Ugh, new roof needed.

Blog 112807

I LOVE my new big screen tv. At first when I first hooked it up the picture was only okay. I did the auto-program which searches for all channels the tv can get. It seems the high def channels are all up in the 100’s. And some of them look awesome. So I have no fear of having been ‘hosed’ on the price as my friends put it. Unfortunately I have to wait to get an Xbox 360.

The past couple of days have been busy as all hell. Today I stayed up late to get my car’s anti-freeze and windshield wipers replaced. That cost a $120. Got to see my parents at least as they live close to the garage and picked me up since the wait was like 90 minutes. One of my wipers was pathetic and half of it was flopping along my windshield. Last time I changed a wiper it was a disaster.

I got home and went straight to bed. Then I got up showered and the dude for the 2nd roof estimate arrived. The first guy quoted me $3800. This second guy quoted me $5320. Yee-OUCH! I have a friend having a buddy come over in the next day or two for another quote. So I called my buddy to confirm and called the $3800 guy to let him know what’s up since he’s a friend of a friend.

Yeah, so I need a new roof. I climbed up it to patch a leak and shingles were split, nails were sticking up almost a quarter of an inch from the shingles and an area of a ‘valley’ cracked and ripped with ease. The next rainy day both my skylights leaked again. So yeah, it seems like time for a new roof.

I dream about work. That kind of sucks since I’m there minimum six days a week. I’ll be working a lot of Sundays too to help rebuild my savings account after my new roof kills it.

I won both fantasy football games this week. I’m 10-1 in one league and 7-5 in another. In the 7-5 league I think 5 out of 10 teams are 7-5 or 6-6. Last year I finished 8-6 and out of the play-off’s. Grrrr. I’ve clinched a bye week in the league where I’m 10-1. The closest guy I think is 7-4.

Oh yeah, I LOVE my 40” high def 1080p Samsung big screen. It seems to pick up some channels that I shouldn’t really get too. I don’t recall a porn channel being part of my basic cable package. I also was able to get a pay-per-view channel or something like Showtime. It had an R-rated movie. I think that those channels will be hit or miss though as sometimes they’ll unscramble and other times not.

Leaving for work in 9 minutes.

Thanksgiving, big screen TV's and ranting

Blog 112407

Thanksgiving was pretty decent but not as awesome as previous years. Mostly this had to do with me working until 7am Thanksgiving morning. I went home, did some internet stuff and was in bed by 9:30am if I remember correctly. I got up around 2pm and showered and made my way to my parents’ place. I read the ads for the next day and ate chow. It seemed like the regular Thanksgiving over kill wasn’t quite there. The table looked a little sparse. Still, I had large amounts of turkey, meat stuffing, mashed potatoes and corn. I also had my favorite little sweet pickles. I’ve loved those pickles since I was a kid.

Desert was ginormous. Apple pie, bluberry pie, banana cream pie, black forest pie, jello, mini cream cheese cakes, cupcakes, homemade whipped cream (yum!) and I think pumpkin pie. I also think I’m forgetting one to three other things. Oh yeah, homemade chocolate covered peanut butter balls.

I downed some Apple pie and banana cream pie and later jello. My sister and brother cleaned up the food while another brother disappeared to his room and my oldest brother went out somewhere. Mom and dad passed out on the couch and my brother-in-law and I played a couple of games of cribbage. My nephew played Playstation 2. And then it was over. Part of the reason I left was because I had to blow up a toilet and I didn’t want it to be my parents. And I did exactly that when I got home. The cause was some heavy pizza from the worknight before courtesy of our supervisor.

The next day was Black Friday, pretty much the biggest shopping day of the year. I avoided all stores opening at 4 or 5am this time around. I went to a local electronics store that opened at 8am. I was set to buy my big screen TV. It took awhile to get a clerk because the store was quite busy. One old lady just caught everyone else off (about 3 or 4 of us) and the guy helped her out! That bastard. I was kind of pissed because the guy had seen me there for like 5 minutes and the other couple had come behind me. The old bag was there for like a minute. So the guy helps me out but boy did he have bad breath! Ugh! The tv I wanted was out but comes in this coming Tuesday. I was okay with that. I then had to wait in line for 30+ minutes. That sucked. Not unexpected but suckles. I think a bunch of people were signing up for zero percent financing because I saw a lot of sheets of paper attached to sales receipts. I was considering it but I wanted out of the store and just charged it. It took less than 5 minutes. On an aside, I wrote out and sent a check to cover the whole cost today so I don’t get slammed by interest on my card.

