lots 'o little things
Blog 01/21/07
Lots of little things so where to start? In no particular order:
Got a bit of a scare cleared up. I had received a message in the mail that something was up with my medical coverage and that any bill after Nov 2006 would not be reimbursed. Turns out after a check at work that the notice was for COBRA benefits when I was laid off. Hoping/knowing I was going back I never signed up for COBRA. But it was still a bit of concern thinking that my medical health insurance was in a furor.
While cleaning up the above mess I had the benefits lady increase my 401k contribution from 8% to 12%. Combined with my IRA at a separate bank I should hopefully now be putting away enough money for my retirement.
I think my house got so dry last night I got a bloody nose. I woke up with a nasty snot in my nose. Upon cleaning it out with a tissue and inspecting (all guys seem to inspect their snots) it really looked like a lump of dried blood. It’s been cold and windy lately and I can recall this happening before during last winter. This despite the fact that I have a humidifier running all night at the foot of my bed.
Spent a bit of money last night. I bought a new printer to replace my dead one. I bought an Epson C 88+ for a little over $80. I was actually hoping to spend only around $60 but couldn’t find a printer that I liked for that cost. I took and Epson over a Hewett-Packard because the HP printers in the same price range all have the single color ink cartridge. All three colors are on one cartridge so that if blue runs out (which is used in almost all colors) you’re stuck buying a new cartridge no matter what level of red and yellow are left. Got the printer up and working fine. I can print out comic scripts again! Most of the money to pay for the printer was a cash Christmas gift from my oldest brother. On a side note, my brother has to travel this week for work. The poor slob has to fly down to Hawaii for a number of days. What a hard life. LOL!
Using the gift card another brother got for Christmas I stopped in at my semi-local Barnes & Nobel bookstore. I LOVE bookstores. B&N was rather filled for a Saturday night. There was a small band playing what sounded like Irish music. Maybe that was the reason. They sounded pretty good. I noticed two old co-workers from the bindery were there. The wife is a cashier there and the husband was just standing around in his coat. I didn’t say ‘hi’ because a second or two after I noticed them I was called over to another cashier to pay for my books. I bought a book on how to paint with acrylic paints. More on that later.
I also bought two Anita Blake Vampire Hunter books to check out Anita Blake. More on that later.
I had also stopped at an A.C. Moore art store to look for a couple of things. Armed with a 40% off coupon I purchased a set of 24 (small tubes) acrylic paints. I also bought two Micron pens each have a .05 pen tip. While putzing around a girl was there with her father buying art paper – looked like exclusively Strathmore. She was either late high school or early college from the looks of her and cute as an added bonus. I was actually fairly interested in talking to her about art because the pair seemed to be buying a whole boat load of supplies. And I wanted to play ‘know it all’ since I worked at Strathmore for awhile. But I didn’t. I bought my stuff and headed over to B&N.
I also hit the comic shop during this spending spree.
I probably looked like I had just gotten out of bed during my travels. I got up at 3pm Saturday having gotten out of work at 7am that morning. I wasn’t sure if I would be going out anywhere so I had on sleeping leisure wear which is my current favorite stuff to wear. So I was walking around the comic shop, A.C. Moore’s which is located in the biggest mall in western MA (maybe even in MA), then to B&N and then to Comp USA all in my waist length winter coat and shades of blue plaid felt pants. LOL! I had a normal pull over shirt though that could actually be worn out to a casual dinner though. LOL!
I called up to check on the status of my unemployment check. I found out that there was a problem with the address and that it was never sent out. Damn it! I was waiting forever for the damn thing since I filled over two weeks ago. So they mailed it out Friday.
I might get to look like some rich guy at my credit union where I cash all my checks. I haven’t cashed my paycheck from last week. I expect to do that Monday. I’ll be getting my unemployment check that week and then my paycheck on Wednesday for the week I just finished this past Saturday. Hopefully I’ll get my favorite clerk and maybe flirt with her. The last bank clerk I flirted with hinted at interest. Our first ‘date’ if you could have called it that would have been helping her move. I declined and that was the end of that.
So I’ve been on this real urge to try out painting. I had gotten a small acrylic set some years ago but lately I’ve been all gung-ho about learning actually how to do it. My only problem is actually doing it. That sounds really stupid. I only have so much paper and I always fret about what subject to paint that I get all tense about it and end up doing something else. But now I’ve got a book and some new paints and I’m ready to go. I just need to pick a subject. Sigh. I don’t know why I do that to myself.
