie on the proper workings of the auto-degator. She later told my supervisor that she doesn't want C to teach her anything ever again. I couldn't help but laugh over that. C is not a bad dude, but he's a bit of an authority on things even if he doesn't know it that well. And he's one of those guys that if he gets a chance to speak he makes sure other people know just how good at things he is. I have to admit, I was fairly miffed that this guy was bad mouthing me about 'not doing things right'. of course, this IS the same guy that has been accused of stealing an $800 bracelet from another employee and maybe some crazy magnet things from another. And he's also the guy that had his little hand held Playstation stolen.

Got two more pictures scanned and grayscaled for the companion issue of The Necropolis Chronicles. I still have about 6 pages to go until it's finished. I should have it done in October.

And just to be a dick and taunt Sara if she's reading this, I just got in the mail a promotion for a local sci-fi convention. It's suppose to have William Shatner there, Checkov, Grace Parks from Battlestar Galactic, and Peter David (long time Incredible Hulk writer) among some other guests that are "B-listers". MAYBE if Sara's nice to me I'll get her a Shatner autograpgh if I'm able to. Afterall, I know she's a big geek at heart. LOL!

Later.

Getting what I deserve

Screwed up my sleep again so I'm all kind of messed up. On Tuesday I stayed up until 2 AM and got up around 8:15 am. Got up early to see if my buddy needed help at the comic store. My other buddy was there so I ended up heading done to hang out with them and found that a third friend was there too. Then a fourth friend showed up later in the morning. So it was a good time - new comics and hanging with friends - do some work too.

Left a little after noon, paid my house insurance down payment (was blind sided by this bill - completely forgot about house insurance), went home, and read one comic in the bright sunshine while sitting on my lawn during the beautiful fall day. I then passed out around 2:20 pm and woke up around 5:15pm. This was bad. I ended up not being able to get to sleep last night and was up until sometime after 3 am. Ugh! Forced myself from bed at 10:15 am this morning so that I would be awake from something like noon today until 9am tomorrow. I'll be taking a nap before work for 90 minutes or so.

I was actually happy to get my credit card bill. A bit insane but I've been working at getting it pretty low so I don't have to pay a big minimum fee. I'm pretty good with my credit and bills so a big credit card bill for me is $1500. I also try to treat my credit card like an American Express card - pay off whatever I've recently purchsed with it. So I've got the money for the monitor I just put on the card and another $150 to knock off older purchses. Between the combined amount my credit card should have around $460 for a balance. I'm quite proud of that and should have it down to $300 after next month's payment. I just noticed during the week of Christmas that I should have a 60 hour week (my normal 48 and Christmas holiday pay) so that should take of any linger holiday bills that I might put on my card. But considering I like to pay for almost everything in cash a big credit card bill may not be a reality.

Looking to splurge a little and buy some Halloween props. My brother bought this funny thing for my parents' house. It's a coffin where if you press the button it opens and a skeleton sits up and says some words while music plays and some lights flash. It's fairly amusing and is about 15 inches long. I'm only looking to spend around $40 on stuff though. It's gets expensive fast. My friend Sara would probably like my parents house. My mom bought this fake blood that adheres to the window so the front door of the house has all this blood seeping down from the top of the window frame. My brother also bought some other things like these puppet things that hang from the ceiling, a spider about the size of a man's hand that drops from the ceiling after a loud noise and then climbs back up it's web line, a witch's head in a sphere that lights up, laughs and moves around in the sphere. the sphere is about the size of a basketball. And there are lots of other props and such all about the house for added decoration. And I mustent forget the real dirt cellar. It's been reworked a ton but I still don't like going into it at night.

Pay day tonight at work!

We also have the supervisor switch deal going on. The supervisor from the other crew likes to write people up to make himself look good to the higher up's. He's also the one that got one of our people fired. The guy did break the rules and probably deserved it but this supervisor doesn't hold his own crew to the same tough restrictions.