I ended up buying a Samsung 40 inch, LCD HDTV with 1080p. It was rated quite highly by Consumer Reports including their highest scores in many categories including picture. Consumer Reports listed it as $1700 and the store was the same or maybe $1800. Their ad said ‘save $400’. The TV was also $50 cheaper in-store. So in the end, including tax I paid $1417 for my TV. And I don’t have it. Grrrrrr! LOL!

Later on I saw some friends and told them about it. The TV coinsurers that they are they said I got ‘hosed’ on the price. They said I could’ve done a lot better for a lot cheaper. Of course, when I noticed their big screens I was mildly impressed but found I didn’t really like them all that much. I think I’ll do fine with mine. On the other hand, my brother-in-law had a 37 inch that looked absolutely amazing. That said, he dropped over $2000 on it. Out of my range. I did see a bigger 56” screen at the next store I went to but I think it was DPL. Or is it DLP? I’m fairly certain that LCD seems to be the best by general consensus. Plasma looked awesome though better than LCD. But most people that have big screens went with LCD over plasma because plasma bulbs burn out or something and use more electricity.

After my Christmas gift for myself I went to Sears and got a $15 gift for a brother that normally goes for $30. And then I was off to Home Depot for some $5 flashlights for my dad. I went back today to get me the same flashlights but they were gone. I was able to get out of Sears and Home Depot quite quickly.

After leftovers at my mom’s plus deserts I missed on Thanksgiving due to fullness of stomach I rejoined my friends at the comic shop. My buddy was playing his NFL discs of all the SuperBowls. Then they all played tabletop version of WarHammer using the future guys. I have zero interest and watched the SuperBowl games. And like they always do, they spent as much time going over the rules and clarifications as they did playing.

They didn’t bother locking the door even though the store was past hours of operation and a couple of customers staggered in here and there. One was a tiny woman none of us had seen before. She was probably 5 feet tall tops. She was average looking, maybe even cute in younger days as she was now probably late 30’s or early 40’s. Her arms outstretched could barely reach the top shelf. The guys did theie standard ‘if you need any help just ask’ line and returned their attention to their game. I was about15 feet away from them sitting alone at a table watching the TV up in the corner. Eventually she asked about some comic none of us had heard of. That broke into books she currently might like. This took about 10 minutes and at one point it seemed like the other guys were grilling her like cops on a criminal about her interests – ‘super-heroes? Zombies?’ I was quite pleased that she bought my recommendations of Fables and Ultimate Spider-Man. She bought about $12 of books and left which was probably 4 to 6 comics. The guys started razzing me about her as she seemed to show the most interest in what I had to say. I thought my buddy Dwain had been boozing it up because I smelled liquor but it turned out to be her! So I got a drunk woman to buy comics that I like to read. Oh well, at least it was a sale for the store. Who knows, maybe if I pushed my luck I could’ve gotten some from her that night. Of course, I would’ve hated myself for taking advantage of her.

I got home read my own comics and fell asleep around 2am.

Today I knew I had some stuff to get done before heading off back to work. I slept until 9:30am and could’ve slept longer because I was tired. Instead I got up and started my day knowing I had things to do. I was badgered into playing Wii bowling with my nephew but we only played one game. I wrote out some bills and sent payment to cover the cost of the big screen and some Xmas gifts I bought on-line on my credit card. The amount should make it so that I don’t get charged jack for interest on the card.

