I take a brief hiatus from the Internet and now I apparently get something like sixty or seventy e-mails a day…and they’re all SPAM.
Can somebody please remind me why I even bother with this thing???
Oi vey…
I was informed earlier that I’ve been neglecting my blog here lately, even though with all due respect I’ve technically been neglecting just about everything that I do online for the past several weeks. I’ve certainly been a little distracted from the online community recently, although not at all in a bad way, but I do think that I need to find a way to balance the two. It might involve my doing a little less online than I normally do, but we’ll just have to wait and see. I can’t honestly make that decision until I’m actually caught up…so maybe this week???
Anywho, last weekend in particular was pretty cool. I spent some time in Orlando, doing the whole tourist thing, which is actually pretty easy to do when the main mouse himself is right next door! We ended up spending a good portion of the afternoon experiencing the Festival of Masters at Downtown Disney, which was a lot of fun. It was the first time I’ve been on Disney property since I got here, so it was good to rekindle the magic, if you will! By far, the coolest place in the area is the Lego Imagination Station, which has officially surfaced my passion for those little interlocking blocks from my childhood – let’s just say that I’ll be posting my new wishlist for Christmas here shortly…
That little visit was also a nice little opportunity to check out the inside of Pleasure Island without actually having to be subjected to all of the dancing within, so that was kind of nice! Didn’t get my gumbo at the House of Blues, but maybe next time. The rest of the evening was pretty much spent challenging the Wachowski bros to completely bore the hell out of me and I must say that they did exactly that with marvelous results! Ok, I won’t ruin it with spoilers for the rest of you who haven’t seen this debocile yet, primarily because I would first have to be able to identify the plot before I was able to spoil it, but let me just say this, kiddies – there are a lot of things in this world that $8 can buy you – a couple of drinks at your favorite bar, two or three boxes of Frosted Flakes, and even one of those DVDs out of the bargin bin at your favorite super store…and I guarantee you that whatever you choose, it will no doubt be infinitely more entertaining than Matrix: Revolutions was. Mind you, I didn’t like the second one, either, and thought that the story was pretty well told after the first installment, but if you go to see this movie and can seriously walk out saying that you enjoyed the show, I can no longer be friends with you.
So hopefully The Return of the King will end up being a better movie – I don’t honestly see how it couldn’t, but you never know! I’ve enjoyed watching the last two each year at Christmas and it’s been interesting to see how Peter Jackson has interpreted the story onto the silver screen thus far, so as long as he keeps doing what he’s doing and doesn’t push too hard to out-do himself on the last one, I think it should turn out pretty good. Of course, this doesn’t give him the go-ahead to go crazy/wild with his next adventure in filmmaking, but is there really anything that we could do to stop him?
Oh yeah, and if you haven’t been able to put two and two together thus far, I met a girl, too. A real one that doesn’t even need to be inflated this time – can you imagine?! It can only go downhill from here…
Bullet points for all!
So much to write about, so little time…
- I had a chance to play with one of Sprint’s new Vision phones at work during the week and well, let’s just say that somebody’s got a new toy on his Christmas list already! I never thought that the camera features and colored screens would be very cool until I tried them out for myself, but now I’m sold – the images actually don’t come out too bad, easily as good as most webcams I’ve seen, and the screen is bigger than most phones I’ve used so far. It might be a tough bite to initially cover both the cost of the new phone and the cancellation fee with AllTel, but I think it’d be worth it. Maybe next year…
- I don’t care how good the people around me claim it to be, pickled bolognajust sounds disgusting to me.
- Two days in a row this week we were let out early, meaning that my 45 minute commute became a 20 minute commute – sweetness, indeed!
- I finally started on Order of the Phoenix after only what, four or five months? It’s a slow start, but with any luck, I should have this one done just in time to pick up the next installment!
- Work was very good again this week and it’s hard to believe that we’ve only got two weeks of training left. It’s actually going to be kinda sad because my instructor doesn’t actually work for the same company and will be leaving in another week, but I did learn the other day that there’s a pretty good chance that myself and a few others in the class could be getting promotions by the end of this, so that’s certainly something to look forward to!