I think I had this dude semi-bad mouth me at work. Myself and another co-worker will probably be training people on this thing called the auto-degator. Because of the way rotation works our trainees (other co-workers) get some time with this other fellow "C". So C gets some time auto-degating with Marie who I've known for 10+ years. And if I understood Marie correctly, C was asking her what she knew about the machine and felt that someone wasn't showing her the correct way to run the auto-degator. Since the other trainer was out sick, this pretty much narrows it down to just me. So C decided to educate Marie on the proper workings of the auto-degator. She later told my supervisor that she doesn't want C to teach her anything ever again. I couldn't help but laugh over that. C is not a bad dude, but he's a bit of an authority on things even if he doesn't know it that well. And he's one of those guys that if he gets a chance to speak he makes sure other people know just how good at things he is. I have to admit, I was fairly miffed that this guy was bad mouthing me about 'not doing things right'. of course, this IS the same guy that has been accused of stealing an $800 bracelet from another employee and maybe some crazy magnet things from another. And he's also the guy that had his little hand held Playstation stolen.

Got two more pictures scanned and grayscaled for the companion issue of The Necropolis Chronicles. I still have about 6 pages to go until it's finished. I should have it done in October.

And just to be a dick and taunt Sara if she's reading this, I just got in the mail a promotion for a local sci-fi convention. It's suppose to have William Shatner there, Checkov, Grace Parks from Battlestar Galactic, and Peter David (long time Incredible Hulk writer) among some other guests that are "B-listers". MAYBE if Sara's nice to me I'll get her a Shatner autograpgh if I'm able to. Afterall, I know she's a big geek at heart. LOL!

Later.

Things from the past couple of days

I get more and more upset over the union greivance that jerk petiationed. Seems he did it all on his own because he's a union steward without asking anyone else their opinion on the subject. Seems he wants to go back to 8 hour shifts because it would give him weekends off and he could watch football. And his fiance works 2nd shift and he'd be able to see her. In other words, he's using the union for his own selfish wants and desires with no consideration for other people. When I saw this guy this morning I wanted to knock him the fuck out. He might cost me and upwards of 25 other people their jobs and our jobs pay us about $36,000 to $40,000 a year. I would have no sympathy for him if he were taken out and beaten the fuck out of if this somehow comes true. I could not only lose my job over this but my house because I may not be able to find another job that couldpay for my house. I just can't believe what a selfish fuck this guy is. Supposedily this guy is a pretty good guy overall but right now I could shit in his mouth for doing this crap. What an asshole.

Got beat in both my football leagues this past weekend. And both games were close or really close. One I lost by one point. The goofy part is, I had to wait for Monday Night Football because I had two guys going. Both of my opponents had one guy going - Keith Brookings of the Atlanta Flacons. I knew I was in some trouble because this guy scores a lot of fantasy points. He scored just enough to make me lose both games. Frackle frazzle. Pretty good drama in one league where one team owner told two others 'fuck you' because they gave him some grief. Some much for friends being friends! LOL!

My baseball team is getting it's ass kicked. My team completely fizzled. Out of the 10 categories we play for, 3 or 4 of them my opponent has DOUBLE my points. And it's been that way since pretty much the start of the first of the two weeks.

Snuck in some more sketching at work. Some of the drawings I expect to be using in my companion issue of The Necropolis Chronicles.

Other than the crap about the union bastard, work was pretty good overall. Nothing else of great interest really happened. I'm always happy to be done with the 3 days on in a row because it just drags you down.

Okay, I'm being boring now.

Over and out.

Live by the union, die by the union

So my buddy and I are walking to our cars after work this morning (Monday) and he explains what he was trying to tell me at the time clock.

Seems the union has filed a grevence against our room (RIM). According to my buddy, the union president wants to break our 12 hour days down to 8 hour days and combine our 4 cres into 3 shifts (1st, 2nd, 3rd) which would most likely mean that upwards of 24 people and a supervisor would have to go. Further, the union wants to remove out 'slilled laborer' tags and make the room a general labor area. What that means is a loss of like $3 an hour and that anyone with more years of experience could boot us out of our jobs and take our jobs if lay-off's happen in other parts of the factory. Currently they can't do this because of our 'skilled labor' tags.

Apparently, and hopefully, this won't happen. But as a still fairly new employee (9 months on the job) here's what I see all this as. The long time employees there fucked up. Our room (RIM) is probably the only secure job at Top Flite for the next couple of years. Some jobs will be moving to China and some things already have. The writing's been on the wall for awhile now. The RIM room has been in existence for just about 2 years now. Many of the employees at Top Flite wanted nothing to do with the new room (RIM) so the company hired a bunch of people off the street - including me. Now, with their jobs in seemingly jeopardy, people in the union are trying to reduce all the special tags of our room so that the long time employees that are otherwise not qualified for the room can come in and take the jobs of the new people.