Afterwards I hit Home Depot for roof sealant and flashlights. I struck out on the flashlights. I hit up my credit union depositing more money for my checking and some for my nephew’s college fund. I have that account up to $2660 after only two and a half years. I like the girl that helped me. She’s kind of cute and always has her hair colored in crazy ways. But she makes it look good. She’s like a pale blond naturally (I think!) with some slashes and ends of black and slashes of pink. It’ done well and looks neat. It’s also funny because she dresses professionally in nice tops and slacks. She had to get up and leave her chair while helping me so I took time to look. : )

I also bought groceries today. All that went quickly and well although I forgot to buy stamps. Grr.

I get home and dare to climb my roof to try and use silicon to seal a leak. Well, that was a disaster. The aprt of the roof seems to be in really sorry shape. Parts of the shingles were cracking and splitting when I was on top of them. A couple of nails were sticking up out of the roof at almost a full quarter inch. No wonder that area leaks. And then the damn caulking gun didn’t work. So climbed down and drove off in disgust to get a new caulking gun. I pull into the same shopping plaza I breezed through before maybe a half an hour earlier. The place was packed. At one point part of the parking lot makes a 90 degree turn. I stopped and waited as an older lady was backing out. It served no purpose to do otherwise because she was clogging the bottleneck area up so it was a lot easier just to wait. This lady behind decided she couldn’t. So she rolls around me going into the ‘other lane’. She nearly hit the other lady in a head on collision. So then the pair start going back and forth with false starts to see who’s going to go. And the lady behind me keeps screwing everything up. They get that settled and the lady behind me passes me. She tries to make a left hand turn but there are a bunch of on coming cars so she has to wait. I pass on the right hand side and am happy to be done with her. I look in my rear view mirror and notice she starts doing what looks like a 3 point turn with 3 or 4 cars apparently waiting for her to do whatever she has to do so they can get by. Like I said, I was happy to be done with that schmuck.

I get into the hardware store and see that it’s packed. Joy. As I’m walking by I hear the reason, some items a customer is trying to buy are not showing up in the computer. By the time I find my caulking gun ($4) and return to the front the situation has not been resolved and something like 10 people or more are waiting in line. So I get stuck in that but everything seemed okay once I got out of that whole plaza.

I got home and patched what areas of the roof seemed damaged and probably the leaking spots. A few phonecalls around and I have no one but one potential person that maybe does roofing. So I’m waiting for my buddy, the Angry Black Man, to call me back and see if he can help me out. I hope I don’t need a whole new roof but it wouldn’t surprise me. I suppose if I do its happening at probably the best time possible since I’m slated to do overtime until March next year.

And I had a neat, semi-weird dream that I’ve forgotten. But I know it was neat. I think there was killing in it. I want to say killing monsters or bad guys but I don’t know for certain. I know it had my friends from the comic shop and I.

Thanksgiving was a solid day for me in fantasy football and it’s likely I’m romp over my opponent in the league where I’m already 10-1.

Whew. Out!

The Mist, ghosts and other stuff

Blog 112307

Ghost hunting at my sister’s went well although there wasn’t any stunning evidence to be found. Again, we tried to do it scientifically using digital cameras, digital camcorders, temperature readers, digital sound recording and one or two other things that I may have missed.

Early on as my sister said as she lead us to a ‘hotspot’ closet that the male ghost of the house was right behind her. We didn’t see much and I don’t believe anything was detected. So it was fun and interesting but I don’t think we found anything conclusive.

I was able to see The Mist at a premiere. For free no less. I LOVED it! I really enjoyed the interactions between the characters and the decisions they were forced to make. One thing I loved was that intelligent characters didn’t suddenly make stupid decisions to allow the bad guys to put them in harm’s way. So many Hollywood movies have great tension build up and then blow it through tired clichés. If this movie had some I missed them. Towards the end I thought there were three main possibilities. One came true and I was fine with it. In fact, I would have been satisfied with any of my three endings because they all worked.

Work has been going pretty fast each day because we are pretty busy. What sucked was a screw up on Sunday night that I had nothing to do with. Another area made the wrong stuff for our new product and it all had to be scrapped. So half of third shift was called an hour before going to work and told not to come in. That sucked. What can I do at 10pm on a Sunday night about half an hour before I’m supposed to leave? Not much. I played some video games and went to bed. The break was nice but I lost out on $240.

