The ticket-seller at the Metra station just came out of his booth to hand me the sunglasses that I dropped in the parking lot, on Friday morning. His cryptic smile combined with the weird nod the coffee-guy gave me lead me to believe that they probably watched me on Friday, as I casually started walking across the parking lot, then saw the early train start rolling into the station, started running, thinking I might be able to catch it and have some extra time to pick up a coffee while walking to work after the trains, slung my bag around from back to front to grab my wallet to pay for parking (which is probably when my sunglasses flew out of the not-quite-closed pocket that they were in), punched in my number and waited for the machine to register my payment, then whipped around the corner to see the conductor get on and close the doors.
I want to believe the coffee-guy saw me running, because, clearly, his job is boring that early in the morning, and seeing someone run for a train is exciting. I even want to believe that he saw my glasses fly out of my bag and turned them into the ticket-guy. I’d also love to stretch the reality a bit and imagine that he thought about approaching me between the early train that I missed and my regular train to tell me something flew out of my bag, but decided not to, because I looked like Bruce Banner about to go hulk. The actual reality is probably that someone turned them in when they saw them in the parking lot and the ticket-seller just knew they were mine, somehow, and has a weird smile all the time… and coffee-guy gives a nod to anyone he thinks might buy from him again.
Whatever really happened, I now have a spare pair of sunglasses, since I went to lenscrafters on Saturday. I also have a spare pair of regular glasses from the Friday that they fell out of my pocket when the school bus that I was in jumped a curb. Those came back in the middle of the next week, in the same case that these sunglasses came back in… the one with the broken zipper-pull, maybe it’s a lucky case. But again, they didn’t quite come back fast enough for me not to replace them.
It’s weird to have spares for both, but I don’t think I should return either pair, knowing my luck and given the worn out condition of the 4-5 year old pairs that tried to get away.
After digging food out of my wisdom tooth with a toothpick after every meal for the past few months… the cavity became too bad and I was experiencing ridiculously unbearable pain every few days. I lined up an appointment at a Dentistry school, since the rumor was that they did good work and did it cheap. They checked me in, took an x-ray, told me that the tooth was definitely the culprit and told me they could pull it right there and then. It was a couple students who did the actual work, and they did hit my gums with their tools a couple times, but it wasn’t an overly painful experience and I didn’t have any ridiculous swelling or signs of infection. They prescribed me an antibiotic, and I took my final dose of that today. I still have a whole that little bits of food occasionally get stuck in, but I’ve gotten really good at using the mirror on my visor in my car and a toothpick to get it out.
In other news, I got on the list at a couple more teams courses and hopefully I’ll be picking up more work. Already lined up a few days in between the usual season and summer camp. Hooray!
So, my big excitement, so far, this year, was the day my facebook got hacked. I don’t know how, and since they didn’t change my password and lock me out, there’s no place to report it to facebook staff, and apparently no action that they’re going to take to try and figure out who this person was who started chatting up all my friends about being mugged while in London and needing money for a hotel bill. So I changed my ancient password… on facebook and several other web-based email accounts and social sites… and I guess I’ll just hope that it doesn’t happen again. I’m sure facebook could at least get an IP address that was signed in when all the messages were sent, but they seem uninterested. The fun part was that I was notified by facebook messages on my phone. I logged in from my phone to check it out… and I managed to change my password and temporarily deactivate my account… all from my phone. I never would’ve been able to do that, before. I love my phone. Also, I set up latitude… you’ll notice a little map with my face on it, in the right column of fashiondisaster.org … no more wondering if I was really mugged while on vacation in London. Did I mention that I love my phone?
Winter. This is my real downtime. The holidays are over and work doesn’t start up again for a few weeks, unless we hire new people and have to train them. I usually entertain myself with a video game addiction at this point in the year, and this year is no exception. Sarah and Frank and I are all addicted to video games. Sarah is still spending most of her time on the Uncharted 2 multiplayer, and I’m almost finished with the The Saboteur. I could go back to Ghostbusters, if I finish it, I guess… Ghostbusters is fun, with all the cast voices in there, but The Saboteur is a way better game. I also have Brutal Legend to finish… and probably some others that I’m forgetting about.