I've already lost two good paying jobs to either other Americans or lay-off's. It sucks. But I'll be pissed if a bunch of people that couldn't read the obvious handwriting on the wall now want to retro fit things so that they can take my job away after they initially wanted nothing to do with it.

I can't say I love my job, but it pays well and I sure as hell don't want to lose it. I'm not going to get to upset about this situation but it is in the back of my mind and really sucks.

Meh! To bed I go because I have another 12 hour shift in 10 and 1/2 hours.

swooning

Or maybe I should say, swaying. Not sure what time I fell asleep last night but when I woke up it was past 11:15am! And even then I didn't want to get up. Had a slight headache but it's gone now. After shaving and showering it was 5 after noon! Ugh! What a waste to the day so far. It's 12:47pm as I write this.

I don't really have much to do today as far as household tasks or business. I have my paycheck to cash but since most of it is going to pay off the monitor I'm in no big hurry to cash it. I could do some minor grocery shopping but am feeling very sluggish. I do have to pick up my nephew at 5pm. I'm kind of annoyed by this because it's my day off - a full day off- and it's my brother's responsibility. While my brother is a terrific tenant overall, he hasn't been doing anything to clean the household or keep it tidy lately. It all just seems like band practice for a band that has yet to play out more than once (and that was months ago) or video games. It's a bit annoying. But he does do other things that are decent like keeping it quiet when I have to sleep.

I was a bit of a jerk and rewashed some dishes he cleaned. He's got a cold and he never uses gloves when doing the dishes. He als has a nasty habit of using the same hand towel to dry his hands for days and then use it for drying the dishes. Well, when he washed 3 bowls out of a mountain of dishes I didn't use them for fear of germs. This week and next week's paychecks pay for my mortgage so I don't want to get sick. So I rewashed the 3 bowls. I can't see how he can't use dish washing gloves. My water gets so hot it burns me through the gloves if I'm not careful. I actually like this in that it makes me feel like I'm burning away all the germs on the dishes even though I am also using dish detergent. I suspect my brother doesn't use as hot water so I sometimes wonder just how clean the dishes are when he does them. So I guess I made my own case for me to do the dishes every time out.

I'm loving my new monitor.

Had a couple of neat dreams but I've slept so long lately I keep forgetting them.

Been sneaking in a lot of drawing/sketching at work lately. We have this machine called a gleebar that grinds down the center core of the golfballs to a very certain spec. It's fairly easy work as the bulk of the time you sit and keep an eye on the machine. And in the bank of machines I'm currently working in I sometimes get 3 or 4 rotations of gleebar. So I've kicked out some cool sketches that I plan to use in my companion issue of my comic. I've been drawing Seth a lot because I have a ton of pcitures of Jaina already.

I'm getting beat 6 to 3 with one tie in my championship series in the fantasy baseball league. My offense has fallen totally flat and it may be luck if I don't lose all 5 categories. 4 of my players have combined for a 1 base hit in 32 chances. That's HORRIBLE for anybody that doesn't know a thing about baseball. One of my guys is having a 'career' year but has gone 0 for 10 in his at bats this week. There are still 3 days left to go but I am a bit worried. At least the worst I can finish is 2nd place.

I still get more mail for my brother who's the previous owner my house than I get. And it's been about 10 months that I've owned the house now.

My buddies are rather worried about maybe having to close the comic shop. That'll suck. But with both working full time jobs and all their part time help friends quitting - including me - they may not have a choice. If this does happen we lose our best hangout and we all know we'll see a lot less of each other without Heroclix and comics to pull us together in a central meeting point.

We have 'observers' at work watching us because we have a new machine. So my old friend from Toys R Us that works there decides that I should have a new name when this observer asked for my name. She called me Sara. That should make Sara happy.

Rambling. I'm done.

new monitor has arrived

Got my new flat screen today and hooked it up. I haven't played with the settings yet but right now it's pretty nice. It gives my desktop some more room in some ways and less in another. Because it's a flat screen I can't fit anything on top of it. So my lame digi-camera or whatever you call it has to find a new home.