Seems like I had a lot more to say but I guess not. Thanksgiving will be brief as I get out at 7am, sleep a little and then head up to the parentals for chow. I also have Friday off and then I’m working, working, working.

I still wake up most days with a headache. I’m not sure why. I think it might be because the house is so dry. Last year I woke up with dried blood in my nose. I added one humidifier last year and added one to my house central air. It seems to help somewhat. I will be firing up my third one in my room to help. I’ve found a problem with doing this though. My room gets heated up to a very comfortable temp. My thermometer for the house heating is in my room. So while my room was toasty the rest of the house was about 60 degrees because the heater didn’t know to go on! Ugh!

I did the plastic over the windows because the house is so drafty. I’ve tried to find where the drafts come from but have failed. I partly wonder if my central air somehow lets the wind in. Unfortunately, my cat is proving once more to be more of a hassle than it’s worth. Within 20 minutes it had shredded the plastic on a window. Funny? Not really. Maybe the damn thing would like to sit outside in the cold that I’m trying to keep out. I now have to find another way to insulate the house to keep my heating bill down and the house warm. Fucking cat.

First snow of the year yesterday. I think we got over an inch. It was pretty awesome to watch.

That is all.

Dreams and ghost hunting!

Blog 111207

Weird neat dream this morning. A group of people and I were part of a somewhat devastated world. I’ve been seeing ads for I Am Legend and this dream was similar in that most of the population was dead.

The group of about 5 or 6 people and I were in a mall. It was a weird mall where every room was the size of a basketball gymnasium or larger. The ceilings were all really high like 30 minimum. Each room seemed to be a different department or store. The places were mostly intact with some things knocked over or stuff on the floor.

I don’t really recall the other people but we were a mix of male and females. Some of my family may have been part of the group but I can’t recall now.

We were putzing around this one store when we could hear these loud footsteps of something really large and heavy. In the dream I was really anxious. A large rock man came around a corner. It looked like he was made of brown, variously sized round rocks that had a polish to them. It was big like 8 or 9 feet tall. It was thick like a bodybuilder. I think it had two eyes also. It didn’t really have hands but more like clubs. And it was looking to kill us. We scattered and it chased us until a few of the group tried to attack it. We couldn’t hurt it. Then, for whatever reason, I realized that my hands emitted acid and that I could probably blind it. I didn’t have enough power to stop it. I wasn’t excited about this prospect since I knew I could get killed but I was the only one that could affect it. I was able to get behind it because it was kind of slow. I jumped to its shoulders and pressed my palms against each eye. It worked. With the thing staggering around we all fled out of the area.

We ran outside because the mall ended and found ourselves in sort of a soft, rolling fields farming community. The mall was huge and behind but with no parking lot or road system that I saw. I think I saw a lone dirt road or it may have been a single set of railroad tracks. There were about 4 or 5 plain houses dotting the landscape.

We hustled into a large red barn that seemed fairly old. The doors were open and it had a few holes in the walls large enough to exit easily. We were mostly leaving to go to one of the houses we I noticed a sort of lower chamber. There was some sort of machine there. It looked like black metal and like some sort of engine. I really can’t describe well. It somehow came to life and started spewing green material out of a top nozzle. This stuff looked like green snot, like florescent green snot. I think it hit one or two of the group. I don’t recall what it did but it wasn’t good.

As we fled that barn towards another barn/house combination we had to flee that. Another rock man showed up and this was like three times the size of the first. We could see people at the other barn house but they were in a corral. Someone or some thing was rounding people up. They were man-like but may have been orcs or something. A couple of us ran to one of the other houses and found a farmer. Turns out the orcs let about five surrounding farms to operator to grow food for everyone. All other humans were captives. I was able to hide in a coffin like thing set in the ground while the orcs stormed the house.

I then woke up.

I’ve forgotten more of the dream but it was pretty cool. While everything was pretty much just like a prairie land area you could tell most of the population was dead.

