Sick again.

More proof that the building I work in is cursed. I haven't been really sick in years, and since moving back to this building I'm sick twice in two months. What are the odds?
Well, probably pretty good, but I prefer to blame inanimate objects.
I felt like I was going to pass out all day, driving home I just wanted to lean back in the seat and sleep. I've yet to sleep... after being up all night tossing and turning and sweating like Chief Wiggum, I decided to stay up as long as I can.

Also while driving home, I started thinking of my grandfather. My fathers father. I don't remember much of him. There's only two events I do remember, both of them occurred at the kitchen table in my parents house, and ugly white slab that was probably designed in the '50s. I was sitting on his lap in both instances, and I don't remember any words at all.
One thing I remember is that he was dunking Nabisco 'Nilla Wafers in his coffee, and he accidentally dropped it and had to fish it out with a spoon. I laughed and laughed at him as the cookie kept diving towards the bottom of the cup.
The other thing I remember was that he was taking a Contact capsule. He pulled the thing apart, and dumped all the little beads into his coffee (do Contact still have those little beads in a capsule? do they even still make Contact??). I found this very gross, so being a 4 year old boy it was wonderful.

Why is it that the only things I remember about my grandfather revolve around putting things into coffee? They say that my personality is a lot like his, and I hate coffee.
I sometimes think it might be better to not remember him at all, than to remember two very pointless events.

It's interesting that both of my grandfathers were in the insurance business. And both of them enjoyed photography. And no, that's not how my parents met, my fathers cousin married my mothers best friend.
Everyone on my fathers side of the family says I look like my uncle. Of course that's always made me wonder....
That is, until an aunt on my mothers side of the family found a chache of old photographs. The truth is I don't look like my uncle at all, or either of my grandparents... nope my looks go back much further than that. I am the spitting image of my great-great-grandmother. No joke.
I'm working on getting a copy of that picture of her, as well as a picture of myself, so you can all have a good laugh at my expense.

All right, time to lay down... I feel a fainting spell coming on.

The people in my office know me far too well already...
We were having our training for the new copiers (which took about one and a half hours for just one copier... sheesh), and the copiers have a spiffy "book mode" that will remove the dark blank line that crosses the two pages when copying to a single sheet.

The rep from Ikon didn't bring anything to use as an example, so I went to the bag I keep my laptop in, and pulled out the book for my tarot cards. I handed it to Dan to pass on the the rep.
"I'm not going to go to go to Hell for touching this, am I?" He inquired.
A few people nodded yes, some others pointed out that they were all going to Hell just for knowing me, and one person was willing to sacrifce me to God.

I think I'm going to have to line my cubicle with mirrors. I am so very frightened.

This disjointed story brought to you by Pepsi, and lots of it


I know a girl. Well, I know a lot of girls, but this is about one in particular. I'll call her.... Samantha.
Samantha had dated the same guy since high school. At 23 the two of them decided to get an apartment together.
Now, I never met this guy. I'll call him Steve. But she'd tell me things about him, about how great he was... and I would always think to myself, "this guy seems like the biggest ass in the world."
It turns out that he IS the biggest ass in the world.... two weeks after they got their dream apartment, she received an email at work from him. He'd moved out, and was never going to see her again.
Understandably she spent the whole day in the bathroom crying.

Samantha and I were never really good friends... sure, if she called me one day and asked me to help her bury "the bodies" I'd help her. But I think it'd be more for my own fun than anything else.
I vowed if I ever saw this guy, I'd thrash him within inches of his life.

I know a few of his hangouts, and have looked for him there... but never found him, which is good because I really don't want to get arrested for battery (probably AAA size, at that).
But I know if I ever do see him, there would certainly be a scene....

So years before all this...
One day, shortly after people started finding out Debbie and I broke up, Samantha's aunt comes up to me with a hushed voice, "I think you and Samantha would make a great couple, you should ask her out."
"ummm..." said I, "she has a boyfriend."
"Yeah," she said in her usual voice loud enough for the world to hear, "but have you *seen*him?"
I had, and yeah.... there's at least one person out there less attractive than I. But I wasn't about to ask someone 10 years younger than myself on a date when she's happy with some guy (and wouldn't have even if I did foresee her future).
A few weeks later a gay philipino guy told me Samantha and I get along really well and should think about "getting together."
Of course, she still had Steve, and I declined.

Then the horrible breakup. No less than five people told me that the two of us should get it on. I declined because I really didn't want to date someone who works in the same company as I do. I did that with Debbie, and it was the start of a long downward spiral.