The picutre's quite sharp and it's bigger than my CRT monitor. Type is a wee bit fuzz easily readable and I might be able to fix it after reading the 'read me' section.

Overall it's somewhat overwhelming compared to my old monitor. The new screen is 19" but seems impressively large than my old 17". The colors and screen are nice and bright. I shall have to look up and see what's better, my direct digital link of the RGB cord. I think the direct digital is suppose to be the better of the two. Right now both are hooked up so I don't know which has priority.

Guess I missed my meeting with the twon planners for my 'Doing Business As'. I've been wondering what's up and I got a call today about it saying I missed my scheduled meeting. So I went down to the lady because they put an ad in the paper announcing things and I owed them $31 for it. Because there was a gaff I don't think I get that money back. And I have to have it run for like two weeks. So I may have cost myself $31 for nothing. I guess the sceduling lady was on vacation last week. I can't recall anything to my knowledge of having a new date set so I was pretty mystified when she called me today to explain that I had missed my appointment.

In a slightly bizarre moment, I saw the same lady at the post office about an hour later.

I was at the post office because I sent out the phyiscal copies of the comic to International Enterprise today. This will allow them to send copies out to publishers across the world to see if they will buy the rights to publish the book overseas.

I also geeked out and bought a ful sheet of the DC Super-hero stamps. They look pretty nice. They are already in a drawer never to be used and only kept as a collectable.

In another bizarre moment, while driving to and back from the town hall I think I passed a dump truck at the exact same intersection. In the Bizarro world of things he was heading west originally and then east the second time we met. I was doing the opposite.

As I was walking out the door to go to the post office UPS stopped to deliever the monitor. Would've sucked had I missed it.

I swiped a photo from Sara's blog to use as the setting for Rochester Academy of The Necropolis Chronicles. The photo is of Quincy University and it pretty much looks like I had envisioned the academy. It is possible I had seen the photo before and sort of unconsciously remembered it for the academy. But on a similar note the academy was always based on the factory I used to work at in Holyoke, MA.

Wow, this monitor is BRIGHT! I am impressed. :)

Oh yeah, both my teams are undefeated in my fantasy football leagues.

some success

Oy, it's 11:17 am and I haven't really started my day yet. I'm kinda sluggish and really feel like being a sloth but I left a number of things to do today instead of doing them the previous days. Clean the bathroom, buy some groceries, buy a dresser, cash my paycheck from the other week, do work on the comic. Maybe I slept to long. 9 hours.

Bought a new monitor.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16824001080

Feels good to have all my bills in order so that I can buy something like this and pay it off immediately.

Having some success in my fantasy leagues. I barely beat out my friend to advance to the championship round of our baseball fantasy league. I'm now guarrenteed to finish 1st or 2nd which will give me a trophy to my Yahoo profile. Because I hadn't done fantasy baseball for almost 10 years, my goal was to finish with a trophy. You got one for being a top 3 finisher. The worst I can do is win silver. Not bad. But I might as well do my best to nab gold. If I do, I will have finished 1st in the first three Yahoo fantasy leagues I've ever joined.

In the two football leagues that I care about I won yesterday but have to wait for results from Monday Night Football to see if I win in the other one. I have a decent lead but it's catchable by my opponent.

In the football work league I joined to help out my co-workers my team sucks and is probably getting beat again. I haven't bothered to look. 3 leagues is actually too much. I prefer just being in two.

Saturday turned out nice in that the gang got together at the comic store. I was expecting maybe one other guy but pretty much our whole gang showed which was really cool. This doesn't happen all that often anymore so I cherish these little get togethers quite a bit these days.

Mowed my lawn yesterday for what I hope will be the last time this year. I have just under an acre and it takes about 90 minutes to mow it. It's rather hilly in parts so it's a decent workout because I use a push lawn mower. I knew I hadn't mowed in about a month and it showed. The mower stalled out in the heavy and sometimes wet grass several times. In the back, the grass/weeds were sometimes almost 10 inches tall!

I'm kind of a bad football junkie. I watched parts or most of 3 separate games yesterday. Probably pushing around 7 to 8 hours of football. Flipping between games and checking the internet to see how I'm doing in fantasy takes time. LOL! But I did work on some drawings and read the Sunday paper while having the games on. But now that I work every other weekend, it's tough to get to watch all the games I would like to.