So I have this internet friend that I could recall talking about this Anita Blake fictional character. I had seen her even post that she had gotten a preview copy of the (then) latest book. I had heard her say some thing that mildly interested me. Recently the first book has started coming out in comic book format. I picked it up and despite the ragging of my friends found enough to like to look into the actual novels further. So I did that last night. I bought books number 9 and number 4 of the series. I know I should start with the first book and all but I went with numbers 4 & 9 because of the titles and small excerpts I’ve read.
So in a nutshell, Anita Blake is a feisty 5’3 woman set in a world where the undead are legal citizen and so are lycanthropes. So far, I like the setting better than I expected. The imagery in the books certainly doesn’t hurt. Anita seems to constantly be in various sexy outfits and high heeled boots. I can get behind that! A lot of the guys and pretty fem or bi which doesn’t do anything for me but I can live with it. Apparently further into the series of books the more erotic and sexual the stories become. I haven’t found a sex scene yet but apparently they can get graphic. So I like the setting, I like lycanthropes, and I like the some what fetish aspect of the book and Anita as a character. Some of the other stuff I pretty much glaze over. I haven’t found anything I outright dislike yet. So last night I plowed through about 40+ pages of the 600+ page book #9 and read a few more this morning. The only reason I stopped reading last night was because it was 2am and I didn’t want to be up all night.
I later woke up at roughly 5am and couldn’t get back to sleep because I was starving! Even though a piece of bread and a tall glass of grape juice soothed my belly I still couldn’t get back to sleep. Thrown in there was a pee and a snot rendering. After some more tossing and turning I read the first 45 pages of my new art book. Since most of the pages where pictures I only really read for a short time. So I got up, took a shower, loaded up some laundry and read more pages of Anita Blake. Right now, I’m really on a reading kick (my Entertainment Weekly is sitting unread though) Anita is my favorite. To compensate, I haven’t been playing video games much lately. I do have 3 days worth of dishes to do.
Ending on a bit of a sad note. Seems, or at least I hope this is the case, that one of my internet friends seems to have given up the internet for the most part. Where are you Sara? I haven’t seen her sign on to any internet site that we frequent since late last December. And before that small burst of internet time she seemed to disappear for over a month also. I miss shooting the breeze with Sara about comics, my comic, and a lot of wrestling stuff. But, in the end, it’s better that she goes to college like she’s doing and experience life rather than spending late night hours huddled in front of a computer screen.
And finally final, here’s hoping that the New England Patriots beat the Colts to advance to the Super Bowl for around the 4th time in 6 years (or is it 5 years?)!
Lots of little things so where to start? In no particular order:
Got a bit of a scare cleared up. I had received a message in the mail that something was up with my medical coverage and that any bill after Nov 2006 would not be reimbursed. Turns out after a check at work that the notice was for COBRA benefits when I was laid off. Hoping/knowing I was going back I never signed up for COBRA. But it was still a bit of concern thinking that my medical health insurance was in a furor.
While cleaning up the above mess I had the benefits lady increase my 401k contribution from 8% to 12%. Combined with my IRA at a separate bank I should hopefully now be putting away enough money for my retirement.
I think my house got so dry last night I got a bloody nose. I woke up with a nasty snot in my nose. Upon cleaning it out with a tissue and inspecting (all guys seem to inspect their snots) it really looked like a lump of dried blood. It’s been cold and windy lately and I can recall this happening before during last winter. This despite the fact that I have a humidifier running all night at the foot of my bed.
Spent a bit of money last night. I bought a new printer to replace my dead one. I bought an Epson C 88+ for a little over $80. I was actually hoping to spend only around $60 but couldn’t find a printer that I liked for that cost. I took and Epson over a Hewett-Packard because the HP printers in the same price range all have the single color ink cartridge. All three colors are on one cartridge so that if blue runs out (which is used in almost all colors) you’re stuck buying a new cartridge no matter what level of red and yellow are left. Got the printer up and working fine. I can print out comic scripts again! Most of the money to pay for the printer was a cash Christmas gift from my oldest brother. On a side note, my brother has to travel this week for work. The poor slob has to fly down to Hawaii for a number of days. What a hard life. LOL!
Using the gift card another brother got for Christmas I stopped in at my semi-local Barnes & Nobel bookstore. I LOVE bookstores. B&N was rather filled for a Saturday night. There was a small band playing what sounded like Irish music. Maybe that was the reason. They sounded pretty good. I noticed two old co-workers from the bindery were there. The wife is a cashier there and the husband was just standing around in his coat. I didn’t say ‘hi’ because a second or two after I noticed them I was called over to another cashier to pay for my books. I bought a book on how to paint with acrylic paints. More on that later.
I also bought two Anita Blake Vampire Hunter books to check out Anita Blake. More on that later.