Shoveling hasn’t been too bad, so far, this year… a couple light ones and a couple heavy ones. I don’t have a feeling this year about whether this is going to be a “heavy” winter, like last year was. I really hope we can avoid the storms on the day we’re flying out this year, though. That was a little too stressful, last year. Good job, those of you who claimed days… 12/28 (evening) through 12/30 is still available, for those of you who haven’t (or just want to leave it up to chance). We’ll be tempted to make a trek down to NYC to see the Tim Burton exhibit and maybe catch up with whoever else lives down there and might want to tag along… unless those days get claimed by people in the MA area.
I managed to get through the balances on most of the gift cards that were haunting my wallet… in a related note, some of you are getting christmas presents from me for the first time in years… or ever, maybe. I managed to avoid most of my impulses to buy things for ourselves that we really don’t need.
I’m getting very comfortable with my new phone; I’m happy with my choice… no regrets. I have a new number that sort of forwards to my old number, by the way… so, if you’re on Verizon, it’s cheaper just to call my old number, but if you’re not, lemme know and I’ll get you my new number.
I finished Mini-Ninjas, though I might just play it again on Hard. I am looking for a new game to become hopelessly addicted to during my break from work. If you have suggestions or games that you like to play online that we can play together, hit me up.
I’m bad at using gift cards. I’ve dig through my wallet several times in the past year and piled all my gift cards up and went to each website, one by one, to find the value of each card. The I try to use the cards… food-specific cards are the easiest to use. Store cards (especially Target, for some reason) stay in my wallet for years. And those visa gift cards are really the worst; I use them until there’s a dollar or two left on them, and then forget how much is on there, and never use them for the small purchases that might not put them over their limit. By the time I remember to try and split a purchase into whatever is left on the card and the rest of the balance on some normal card, the card is more than a year old and some maintenance fee has wiped out the remaining balance. The exception, of course, was the stockpile of Apple gift cards that Sarah (and her mom) gave me over the past few years. I had no problem spending them, all at once, on the macbook that I happen to be writing this post from, right now.
I’m genuinely worried about the two $100 gift cards that I put into my wallet this week. One is an American Express card that I only paid $50 for at their Daily Wish site, and the other is a rebate from Verizon. Regardless of my extensive and ridiculous wishlist
, I like getting gift cards. They make things easy, theoretically, but I’m still bad at using them.
In other news, we got that tree up, and got lights and ornaments on it. Peanut helped untangle the lights.
Am I a Black Friday shopper? No, not really. I admit that I’ve spent half my day, and half of yesterday, at the computer, tracking good deals on my favorite shopping sites… and I do have five orders pending with Amazon, right now, and a couple with some other random places and I did get in one line this morning, but it was inside a store, and I only stayed in it for about 10 minutes, at which time I saw the item I was interested in, sell out. I laughed at the seven geeks in line outside Half-Price Books, and chuckled when I saw the limousine at the Dunkin’ Donuts drive-thru… There are definitely parts of the craziness that I enjoy, but I’m not a big shopper. I did exchange my Droid for a new one, because of some weird whistling noise it was making. The set up process was surprisingly easy. I really do like Android. I also went out and cut down a christmas tree, and now it’s time to clean up the tree stand and put that thing up.
So, I’ve had to create and send PDFs to coworkers this week. I hate PDFs. I believe that they are the devil’s file format. Why would I sink to such a level, you ask? Because my boss doesn’t have/can’t operate Excel (and doesn’t have the web savvy to use Google Docs). There’s lots of rumblings about our boss, but that’s really nothing new. I hate the feeling of instability it lends to my job, though. I’d totally go back to a tech job, if I could find one that was in a laid back environment and paid well… on the other hand, I’d really go for a position at a place with high ropes that had steady work for two or three seasons, even if it paid the same as I’m getting, now.
In other news, we’ll be back on the east coast, doing the family thing and trying to catch up with all the people who I’ve neglected to see on my last couple trips that way from the day after Christmas until about the 30th. Let me know if you have time in there and want to reserve a day or evening, now.