Went looking for a snapping turtle at my parents' place that my brother found the other day. No luck but that might be just as well. Last thing I need is to lose some toes if I put my foot in the wrong place!

Choked on some Honeyhut Cheerioes today. Splattered the comp keyboard with milk and littered the floor with Cheerioes as I coughed them up and out of my throat.

Bought some new art pens. My local A.C. Moore had a 40% off a regular listed item so I went up and bought another rapidograph pen. The damn things went up in price. Cost $30! $20 with my coupon. I only buy them when I have a coupon. Bought a couple of cheaper pens $2 and $3 to try them out and a small bottle of ink $4. I love the rapidographs I have but they kinda suck to refill. They are actually a lot easier than they use to be but I still make a mess. Pretty much, you take the pen apart and use a squeeze bottle to refill the ink cartridges via drops (yeah, DROPS!) of ink. I always manage to get ink all over my fingers and the pens themselves.

One of the cheaper pens I bought is a Sharpie to use to 'fill' black areas. Not a big fan of Sharpies because of the smell of the ink. It's fairly repulsive. But it's usually a lot quicker than use a brush and a jar of ink. And filling black areas is usually pretty tedious. A Sharpie tends to make it go much faster with almost no clean up.

Yeesh! 11;40 already. Okay, I'm done for now.

Hmmmn,...

Can't recall what I've mentioned before and what I haven't.

I signed the contracts with International Enterprise to see about having the comic published across the world! Pretty exciting stuff.

My co-worker gave me a way cool compliment the other day. He was saying how I'm cool because I'm always in a good mood and ready to joke around. It's stuff like that - when it's said by other people - that makes me feel pretty good about the way I conduct myself.

Been dragging a sketch pad with me to work. There have been some productions problems giving me some time to draw. I expect to be using two of the sketches in my companion issue of the comic. My co-workers seemed to like them and would stop and take a long look when they would walk by.

I enjoyed reading about Sara's lesbian nude oil wrestling but alas, with no pictures, I must admit I was somewhat disappointed. But there's a slight chance I could be a ref. :)

Been up since 3:30 pm yesterday. It's now 8:30am as I write this.

Had a crazy dream about following wild turkeys around or something including through tall grass taller than me! I think I had to protect them or something. Bizarre stuff.

I seem to have a fat spider infestation going on outside my house. These spiders are fairly ugly and somewhat large - each is about the size of the tip of a man's thumb and about as fat as a thumb too. They are brown and hairy and rather ugly. One tried to take up residence in the front door door frame. It has since moved to the side of the house. The other started making a web stretching from the garage (about 7 1/2 feet tall) to the ground. What the hell does it want to catch - a human?!?!?! Creepy stuff.

I should be buying a sorely needed second dresser this weekend. I'm getting sick of having half my clean clothes sitting in a laundry basket.

I'm half planning to buy another Rapidograph pen. These are fairly expensive pens usually starting at $15 and more likely low $20's. But A.C. Moore has a 40% off one item coupon so I can get such a pen for around $12.

I also expect to buy a new LCD flat screen monitor on Monday. It goes for $280 on newegg or some site like that. It's a 19", 700 to 1 ratio, and some other crazy sounding stuff. Should be pretty cool. I've wanted an LCD flat screen for a while now.

And I think I may also buy some Halloween decorations. Halloween is the coolest of the holidays. I might spend around $20 on stuff.

So this big buying spree is going to chew up all my spending money and the paycheck I just earned. But I'm sick of spending all my money on bills so I want to splurge a little. The best part is, I can and not put myself in financial jeopardy. Sweet!

Okay, off to bed for a few zzz's! And yes, it's 8:35 am. I work nights. Leave me alone! LOL!

Sleepy things

Lots o' little things. Don't feel much like writing as I'm sleepy from days of work.

I thought my co-worker might have stunk last night. In the end, I think it was her gum. It was a tangy flavor and to me, gave off a sort of pee scent. So I got her all paranoid by asking her 'is that you?' and sniffing in her direction. So it was a running gag all night. Doesn't help she's really cool and kinda cute. But alas, she's married with 2 kids. Oh, well. We get along well though and flirt here and there.

I'm out of my first football league - the Suicide League. It's the only money league I joined. $25. Pick a team - a new one every week, can't repeat a pick - win you continue on, lose you're out. My first pick bombed big time. They lost something like 27 to 10. And my pick scored a garbage touchdown at the end or else it would have been 27 to 3.