- Friday is quite possibly the most excellent of days in my book. It’s the end of the week, I’ve gotten paid by then, but most importantly of all – live music in the park during lunch! Nothing helps to reinforce the scenery like a soothing array of cover tunes featuring Jimmy Buffett, Van Morrison and UB40 – pizza and hot dogs have never tasted this good.
- I think I may take up walking at night again. It certainly won’t be the same without Brandi’s company, but it was fairly good exercise and it’s actually something that I don’t really mind doing. The area seems pretty quiet and safe at night, so we’ll see…
- I understand the purpose of the receipt checker who stands at the door of your local Wal-Mart or what-have-you, and I’ve never had a problem with these people in the past, but one just really pissed me off tonight. Nobody is in the store and I came from the closest checkout to the door – she watched me the entire time, and yet waited for me to get out the door before yelling at me to come back so she could check my purchases. I had exactly $22.50 worth of merchandise, comprising of celery, shampoo, and a few various office supplies, and she insisted on comparing the UPCs on every single fucking thing I bought.Don’t worry, folks – I pay for my celery…
- And while we’re on the subject, I don’t think that people should be allowed to wear Halloween costumes to work, or at least not those in service and retail industries. If a woman two floors down from me wants to dress up as Xena: Warrior Princess and strut around during lunch, I can and will fully support that, but it’s a different case when I’m doing my grocery shopping at night and you’re dripping blood all over the floor because your whole dracula / stockboyidea didn’t work out quite as well as you had predicted.
- But most importantly of all, I need furniture – bad! I cleaned up my living room this evening so now it’s just an open room again, so I think it’s about time to find something to fill it with. Plus, I’m getting tired of sitting on the floor to watch television and the whole inflatable bed thing is getting old, too. Of course, I also need patio furniture as well, but at this point I’d settle for the couch and bed!
Ack! Eeek, even…
Help! My ice machine won’t stop making ice!!! Ever since sometime late last night, that beast has been churning out ice like it’s nobody’s business – I’ve tried moving the arm every which way, but it won’t stop! My freezer is damn near all ice at this point. No single man needs this much ice…I may need to throw some sort of party or something just to whittle down the reserves – bring your own warm beverages.
Although I don’t have the evidence to back it up yet, I’ve got a sneaky suspicion that Arnold is behind all of this…“Rise of the Machines was just a movie, my ass!” Either him or Jerry Falwell…
…back in the day when music was listenable…
I WILL get my inbox cleaned out before I retire to bed tonight, but…
…my music selection right now is absolutely horrible! My MP3 collection is sitting quietly in a computer that I can’t use until my router gets here, so I have a grand total of nine songs on this computer and as good as they are, I’ve listened to them all approximately three million times and they’re starting to get a little old!
Also, I’ve tried not to let anything get to me since I arrived here in Florida – kind of a self-improvement deal, if you will – but today as I was leaving work, I had an increasingly bad headache and somebody finally just pushed my buttons in the wrong way…
ELEVATOR ETIQUETTE – am I the only one who understands this?! Obviously we’re all going to the same place, yet apparently the people already waiting for the elevators to show up are just in the way because as soon as that tone is heard, everyone and her** brother shoves their way from the back to get in first. Cramming to fit in so they can get stuck in traffic before anybody else, these people will step on your toes and elbow you out of the way, all with a friendly “Excuse me!” and yet once they’re finally on the elevator, they look at you like you’re some kind of asshole for finding a spot yourself! Twelve people are crammed onto an elevator, practically sitting on each others laps, and the second I get on because there was a little extra standing room (and hey, I was standing directly in front of the door prior to my trampling), I’m the jerk because I bumped someone on the way down.
Tensions rise, people scream, “Hello? 3500 pounds?! Don’t touch my elbow!” True, it was the same elbow that shoved me out of the way in the first place, but I suppose that was different. I always thought it was polite to wait in line and take your turn as it came, but after two weeks of watching six or seven elevators leave before I had the chance because people are rude, I decided to just say “Fuck it” and go with the flow. As if a forty-five minute commute home isn’t bad enough already, we just don’t need this kind of shit building up ontop of it…
** I say her because from my previous experience, the women are typically worse than anybody else at this. She may look hot when you see her walking down the hall, but you can’t truly judge a woman until you’ve observed how she acts in an elevator…
Maybe Kurt wasn’t as crazy as I thought with taking the stairs and all! Oh well, tomorrow is another day, another victory at rummy, and who knows what else is in store for our hero? Tune in next time…
coincidence?
