tea + keyboard - mixed nuts

First, I have to set the scene a bit:

1. I'm at the computer at home. In front of me on the desk are a cup of tea on the left and an open can of mixed nuts on the right.

2. It's my habit to either:
a. Pick up the cup of tea with my right hand (thus reaching across the desk) and take a drink - or
b. Pick up the can of nuts with my right hand and shake a few into my left hand - then toss the mixed nuts into my mouth.

Now that's set up, we'll begin...

I'm playing a computer game and have been doing so for a while. Every so often, I'll take a drink or get a snack. And then, for some strange reason and clearly without paying close attention, I picked up the cup of warm tea and poured most of it into my left hand.

Pause for a moment for the swearing.

Once that was done, I began the clean up. The desk and keyboard tray were easy to clean up - but the throughly drenched keyboard was a loss. I shut everything down quickly and then unplugged the keyboard and tried to rinse it out. I then let it dry in the sun - but I don't fully trust it. So, I went to best buy and bought a keyboard and mouse set. They're pretty cool and have more buttons, but it was still a waste.

I can laugh about it now, but it was pretty bad when it happened.

New rule... Either drink or snack at the computer - but never both.

later...

30, bomb, cola, costume, game, nails

I swam 30 laps today, despite being a bit tired and getting a late start. Felt pretty good and could have gone further, but ran out of time.

Had another bomb threat today on campus - someone wrote a warning on the wall of a bathroom stall. How lame can you get? I hope the bomb sniffing dogs are getting some good treats out of all of this - they'd be the only ones who might benefit from it.

It's been a few weeks since I had my last coca-cola - I think I've finally gotten the addiction beat. Drinking a lot of water to make up for it, but that's better anyway.

My Halloween costume is coming along nicely - had a make or break moment last evening and things went better than expected. No hints, so don't even bother asking.

Played a little Final Fantasy again last night - and got my ass handed to me. I literally ran away screaming like a little girl. It was sad and pathetic.

Finally, I've been working on not biting my nails anymore. I'm making some progress, but it's taking a lot of concentration.


6 random topics and I'm outta here. Later...

football game, sunburn, time

Went to a football game with my room-mate over the weekend - WVU in morgantown. The drive down was boring on Friday, as was much of the evening. I did a bit of folding and read a book.
On gameday, we head out early and then had some issues with the optimum route. My room-mate and his sister had different ideas on how to proceed and I sat in the back and wondered if we would ever get there.

Finally arrived and found a parking space - and waited for his other sister and her family to show up. They finally did, and we set out to find them in the lot where they said they had parked. He and his sister started out, I told them that I would catch up after visiting the port-o-let. They were long gone when I emerged, but I figured they wouldn't be hard to find. I went to the correct lot and with a little logic, found his other sister and her family. A number of cell phone conversations and my room-mate and his now deeply cranky sister finally arrived. Apparently, they thought I had gone back to our car for some reason. Anyway, we split up once in the stadium and found our seats.

My room-mate's niece had what they called "a meltdown" and the rest of his family left the game just before half-time. My room-mate started to overheat and needed to borrow my hat - though it was only a stop gap measure as he had to leave before the 4th quarter.

Ironically, I wasn't really in favor of going to the game at all, but ended up being the only one who could have stuck it out - though I left with my room-mate since he was driving.

Once back at their homestead, his niece threw up due to her migraine and my room-mate pretty much passed out from the heat exhaustion. I ended up with a sunburn.

Oh, and WVU won the game. (we heard it on the radio as we left)

I had a headache most of the day and went to bed early. The next day I was ready to leave at 8:30 but we didn't get on the road until around 12:30. I went into a low-power mode to help get though the intense boredom - it helped a little. And despite a relatively innocuous visit - there was a comment made right at the end that burned me up. I kept quiet about it, but I have to wonder what holding all this stuff back is going to do to me. Nothing good, I'm sure.

In other news... our university President did it again and gave a commencement speech that I enjoyed reading as I posted it on the web for him. This one was about Time and he quotes Penelope Corfield as she describes time as:

“one long never-ending Now.”

I like that - fits in well with my own personal philosophy.