Then Samantha got another guy in her life. And for a short time I thought I might have missed the chance of a lifetime, but then I met M. So Samantha was forgotten.
Last Friday, I was talking to Samantha... and without warning I just started thinking. "How could I steal her from Mark?" Mark is her new guy.
But we work together... I can't do that.
But then I think about rules for dating someone at work.
And then I think about keeping it all a big secret, and how romantic it would be to sneak all this stuff past everyone's prying eyes.
I gotta make Mark look like some kind of villian*.

Yeah, my life has become a high school soap opera.
While being depressed, I'm drinking a billion cans of cola a day. All that sugur and caffiene is making my mind go a million different ways at once. After this week, I'll cut back on the Pepsi and go back to normal... I hope.


*If I ever have a son, I think Villian would be a great name!

I'm just very depressed lately, but everyone knows that already.
I just want this all to end, but it won't. *sigh*

On the brighter side of things, I made someone laugh today that I never see even crack a smile.
Back when I first started working at United Stationers, she was probably the prettiest woman in the company. Twelve plus years of trying to salvage a failing marriage obviously put a lot of strain on her mentally and physically (just finalized the divorce in November). She looks terrible now. Sure, she's still pretty, but she just looks as worn out and depressed as I feel.
Anyway, we got a bunch of new copiers/printers/fax machines today. Some all fancy schmancy and full color (and it copies orange scented highlighter a little too dark, if you ask me).
A few of us were trying to figure out one of the black and white copiers, and she kept referring to the others as "colored copiers."
"Psst," I said, whispering to hide her shame, "they prefer to be called african-american."
Even when I'm in the worst mood I've been in in months, it's quite the spirit lifter to make someone who's so obviously unhappy with her life smile for just a few moments.
I hope when I get like that, someone can make me laugh.

Well, today I told my parents I'm going to be squatting in there house for a while... yikes I don't want to.It's for the best... but I'll have to mow the lawn and stuff, blech.
Feel free to send me money so I can get a place of my own instead... please

Friday night I chatted with Mark about going to take pictures over the weekend. We decided Saturday would be the day! He decided that leaving at 4AM would be the way to go... no matter how I tried, he would not change his mind.
So, I got up at 3 to take a shower and start the long trek to his house. I only got lost once, and so I ended up right on time.... he was waiting outside for me at 4AM. At least he was up... if not awake.
Breakfast was... well... edible. And we were at the lake by 5. This was roughly 55 minutes before sunrise, which was good because the walk took about an hour... what with all the frequent stops to take a few pictures in the dark.
Sadly it wasn?t till we were a few hundred feet out on the pier that I noticed I was missing a part of my tripod, rendering it useless. Bummer.
Mark was nice enough to let me use his a few times, but I felt like I was mooching, so I didn?t use it often since he wanted to use it too.

Let me just say, it was cold that morning! And when I had to walk/run back to the car I thought it odd how warm my face got... turns out that after taking my gloves off to see just how warm I was, my face was freezing. Not a good sign. But no frostbite, thank the gods.

No sun all day, so no color. Pict?s weren?t all that great, well, mine weren?t. I haven?t seen Marks yet. We were done by 9AM, after deciding the sun would never come out. Lunch at 9:30 is weird.

So if you want to see the best of the pictures, here they are.
Don?t mind that they are cropped badly, and scanned crooked. If you want to see what they really look like, come to Chicago to see them!

Carlos: Hey, does this look like a good enough reason to go home early?

I turned and looked at him standing something like a DaVinci drawing, and I just couldn't tear my eyes away from his crotch.
No wait, that's not what I mean!

Apparently while he was at lunch, he was shaking up a ketchup bottle. The last person to use it wasn't nice and left the cap quite loose, so catsup erupted like a volcano and landed all over his lap. Tough to get that stuff out and it couldn't have been more perfectly placed.....

So Carlos was the butt of many jokes today (or the lap of many jokes?). Amazingly enough, I was the only one to even consider "that time of the month" humor.
And woe to Carlos, for my jibes were unending. Though he always gave me that "I am SO going to get you back for this" look.
I've never been more proud.

But... around 4 o'clock I devised a plan. I would embarress myself in the process, but some things just have to be done!

[flashforward]
Carlos was on the phone. When he's on the phone, he has no idea what's going on around him. I got about 10 people to surround his cubicle, all that was still working at the time.
He hung up the phone realized we were there, his expression showed he knew something was up.
"Carlos," said I, "we all understand your problem, and it's nothing to be ashamed of. So we all chipped in and got you one of these...."
I pulled the pad out of it's wrapper, and offered it to him. He refused to take it, so I tossed it at him, and I couldn't have had a better shot with 50 years of training. It landed perfectly covering the giant red splotch.
"You can all bite my ass."
Everyone had a good laugh, and then Carlos looked at me and asked, "where'd you get one of those?"