On a random note my co-worker’s grandson made it on to kid’s Jeopardy. This is the real Jeopardy show but has only kids around 10 to 12 I believe for contestants. He finished last of his trio but got $1000. He was something like one of 15 kids selected out of 35,000.

Things that don’t get old: my cat doing the cartoon effect of running in place when she tries to run on linoleum.

Things that are always old: the cat scratching and damaging stuff in my house.

My buddy came over my parents’ house last night for some ghost hunting. It was just him and his girl but it was fun. He’s into scientific research as opposed to religious investigation. He had about 5 pieces of equipment: digital camera, hi-def digital video camera, a thing to record sound digitally, and two types of energy reading/sensing devices.

As usual, my dad gets all anxious and my buddy was a little late. Once he arrived you couldn’t stop my dad from talking about the house and then pretty much everything. It got to the point where you couldn’t get a word in!

I led my buddy around the house. He set up his digital camcorder and some toys in a ‘hot spot’ to see if they would be moved at all. Later when we came back about 20 minutes later his brand new batteries that he had opened in front of me were almost dead. They should’ve lasted for a lot longer.

They snapped pictures and did some sound recordings. At one point my buddy thought he felt a touch of a cold spot on his face on the staircase where a young boy supposedly died long ago. After some quick device pointing though nothing seemed overly out of the ordinary. It may have been the fan from the kitchen. My parents use a fan to suck the heat from the woodstove into other parts of the house. The fan seemed pointed into the room this time as I felt an occasional draft on my face.

Nothing really great or monumentus happened but there was one somewhat interesting note. I had shown them the basement. The basement has a dirt floor and many a psychic claim there is a lot of energy there. Nothing happened in the basement that we were aware of. We moved upstairs to the back staircase. There is a small storage area underneath the staircase that seems to be a hotspot. My buddy was asking questions for a sign as he recorded with his sound recorder. He was asking for the spirits to say or do something that could be recorded. Out of nowhere the three of us clearly heard something fall from a height in the basement. To me it sort of sounded like a gas funnel or something light and hollow bounce off something and then again and then hit the floor or something. My buddy said it was metallic sounding. But all three of us definitely heard it. Eventually, despite some hesitation on my part, we went back into the cellar. There is so much stuff down there that something could have fallen but we really couldn’t find anything amiss. They did spot a small mouse but not in the area of where the sound came from. Oh yeah, the millions of spiderwebs in the cellar and some in the attic kind of creeped me out. Some of the attic webs still had long legged thin long spiders moving around in them.

So after about 90 minutes my buddy packed up his gear and they headed home. I asked for a CD or DVD of his recordings. He said it would take about a week to go through everything. And next Sunday we’re slated to do the same thing at my sister’s house.

I’ve won again in my fantasy football that I really want to win. I’m now 9-1 but the play-off’s are lose once and out so it could all be for nothing. I should make the play-off’s easily though since I’m in first and just handed a loss to the second place guy. I lost in the other league so I’ll be 6-4 and remain in third I believe. In my pick ‘em league I got like 5 games right out of 14. Ugh. I lost my big point games and will probably fall a notch or two in the standings.

I’m sore from my new job. My new job has lots of arm, shoulder and hand usage. My muscles are sore as I get use to using those particular muscles on a regular basis now. I did my first day of over-time on Saturday. Because I have today off (Monday) it’s still a two day weekend for me. I won a bid for third and will start that tomorrow night. I’ll work this week and then I believe it’s already Thanksgiving weekend so that’ll be two more days off. I’m hoping that the company doesn’t pull any BS and make us work that Friday and Saturday or even just that Saturday. I would like a 4 day weekend. It would almost be 5 days since I wouldn’t be going into work until Monday 11pm. The only thing that sucks is that I get out on Thanksgiving Day at 7am. I’ll probably sleep for an hour soon after I get home and then run up to the parentals for a great meal.

I should be working six days a week now until March of next year or longer. The money will be nice but I worry about fatigue and burnout. After six months I should be able to bid out of the department and just might for a break! I’m hoping the extra money will allow me to do a couple of things: go to Origins in late June, go to DragonCon Labor Day weekend, buy a big screen TV, buy and Xbox 360, and allow my to buy all my Xmas gifts in cash so that I care no debt over into 2008. We’ll see as I’m only earning an extra $100 a week. But some of the vacation stuff I plan to fund from my tax returns.