I won in the two leagues I care about and lost in the league I joined to help my co-workers out.

Watch Swingblade tonight. I've seen parts of it efore but never uncut. An enjoyable flick. I didn't realize Billbob Thorton wrote the screenplay, directed and starred in it. I thought he just starred in it.

I did a couple of sketches at work that I may use for my comic. So why does my comic take so long? Well, I work 12 hour shifts working either Monday, Thursday/Friday or I work Tuesday/Wednesday/Saturday/Sunday. When I work Sat/Sun I always work Monday too so it's 3 days in a row. Leaves me fairly beat the next day - as in Tuesday, today. So that kinda leaves only Wednesday as a full day off and a day I do my tasks where I have to drive around. Doesn't leave much time to work on my comic. Then, I'm doing everything. I'm writing it (most of it) drawing, inking, scanning, adjusting the pictures in Photoshop, laying out the comic page by page in Pagemaker, saving and proof reading the files and preparing them to be 'print ready'. Whew! So all that takes a fair amount of time.

I believe this next paycheck should take care of all my monthly bills. That should leave the paycheck I'm earning this week all for me. Should be around $250 to $300 for me. Depends which check gets nailed by union dues.

I think I'm going to buy a new monitor for my computer. Last year, a nearby lightning strike fried most of my computer. My monitor has a habit of flickering in the upper right hand corner. It's subtle but very annoying. It's kind of bugging out my eyes right now. Seems to come and go. So I expect to use my money to get a decent flatscreen. It's something I've wanted for quite some time.

I might be helping my buddy at the comic shop tomorrow morning. Another friend has pretty much said with little to no warning that he can no longer help out on Wednesday morning. Wednesday is the biggest day of the week because that's when new comics arrive. If I wake up early enough I may hustle down to the store to 'pull sub's'. I actually enjoy the work but it's the timing that usually sucks. The obligation became too much also. It was only once every other week but it also falls on th only day I have off that week. It became more of an obligation rather than an enjoyment. This time it's only some spot fill-in's and usually by choice.

Had an erotic dream. I was up at my parent's house and the housing was slightly altered. The 'barn' was a lot larger with a basement and upper floor. There was a black girl there, light skinned with a frizzy bob haircut. She was quite cute. For whatever reason, she was wearing a lab coat and black knee high boots. I'm sure she had on other clothes but I couldn't see them. So we get into some heavy petting and I sense this girl is kind of a 'bad girl'. So I decide to talk dirty to set the mood. The first words out of my mouth are 'you're a great skank 'ho.' Whua?!?!?! I'm immediately shoved away from the girl and I spend the rest of the dream feeling really bad and trying to get back into her good graces to no avail. Can't say I blame her.

Meh. Can't think of much else to say. And the screen's bugging out my tired eyes.

For instant asshole, just add alcohol

Pretty much got what I wanted reloaded reloaded on my PC. I added a new program or two and have left off some older games [bye Civ 3! :( ].

Today is miscellaenous day. Lots of little tasks to do. I've got a load of washing churning i the background. I need to do the dishes. Cash my paycheck. Maybe buy a dresser for all my extra clothes, get my comics (new Uncanny X-Men!) and have homemade french fries (they taste terrific) at my mom's!

My friend needed me to join his football league so that it would happen. So I signed up last minute (everything was last minute) and pretty much went to bed and let the computer draft my team because I was really tired. So now I'm in 3 fantasy leagues. To many in my opinion. I like two tops because you end up cheering against yourself and whatnot. And what a surprise, for the third league in a row this year, my team drafted last #8 out of 8 teams.

I've been checking up on Dragon Con photos from this year. This con just happened this past Labor Day weekend. I went to DragonCon back to back years a couple of years ago and I LOVED it. There is too much to do there! And every time I see photos and whatnot of the con I get a little bummed because I wasn't there.

This is my favorite photo I've seen so far. I love this Batowman/Batgirl's costume which is saying something because I LOATHE Batman. Hopefully the picture loads up correctly (it's at the top).

Went over my buddy's place for opening night of NFL football. I sorta let my friends down. The past to times I've gone to a gathering I've brought these almond flavored ice cream bars by Good Humor. A couple of guys asked where they were even though I had asked if I should bring anything and the answer was 'no'. So I felt kinda bad. I'll make sure to bring the ice cream from now on regardless.