Today, I fixed a leaky bathtub faucet. I don’t think I’ve done much in the way of plumbing ever in my life… maybe taken off a faucet handle and then decided the job was too much for me or finding a leak, but then calling someone about it… or pouring drano down something. This was certainly the first time I ever actually fixed a leaky faucet. It was painless enough, even made me feel sort of accomplished.
Every time I see my prescription, specifically, the bottle with my last name on it, I think about my Dad… not some random thought, but something like “is that my Dad’s bottle?” or “Why is one of Dad’s prescriptions out here?” … defying any logical thoughts about Dad being gone for several years now, or the fact that I haven’t lived in the same house as my Dad for eight or nine years. My brain just can’t see a bottle with my name on it and think that it’s mine. Will I ever get used to having a prescription?
The ongoing health issues have prompted lots of discussion about health insurance and Sarah or I needing jobs that have real benefits. Drama being what it is around here, the discussions have often turned into fights or bouts of silent treatment. The whole thing has got me looking back into tech jobs. I cruise craigslist on a daily basis and send an occasional response to interesting looking positions; Haven’t heard anything back from anyone, yet. It’s not something I want to do. I swore to myself that I wouldn’t take another desk job unless I was being paid substantially more than I was in Marlboro… but I was probably overpaid, given my technical qualifications, at the time. Either way, I was not healthy and not happy and I don’t know what the consequences would be if I were to take such a job again. I don’t want to sacrifice my mental well-being for the chance at better physical well-being. It makes me actually take some interest in this health care reform political stuff. I guess there isn’t a chance that we’d have a universal, free-to-everyone system like the rest of the civilized world has, but it would certainly ease my mind of this issue, if we did.
The Palm Pre is out of the running; I got to feel one at work and the keyboard is just too small. I’m a texter with big thumbs. So, it’s back to a waiting game… wait for that first android phone’s price and date to hit Verizon, the phone should be a Motorola with that spiffy new Motoblur UI slapped on top of Android … or wait for the Nuvifone, which isn’t Android and doesn’t have a release date or price yet (or carrier, officially), but will almost certainly have the best GPS and probably handle gmail without any problems, at least. Or give in and get an iPhone; It’s so tempting.
In other news:
Work starts back up soon, one meeting next week and then officially back to a regular schedule the following week. I think we have Fridays off this season.
Got the annoying clicking noise the rear wheel(s) of my car were making fixed… it took three tries, but we got it done. Now I hear every click and creak the car makes when I hit bumps and stuff… still need to do whatever needs to be done about the little ding in the windshield.
And we’ve been using our game consoles a lot over the break… picked up the X-Men Origins: Wolverine for xBox 360 and Fat Princess for PS3 … and I might dig into our most recent purchase, Mini Ninjas during this last week off. Fall TV season be damned, we’re playing our video games!
I have time, still nursing along my beaten and broken phone, but it’s on my mind. Do I replace it now, before the work season starts? Do I wait? It seems like the sensible thing to do but not if I really don’t want to carry both a phone and an iPod. How important is good GPS? I really only use it on vacations. Apparently, my phone saw me writing this and ran away… this makes all phones which had “wait” as an option, pretty much not an option, since I need a phone for work… unless it shows up at work tomorrow, that’s the only place I went before it ran away. Phone turned up. Sarah knew where to look, she rocks.
iPhone
Pros:
available now
Apple hardware exclusivity means cooler peripherals possible
definite iPod replacement (only carry one device)
Sirius app
Cons:
switching to AT&T
higher plan cost
GPS apps aren’t as good as a Garmin
no background apps without jailbreaking
no keyboard
Android (undecided on which exact phone, maybe the rumored Sholes)
Pros:
Open source
coming to Verizon in October, probably (no switching)
instant Google-ness
keyboard
Cons:
might not be an iPod replacement – dunno how music players on android are
Waiting for a verizon release or Switching carriers
GPS apps aren’t as good as a Garmin
Nuvifone
Pros:
GPS is as good as a Garmin, it’s a Garmin!
Cons:
probably not an iPod replacement – seems GPS/social-centric
have to wait AND probably have to switch carriers
next version is going to be Android
no keyboard
Palm Pre
Pros:
available now
a couple personal recommendations
Cons:
tiny-ass keyboard
switching to Sprint