Time for brunch, almost lunch as I’ve yet to eat anything yet today!

Dreams and my new job

Blog 110807

Had a strange dream this morning. I, and several of my co-workers, were in sort of a live action role-playing game type deal set in a Star Wars theme. The place seemed like a library or something. Nobody was in costume and the props were few and far between. I was running around with a Stormtrooper’s blaster. It seemed like one of the bigger guns in the game. I know we were shooting one another but I can’t recall if actual beams came out or if we just use to say, ‘I got you!’

I was kind of lagging behind with a few other stragglers as my team advanced from room to room. I ran towards the front and like Call of Duty 2, missed most of the action there to. I stepped into this one room where everyone was just standing there. They were all pretending to be frozen in time but for what reason I don’t know. I think someone had set off a paralyzing grenade or something. The room looked like an old western saloon too.

I moved over to three women and asked if they were rebels (my team) or Empire. Empire they responded. I stated to the room, ‘I kill them.’ They got up and left to move out of play. Others just sort of laughed. One guy was sitting at a table were some sort of poker game was going on. I had never seen the style of cards or money before on the table. The guy at the table had looked like he was about to or had just won an important hand in the game. A few feet from him standing up was another guy with a grenade held head high and primed. I got the impression that he lost the poker hand and was going to blow the room up or something. A couple of co-workers standing against the wall watching everything just had smiles on their faces as I was the only guy moving in the room. My co-worker Laura joked something like, ‘Let’s see if he can figure out what’s going on.’

I didn’t. I woke up.

Work took a new twist. I finally started training this past Monday. I went to bed and fell asleep before 10pm on Sunday night. I woke up around 2:30am feeling refreshed and energized. Damn it! I was able to get back to sleep and but every half hour or so until I got up at 5:40am for good.

We sat through a boring intro to the stuff we were suppose to be doing. After about 2 hours we went to the machines and started poking around and learning how to make product. We essentially put slugs of rubber on a plate and then have it crushed under extreme heat and pressure to make a core. It’s a lot like baking cookies. Once that’s done we put more rubber slugs around the molded core and subject it to heat and pressure again. That makes the inside of the golf ball and our part is done. The core is shipped off to another department that puts the outside skin on and then that gets painted and you have our new golf ball. They gave us two days of training and sent us to our regular shifts because the department is already behind by a number of days. Under most circumstances a worker is suppose to get a week’s training. I guess there was a heated argument between middle management or higher about how much training we should get because we are behind schedule. One guy fought for another day but the guy pressing for production won. So after two days of training we are in production.

So I must say my job is kind of boring even after only the third day but it pays decently and its job security. I worked first shift the first two days and now I’m on third. The company is adding two more people to each shift already and I was able to use that to get the okay to switch to third shift. I suspect I’ll be able to go to third this coming Monday since it’s the middle of the week as I write.

I checked in on my old boss because I had heard he had suffered a leg injury and he missed the last two days I was there. After going to the doctor’s he found out he had a blood clot. He’s been to the doctor’s every day since as they give him medicine and keep an eye on it. He missed Monday but was back to work last night. It’s still slow as hell over there while at times I have to run my ass off at the new area. I did tell my boss I would be staying at the new job though.

We have to work six days a week mandatory and the estimate for that was at least until March of 2008. Another guy said June. Oy. At least I’ll have plenty of money during a tough time of the year, Christmas and winter. The money should also allow me to buy some things I would like to have. I want a big screen tv, some furniture for the house, and money to keep making comics. I won’t be rich by working one day extra a week but Sundays will also probably be available if I want to work myself to the bone. By working 16 hours OT I might be making ¾ of what I make for a normal paycheck. I’ll have to see how my stamina holds before I go crazy working 7 days a week.