I just realized that the room number that my Dad is in right now is exactly the same as the room I had at the Howard Johnson when I got down here a month ago.
That’s really weird…
all sleep and no play makes Scott a dull boy; plus, pictures from work!
Yesterday I got home from work and pretty much did absolutely nothing but sleep – this irregular bedtime schedule of mine has just got to stop! So basically, here I am up at five o’clock in the morning trying to take care of some of the stuff that I had wanted to do last night…it’s just insane, I tell ya…
For probably the eightieth time this year, I started up my exercise routine again this morning, only this time I’m actually gonna stick to it – I feel like I have to. It’s not so much that I want to drop a little weight, even though of course that’s also a factor, but I just don’t want to end up like my Dad and the rest of the men in my family. Phase Two will be kicking in here shortly, as soon as I can get to the grocery store for some better food and my pots and pans show up in the mail. It won’t be easy because oddly enough, healthy food is more expensive than junk food, but it certainly beats putting yourself in the hospital from eating microwavable fried foods everyday. Nonetheless, if you happen to hear a news story about some guy’s death from exercising and eating too many vegetables in the Tampa Bay area, don’t be surprised!
And I finally took my camera to work with me, too. Apparently the camera part of it still works, it’s just the display that’s toast, but it’s still really weird having to use an actual view-finder after being used to the LCD for so long – is this how people actually took photos back in the old days?! Even though I’m afraid to see the estimates, I’ll have to hunt down a camera shop this weekend and find out how much cash it’s going to take to have the thing repaired. I really like this camera and it’s been very good to me over the years, but I’ve got a feeling that it’ll be cheaper to get a new one than to tear this one apart…
Verizon building – |
western downtown / Bank of America building |
southern downtown / Channelside & St. Pete Times Forum |
western downtown / SouthTrust Bank & Bank of America buildings |
southern downtown / Wachovia building & Davis Islands |
Now it’s off to do battle with the morning rush – have a great day!
What time is it, Mr. Fox?
“Today I did absolutely nothing, and it was everything I’d hoped it could be…”
Ok, so not really, but I only left home once and that was to get something for dinner. I did go to Wal-Mart and return the cheap, crummy “pizza stone” that I purchased broken the other week. It still sounds like a cool idea and I’ve heard that they’re the best for your Italian baking creations, so if anyone’s looking for a neat Christmas gift for me, there you go…just plan on spending a little more than $6 and don’t buy it at Wal-Mart!
I also broke down and bought an oven mitt because my dish towels simply weren’t cutting it anymore. Ever notice how you can never find a manly oven mitt? They’ve got more vegetables and flowers than you can shake a stick at, but no skeletons or diesel engines or anything. I’d have settled for even a solid-colored one, but nothing – maybe us guys don’t belong in the kitchen after all! I think I ended up with one bearing a farm scene with some cows on it. Sorry, guys – it was the best I could do…
And thanks to Kim’s insight, I’m now making ice the way that rich people do – something else is doing it for me! (…or do the rich people actually pay somebody else to move the little arm up and down for them, too?) It’s actually a pretty slick process, and I know this because I stood there and watched the entire thing…woo-hoo, party! The wild antics just never end when you’re at my place…
Three Brief Points
Quite the eventful day today…
- remembered how to play rummy at work and came from behind to bring victory over my opponents, who never saw it coming. (…ok, neither did I…)
- lead a rousing discussion about the local lady who had to give up her dog of 12 years because it “scared” some blind guy’s seeing eye dog. Apparently when the majority of the residents are old and retarded, just about any wacky ruling is fair game.
- sorted through some three hundred old messages in my e-mail account that I somehow didn’t delete over the last month. I’m not caught up yet, but we’re getting there.
Tomorrow is Friday, which is always a good thing! I’m debating whether I should go out and do something or just stay home and actually do all of the writing that I’ve been putting off for the last month (or more). Rumor has it that it might be fairly nice out this weekend, so we’ll see…