The game was okay. The two best friends each had their favorite team playing (Pittsburgh vs. Miami) so there was much hooting and hollering. Actually, it was somewhat embarrsing how much considering that these are guys in their late 20' & 30's. And it was LOUD shouting.

We've got this one friend and he's a bit of a drinker. And he was drinking. He wasn't too bad except for the wrestling on the couch. Considering I was outweighed by 50+ pounds I evacuted the area pretty quick. It was 'fun' wrestling but it was getting borderline trouble. Unfortunately, I don't think the drunk wears underwear. Ugh! Everytime he did something his jean shorts kept showing lots of ass. And he's got a big ass! Ee-yuck!

Towards the end of the night around 11pm or so, drunk's buddy calls. Buddy hasn't seem drunk in years and buddy lives out of state or something. Buddy convinces drunk drunk to go out driving to come see him. Or at least, drunk drunk offers to. So it's agreed. Except we all balk. But drunk drunk will have none of it. So things were getting borderline bad as a couple of guys hid drunk's car keys. But drunk started getting violent toosing shit around and threatening to break stuff. Three of us were kind of spineless and ended up leaving. The game had ended and drunk drunk was being an ass. I think I delayed drunk a bit by telling him. listen, I see you out on the road and I'm calling the cops. You're putting MY life at jeopardy." This seem to sort sink in on the drunk drunk. I was backed up by a buddy 'Jim's strict about that shit' and because I don't drink and stuff my words seem to carry some weight with drunk drunk. So drunk drunk agreed to wait. It wasn't much of a threat and I'm not sure I would've actually called the cops but it at least delayed drunk drunk some.

As the three of us left, we could here drunk drunk and the two best friends arguing about drunk drunk going out driving. I don't know what the final result was. So once again, alcohol adds a pretty good dampener to the end of the night. A fun night too.

whew! 24 hours straight

Gah, I couldn't get to sleep during my afternoon nap yesterday. So I ended up being awake for 24 hours straight from 6:45 am to 8:35 am. At least I rested my body as I lay rolling and turning on my bed yesterday. I tried to meditate at least but was fiarly unsuccessful.

Goofed around a bit with blogger and was able to add a photo to my profile. It took about 6 attempts.

My reformatting of my harddrive went fairly easily. Pretty sure I had a virus that my anti-virus missed. Probably didn't have a definition for it. Now, I can get to Yahoo.com easily (it wouldn't load at all!) and the icons on my desktop are no longer changing after I open or close a program. I haven't reloaded everything yet but most of the stuff. Call of Duty 2 is 6 CDs long! Ugh! But I still love playing it on-line so I will reload it.

Watched 5 hours straight of The Sorpanos on Saturday night. I love this series. I'm on season 5. Because I don't have HBO I have to rent DVD's or fet full seasons from my friends.

The next 4 days should go quick. Go to bed tomorrow morning, watch the 1st game of the NFL season that night at my buddy's. Friday is get my check, do errands, load more programs on my computer and homemade french fries at my mom's (YUM!). Work Sat/Sun/ & Mon nights. Miss opening weekend of the NFL because of need for sleep between work days (BOO!). And first week of fantasy football!

Yeah, this weekend should fly by.

me

Varying stuff

Steve Irwin the Crocodile Hunter died during filming the other day. I really enjoyed his shows about animals. I shall miss him. He was killed by a stingray.

Weird dream a few days ago that I thought I had forgotten forever. I 've forgotten most of it. I was travelling to a city. A large industrial city that had a mammoth energy plant that was a couple of miles across or something. It had a couple of structures that were like skyscrapers and it was really impressive but also a little on the skyline at the same time. Various family members showed up including my parents. They were going to dine at this restaurant that was on the energy plant's land. This place was like a casino or something. I did get the feeling that the city more grew around the energy plant as opposed to the energy plant being built for the city.

I did some walking around the plant. Large tanks like oil tanks and such were here and there and the ground was mostly kinda dirt with some paved roads. Like I said, very industrial. My brother Greg showed up from somewhere.