[end flashforward]
Me: Oh my god! Gloria, you gotta help me!!!
Gloria: What?
Me: Well.... do you plan on going to the bathroom soon?
Gloria: uhhh
Me [much more timidly]: Well, I was hoping you could maybe get something out of one of those machines for Carlos.
Gloria: I'm not giving him THAT!
Me: No no, give it to me, I'll give it to him.
Gloria [after some thought]: I don't want anything to do with that...
Gloria [after seeing my disappointment]: Well, I'll stand guard while you go.
I had to decline. A great trauma in grade school will keep me out of ladies room's for all eternity.
Gloria: Why not ask desktop?

Me: Oh my god! Can one of you help me?
Jenny and Jahaira: What?
Me: Well, you know how I've been teasing Carlos....
I was paying more attention to Yahaira, because she's not married, but I saw Jenny doing something out of the corner of my eye.
Me: Well, I was hoping one of you could get me... umm... you know.
Jenny: Here.
Me: No no no... I don't want to take your... umm... private stash.
Yahaira: JENNY! Put that away!.
Jenny: No, take it.
Why was I turning bright red and embarressed at this? I would have happily taken it if it came from a machine.
She tried forcing it into my hands, I curled my fingers into tight fists.
Eventually I was worn down and took the pad. I knew everyone would see me with this, and it mortified me! I was bright red until I left the building for the day... I just embarress too easily.

Though to be honest I was hoping for, what Jenny refered to as, a nosebleed stopper. Turns out the pad worked better.

I was reminded today of a something.I was at my friend Gay Nick's apartment, a bunch of us were... I think that's the day Kevin almost castrated himself with a Nerf sword (he claims it was an accident).Anyway, I had to go pick up my then-girlfriend up from a late night at work. On the radio they were commenting about a meteor shower that should be visible in a few hours....While waiting to make that left turn onto a busy street, I noticed a car that "seemed" to be trailing something behind it... behind it and above it... like a kite.It was shooting off sparks or something... I didn't get a good look, it was travelling faster than the 40 mile per hour traffic."Holy shit!" I thought to myself, "A meteor!" I defied all laws of left turns and plowed through traffic to follow the rock... but it was already gone from my sight.I have no idea if it reallly was a meteor, or just a trick of my mind. But it would have been pretty cool if I could find it, and maybe contract some bizarre space disease like Stephen King got in the movie Creepshow!Wow, this story was so anti-climactic it makes me want to cry!

Argh... I am soooooo dizzy today. It started around 7.
I hate being dizzy!

I finally did it!
I've started putting pictures on a gallery I made Mr Nosuch put on his server.
It's far from complete, as I need to scan in a LOT more pictures... yes, I'm a purist and am actually using real film! Kodak, Fuji and Agfa love me because I'm so anti digital....
The pics that are on there might go away, because I've got better laying around somewhere, so see them while you can.

Here they are: http://www.nosuch.org/gallery/

There's something to be said about guys named Willard... like stay far, far away from them!
I speak, of course, of the remake of the '71 classic Willard (and don't forget it's fabulous sequal, Ben).
Now, I've never seen the originals, but that's one of those things I always want to see, until I'm in the video store and forget all about it.
For those who don't know Willard (played by Crispin Glover... I don't think he's related to Danny Glover, but I could be wrong) is a loser-type whose first and only friend is a rat named Socrates.
Together Willard, Socrates, and another rat named Big Ben (possibly played by a giant oppossum) raise a vast army of rats, and do some very mean things to people.
From the opening credits, I thought this movie was fabulous. It started off giving a nice old horror movie feeling to it, which seemed to disappear as the film went on, or maybe I just grew accustomed to it. I thought the camera work and sound really made this movie, and they'd have to because the story's been done before. The acting (with a main cast of about 4 people) was superb.
I dunno, I thought the movie was great... but I left the theater feeling like I was missing something. Oh, right... not once did I feel scared. I won't have trouble sleeping tonight thinking something isn't quite right.
I expected it to be a scary movie, but it really wasn't, and so I am disappointed in it. Sure, many times I said, "ewww" or "gah-ross!" but it wasn't scary in the least.