My fantasy teams eeked out two victories this week. I’m now 9-1 in the league I really want to win. My only loss was my first week and I only lost by a point and a half or less. Behind Tom Brady and Adrian Peterson I usually win by 10 points or more. Usually more. My friend that I played had a record of 2-6 going in. He scored more points this week by far than anybody else except for me. The poor bastard. He got a loss.

I the other league I’m now 6-3. By normal football rules I would be in second place because I beat the second place guy. Because fantasy football works on record first and then points scored I’m in third. The second place guy has scored more points than me. I totally eeked out a win there. I beat my opponent by .52 points. That’s about as close as you can get. I think just getting a catch in that league gets you.5 points. Whew! Good fortune was with me though in more ways. We were the two lowest scoring teams this past week by a large margin. I score 127. something. Most other teams scored over 180 points! I beat the only score I could. I’ll take it.

My sleep is kind of messed up right now. Two days of first shift and now I’m on second. I try to sneak in a small nap of about 20 to 30 minutes before work. I can’t help but wake up around 7am every morning. So I’m a little sluggish until I get to work. It’s hotter than hell there and I have to run around and be attentive because everything is so new. I expect to be wearing shorts to work in the middle of January. Once I hit third again I think things will calm down and I can get back to regular time periods for sleeping. Getting up for about 5 hours, napping and then working 8 hours kind of sucks right now. I’m also not a big fan of my 30 minute lunch happening 3 hours after I get to work. I much prefer my 10 minute break first and then lunch later on in the day. Between the heat and somewhat running around I expect to shed a few pounds at the new job. That should be a decent thing though. And I’ll be drinking a lot more water now at work because I get so damn thirsty! Over and out.

What were refs looking at?

Blog 110407

Fairly boring Saturday. I slept late after playing some computer games after work. I didn’t get up until almost 5pm. Went to the comic shop and hung out there with my friend for awhile. I almost had to jumpstart someone’s car but I couldn’t park close enough because of a full parking lot.

After the comic shop I bought a ne pair of pants and then groceries. Yeah, exciting Saturday.

Sunday was a bit better. I got up early to join my parents for shopping at a local outlet store. Mom had a 25% off coupon so we pretty much went as soon as the store opened at 8a.m.

I struck out twice. First, the $89.99 dresser I wanted sold out literally seconds before I got to it. I could hear the people at the counter going ‘we want to buy the dresser too’. Damn.

I wandered around some of the other furniture and most of it was somewhat pricey that I liked. I found a bureau type thing, maybe more of a hutch with legs for $200. It would be $150 with mom’s coupon. But that too was sold out. Damn it. So I bought another pair of pants the same kind I bought on Saturday.

On Saturday I noticed a cute cashier at the outlet store. She seemed a little heavy on the make-up but other than that she looked like a blond Denise Ricardson, the Hollywood actress. I liked her outfit and drew it on to one of my super-heroes when the super-hero appears in public.

I was hoping she was there again this morning when I went with my parents. She was. The make-up was a little heavy again. Her outfit was blah this time around.

I have done a couple of drawings lately. They seem pretty decent to me. I may post them on the internet.

Wow. That’s all I can say about the Patriots/Colts game. It was a real nail biter. I also couldn’t believe the refs. What the hell were the refs looking at?!?! The refs blew about 5 calls. Two were really bad. The Patriots had to use a challenge to overturn one of the two really bad calls. Even the TV announcers were going ‘wow, I don’t see it (the penalty)’.

The Patriots committed the most penalties in franchise history. Most were justified but around 5 were really questionable. The Patriots were also flagged for over 100 yards in penalties. The Colts were flagged a couple of times but not until late in the game. Theyprobably had between 4 to 6 penalties for about 55 yards. I think the Patriots were flagged 12 or 13 times. All the local sports radio talkshows are having fits. Some are saying referee incompetence to the referees fixing the game.

In the end, the Patriots won and are still undefeated so far this season but damn, this one they really had to work for. The Colts are the second best team in the league.

Ugh, I start first shift tomorrow. Maybe. I could get there to find out that things have been cancelled again. But I think training will start since the area is already six days behind schedule.

Waves ‘hi’ to Wendy because I never mention her.