I saw this so of mammoth testtube just hanging in the air. It was all metal and seemed to be used for pouring sludge or maybe molten metal. It was huge! Two or three people could stand on one another and still not reach the top side of the mouth. It had to be around the length of a football field or something. My brother and I were hanging around when the test tube - quite far away, suddenly turned in the sky as if to pour and then we finally saw some suspension wires. I almost got the feeling that I added them into the dream to make it more real so I may have been lucid dreaming a bit. So my brother and I watch the tube and it starts coming our way. We watch it some more and it keeps heading down towards us. We finally panic and ran like hell to hide behind this open topped tank. DUH! The tube was heading for it and started pouring it's contents out into it with us right there. It seemed like an extremely dangerous situation.

Don't remember much else of the dream.

My brother's evil cat returned home to my parents' house. It was gone for 4 days and nobody saw it during that time. It had been a house cat it's life before going up to my parents' house late last year.

D&D was both good and bad yesterday. It was good because I hung around with friends and played D&D. It was bad because I couldn't roll to save my life. For thos that don't know you roll a 20 sided die numbered 1 to 20 and the higher you roll the better. In the final fight I rolled 6 or under 5 times in a row. This really sucked because the guys we were fighting weren't that tough because we were playing low level characters. But it also really sucked because my character was 'buffed' meaning pumped up on magic to be able to do massive damage. But I never hit. In fact, I probably hit less than 30% of the time I rolled. It was really frustrating. And to add to it, one of our players insisted we go straight to where we suspected the biggest bad guy was. So we missed all these things to help us with him and he kicked our asses. He dropped our two big fighters and killed my character with one hit each all in one round. Basically, we got close, he attacked, we died. And then the DM pulled all his punches so the other three characters survived. I was a little irked at this because by all rights, 5 out of 6 characters should have died because 2 could not escape being in the bad guy's face but the game isn't neccessarily about butchering characters. So I was a little upset that the DM pulled punches after jacking us up after our party made several strategic mistakes - he just wussed out. LOL!

Another part that sort of sucked is that we have this guy 'S' play with us, He's a good guy, about a year away from retirement and a reliable person. When he says he'll be there he's there. But he does have the annoying habit of telling us about every signle one of his characters. Unless these stories involve the listener's characters in some way so they can join in in the memories, listening to someone else's fantasy exploits has got to be one of the most boring things in life. And he mentions all these names of other characters, other players and other gaming campaigns that we've either never heard of or never played. It borderlines on torture!

I've been liking the rainy days of the past two days. It's a little cooler now as summer is fading fast and fall is probably my favorite time of the year because of many reasons. Okay, NFL football is a main reason but Halloween, cooler tamps, etc...

Rainy days are good for sleeping and good for gaming. With a rainy day, you really don't have to worry about mowing the grass or shovelling snow or anything like that. It's been a good rain too. Not to heavy to knock down trees but enough to make soothing pattering sounds on the roof that are almost hypontic.

I finsihed my book Ghost Tracks. Not bad. I like the Warren's ghostly investigations although some of them are pretty hard to believe. I think the only thing I didn't like were two things and it may have been the author's fault rather than the Warren's. Lorraine Warren has had her clairvoyant abilities tested and confirmed at UCLA - a fairly well know college here in the States. And the author or the Warrens never lets us forget it through out the book. It must be mentioned in every case and in multiple times per case. Yeesh.

And they talked about their experience. They mention that people shouldn't really on inexperienced parapsycologists. But it almost makes it sounds like they are the only people experienced in the business.

I like the Warrens and hold them in high regard but they are only human. And I still can't forget how i pretty much cringed at one of their lectures during a slide show when they showed what was suppose to be a demon manisfesting in a commercial kitchen. It looked so Photoshopped to me that I couldn't help but shake my head. I still believe that they had been had to this day on that one.

My fantasy baseball team pulled out a victory on Sunday and finsihed in 2nd place in the regular season standings! This means that I get a 'bye' in the play-off's as the play-off teams #3 through #6 duke it out to advance to the 2nd round of play-off's. That's when I face my first play-off opponent. So I believe I should finish no less than 4th in the final standings. I know, that seems weird because I finished 2nd already but essentially the play-off's are a new season. Because I did so well in the regular season I get to skip a round of playing so I will automatically finish no worse than 4th when everything is said and done. I want to at least finish third though so I can get another little trophy for my Yahoo sports profile! LOL!

Enough of my blabbing.