So...
If you are one of those people who are displeased with the thought of rats.... don't go see this movie, you'll only squirm around in the theater chair as you constantly imagine little nibbles at your ankles.
But if you're strong minded (like me), and enjoy a good movie filled with symbolism, images you'd rather not remember (like fungal feet and long drips of snot), and an excellent fitting soundtrack, see Willard.
It's better than Mission to Mars and so it's the best movie ever made*.


*My theory that no movie could ever be worse than Mission to Mars may be flawed, however The Core hasn't been released yet, so I have no real proof. And even if it was released by now, I still wouldn't have any proof because that movie can't possibly be good enough to ever watch.

Fabulous news!
I don't usually go to the game store at night... too many geeks hang out there for my taste (including the one fabulous babe with a man's voice because... she once was a man, yikes!).
I went to the counter and demanded all my glorious money from the auction. And they handed me a purple (blech, purple) piece of paper promising me $433.50 worth of fake money. Which means I averaged just under $10 per item.
So I shopped... and shopped... and shopped. I easily could have spent it all, but I narrowed it all down to a measley $100 worth of stuff to walk out with. Probably crap, but it's a few things I've wanted for a while but didn't think it would be worth the money.
So the next few times I go to feed my addiction, it'll be like Christmas! I can't wait to go back!!

What I'm about to admit is not exactly true, nor is it exactly false... it's just something.
I kinda sorta met this girl through a, more or less, fairly unconventional means. Ok, "met" is a bit of an overstatement, or perhaps an understatement.
She's attractive, intelligent, and seems fairly nice. And, most importantly, she hates beans as much as I do.
I like her... she'll make a wonderful friend. But the whole point of this was... well, for something more.
I compare her. I make it all a contest. Can she replace M? No. Yes. Maybe.
I still feel that M is the one I belong with, but.... well, you understand.
There's also the fact that this new girl... yikes... she's in Florida. That's a 20 hour drive just to meet her.
Bah.... I'm just a mess over this. So many do's and don'ts going through my mind. I know what I want... and I know what's best. And those two are not identical in the least. So it's a huge struggle I have with myself... and all I can say is, "arrrrgh!"

bah... I just looked at my blog in Safari... it looks like crap! Where'd all my archives go? Huh?
Mark, be a doll and fix this for me... you need a break from working on your own blog endlessly.

I dunno, I just feel like my life is wasting away lately.
I'm bored, and that makes me boring.
Someday maybe everything will go back to normal... I hope so.

Well, $812.60 dollars later I have Marty back. He hates me for doing that to him.
I only paid for 1/2 that... which was $400 more than I wanted to pay. So nice that I was SO close to getting my finances in order, and now it's all gone to hell. It seems like everything is falling apart in my life, and I almost wish I'd have that well deserved nervous breakdown so I can do something stupid and feel good about it.

I finished getting all my games ready for that auction. I'm gonna lose out on some pretty good stuff. But I think I should get at least $200 for the whole thing, if I get rid of it all for minimum bids... that'll be about $45. Which is more than I have now! I'll find out on the twelfth what I get... I'll keep my fingers crossed and hope for well over $10000.

Holy crap! I didn't do the song of the month this month!! I need to do that, probably not till Monday though.

I talked with a good friend today that I don't talk to often enough. I think I end up making better friends with women than with men. Does that mean I'm gay?

You know... back when I thought I had a chance with M, there was this girl I was good friends with. M was a bit jealous of her, and so I did the stupd thing and started blowing her off... we'll call this chick L, because she was there before M... and eventually we just stopped speaking. I saw a doctor at the vets office today who was the spitting image of L. So I'm thinking I should contact L again, but I don't know where she is anymore.
*sighs* Guys do some stupid things for girls that end up biting them back even harder later on...

Denise and I have started a ritual of getting hot dogs on Fridays lately (sure, I could call her N, but I already used her name before, so I'll leave it as is... besides there's a total of 6 fabulous babes at my office, and someone any one of them could be N someday). I've successfully converted her from ketchup and mustard, to a fully loaded hot dog, sans relish.

I'm looking at taking some kind of martial arts, mainly to work off this stress I've been having lately. But also to get some exercise, which I desperately need. But I don't want to go alone, because I'm lazy and without someone making me go, I'd probalby quit after two weeks. None of my so-called friends are willing to do this... fools. Denise said she would, but only through the Y, which is $175 to join PLUS $60 a month PLUS the cost of the class.
Why the hell does anyone belong to the Y?
So after weeks of searching, I finall found someone willing to think about possibly doing this. But she (it's always a she with me, isn't it?) has her stipulations. I should fine out Monday if this is even conceivable... or if her stipulations are just too much.

That's it for now. I have a headache and need some rest...