I had also stopped at an A.C. Moore art store to look for a couple of things. Armed with a 40% off coupon I purchased a set of 24 (small tubes) acrylic paints. I also bought two Micron pens each have a .05 pen tip. While putzing around a girl was there with her father buying art paper – looked like exclusively Strathmore. She was either late high school or early college from the looks of her and cute as an added bonus. I was actually fairly interested in talking to her about art because the pair seemed to be buying a whole boat load of supplies. And I wanted to play ‘know it all’ since I worked at Strathmore for awhile. But I didn’t. I bought my stuff and headed over to B&N.
I also hit the comic shop during this spending spree.
I probably looked like I had just gotten out of bed during my travels. I got up at 3pm Saturday having gotten out of work at 7am that morning. I wasn’t sure if I would be going out anywhere so I had on sleeping leisure wear which is my current favorite stuff to wear. So I was walking around the comic shop, A.C. Moore’s which is located in the biggest mall in western MA (maybe even in MA), then to B&N and then to Comp USA all in my waist length winter coat and shades of blue plaid felt pants. LOL! I had a normal pull over shirt though that could actually be worn out to a casual dinner though. LOL!
I called up to check on the status of my unemployment check. I found out that there was a problem with the address and that it was never sent out. Damn it! I was waiting forever for the damn thing since I filled over two weeks ago. So they mailed it out Friday.
I might get to look like some rich guy at my credit union where I cash all my checks. I haven’t cashed my paycheck from last week. I expect to do that Monday. I’ll be getting my unemployment check that week and then my paycheck on Wednesday for the week I just finished this past Saturday. Hopefully I’ll get my favorite clerk and maybe flirt with her. The last bank clerk I flirted with hinted at interest. Our first ‘date’ if you could have called it that would have been helping her move. I declined and that was the end of that.
So I’ve been on this real urge to try out painting. I had gotten a small acrylic set some years ago but lately I’ve been all gung-ho about learning actually how to do it. My only problem is actually doing it. That sounds really stupid. I only have so much paper and I always fret about what subject to paint that I get all tense about it and end up doing something else. But now I’ve got a book and some new paints and I’m ready to go. I just need to pick a subject. Sigh. I don’t know why I do that to myself.
So I have this internet friend that I could recall talking about this Anita Blake fictional character. I had seen her even post that she had gotten a preview copy of the (then) latest book. I had heard her say some thing that mildly interested me. Recently the first book has started coming out in comic book format. I picked it up and despite the ragging of my friends found enough to like to look into the actual novels further. So I did that last night. I bought books number 9 and number 4 of the series. I know I should start with the first book and all but I went with numbers 4 & 9 because of the titles and small excerpts I’ve read.
So in a nutshell, Anita Blake is a feisty 5’3 woman set in a world where the undead are legal citizen and so are lycanthropes. So far, I like the setting better than I expected. The imagery in the books certainly doesn’t hurt. Anita seems to constantly be in various sexy outfits and high heeled boots. I can get behind that! A lot of the guys and pretty fem or bi which doesn’t do anything for me but I can live with it. Apparently further into the series of books the more erotic and sexual the stories become. I haven’t found a sex scene yet but apparently they can get graphic. So I like the setting, I like lycanthropes, and I like the some what fetish aspect of the book and Anita as a character. Some of the other stuff I pretty much glaze over. I haven’t found anything I outright dislike yet. So last night I plowed through about 40+ pages of the 600+ page book #9 and read a few more this morning. The only reason I stopped reading last night was because it was 2am and I didn’t want to be up all night.
I later woke up at roughly 5am and couldn’t get back to sleep because I was starving! Even though a piece of bread and a tall glass of grape juice soothed my belly I still couldn’t get back to sleep. Thrown in there was a pee and a snot rendering. After some more tossing and turning I read the first 45 pages of my new art book. Since most of the pages where pictures I only really read for a short time. So I got up, took a shower, loaded up some laundry and read more pages of Anita Blake. Right now, I’m really on a reading kick (my Entertainment Weekly is sitting unread though) Anita is my favorite. To compensate, I haven’t been playing video games much lately. I do have 3 days worth of dishes to do.
Ending on a bit of a sad note. Seems, or at least I hope this is the case, that one of my internet friends seems to have given up the internet for the most part. Where are you Sara? I haven’t seen her sign on to any internet site that we frequent since late last December. And before that small burst of internet time she seemed to disappear for over a month also. I miss shooting the breeze with Sara about comics, my comic, and a lot of wrestling stuff. But, in the end, it’s better that she goes to college like she’s doing and experience life rather than spending late night hours huddled in front of a computer screen.
And finally final, here’s hoping that the New England Patriots beat the Colts to advance to the Super Bowl for around the 4th time in 6 years (or is it 5 years?)!
posted by DungeonMasterJim at 9:26 AM
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