On the flip side is a quote by Ariel from the video game Legacy of Kain - one of my personal favorites. I played through that section several times so I could write it down word for word:

'All I can do is watch and remember.
Ceaselessly conscious as this wretched world's history unfolds.
Ghastly past, insufferable future - Are they one in the same?
Am I always here?"

At the point in the game where she says this, she's a prophetic ghost. So, it pretty much sucks to be her.

I can identify with that to an extent - in a way, she reminds me of cassandra from ancient greek myths. Blessed with visions of the future, cursed so that no one will ever believe her.

Man, I feel like that all the time. Things would work out so much better if everyone around me would just listen to me and then do exactly what I tell them to do. I'm seriously going to have to break out the mind control drugs one of these days.

Well, that's it for now. Gotta get back to the grind.

later...

credit card, hospital bill, red cross, cola

I got a bill a couple days ago for my credit card - the one that I'd thought I'd paid off and canceled. Apparently, I'm being charged interest on the amount before my check got to them. $2.83 cents. Wankers.

I also got a bill from the hospital for my stay back in February. For $50. Not bad. I suspect they'll be more, but it looks like my insurance paid about $4000+, so I'm not complaining.

Got a call from the red cross, encouraging me to give blood. Which I'm not allowed to do anyway since I just gave within the past couple of weeks. Not sure what's up with their records.

The strep throat has had one good side effect - I think I've broken my coca-cola addiction. It hurt far too much to swallow the carbonated soda, so I found myself not drinking it at all. It was rough going for a bit there, but I think I've gotten stopped at this point and I'm drinking a lot of water and a little bit of tea. We'll see how it goes.

that's it for now... later...

grape

While still fighting my sore throat, I bought some grape flavored cloroceptic (sp?). It was the children's strength, but still did the job and tasted better than the cherry flavored adult stuff I'd been chugging.

This is important to note since I have also gotten into the habit of using a spray cleaner that I got from my eye doctor for cleaning my glasses.

While in Illinois I grabbed the spray bottle and the lens cloth and hit my glasses, once per lens on each side. And even though the bottles are nothing alike other than that they spray liquid, I managed to grab the wrong one and doused my glasses with grape cough medicine. I even started to use the lens cloth to wipe off the grape liquid before the color and smell stopped me.

I got the lenses washed off with water and tried again. I also shared this incident with my family, who got a good laugh over this.

And I am very glad they didn't get mixed up the other direction - otherwise, I might have poisoned myself.

That's it for now... later...

donation, christening, block party, wedding, strep, old friend, chipolte

Well, time to catch up a bit.

1. Went and gave blood recently. Went pretty smooth, except the woman that took the donation kept talking about how she wouldn't take blood from another employee as they would be too critical of her work. Well, turns out there would be good reason to be critical - she didn't do a very good job. Not the end of the world, but not really precise.

2. Went to a christening for the couple that stayed with us while waiting for their surrogate twins to be born. It was a nice service and the church would make a great place to hide from vampires as it was covered in crucifixes and had holy water on tap. Handy. The service made mention of an exorcism, but it was not as interesting as it would have seemed. I got to hold one of the twins afterwards and told her she was my buddy until she pooped. Instead, she spit up on me.

3. That same weekend, went to a pretty cool block party. Stayed late, talked to a lot of people, ate some good food and did a little dancing. Also participated in the potato race - which involved holding a potato between one's legs and attempting to run. I wasn't very good at that.

4. Went to a wedding late weekend for my cousin. She looked radiate, her groom was in a kilt and there were bagpipes playing. The service was outside and only lasted about 10 minutes - justice of the peace running the show. The food consisted of snacks and I hung out with some my extended family. Had a nice time - though the drive to Illinois and back was really long.

5. In and around all of this, I'd been fighting a sore throat. A bad one. I finally went to the doctor and got a prescription - which seems to have finally done the trick. I thought I was going to OD on menthol for a while there.

6. The middle son of my former room-mate contacted me recently - he's college age and starting at UA. Which is pretty cool - I'm hoping we can get together for lunch one of these days.

7. I finally went to a chipolte recently - and that was some of the best food I've ever eaten. I ate a burrito that was the size and shape of a brick like it was nothing. Man, that was good stuff.

Guess that's about it for now... back to the video games.