Saturday, March 03, 2007

terribly early in the morning

Answer Me This?

On Thursday, after plenty of decent sleep, I woke up feeling like I’d been run over by the fatigue bus.  If we didn’t have the dogs to take out or any of the pets to feed, we both could’ve gone back to sleep, that’s how terrible we felt.  On Friday morning, after waking up about every two hours or so, which I would think would be a fairly crappy night of sleep, I woke up feeling almost like I used to feel.  I felt decent all day.  Actually, it was the first day in a long time I could remember waking up and not bargaining with myself, “If you get up, you can have some Tully’s coffee downstairs, and a peaches & creme parfait cup.” I just got up and was fine.  Unfortunately, I’m now still awake from that oddly refreshing day.  It’s 22 hours later.  However, I did accomplish some stuff for work, got a haircut, watched an excellent episode of “Veronica Mars” and a totally incredible episode of “Heroes”, and fastforwarded through the Leafs shootout win over the Devils.  Although, I’m a little worried about Tomas Kaberle.  He got a late hit elbow in the face from Cam Janssen (dirty hit or just jerky?), which caused him to slam awkwardly into the boards.  His face was immediately bruised (at the very least) and he looked dazed.  Like concussion dazed.  But the Leafs need him.  Desperately.

An added note:  my writing quality suffers tremendously as the hours awake climb over twenty. 

terribly early in the morning

Idiot of the Day - Ann Coulter (again)

I know I shouldn’t give her any attention, but she’s already made it onto the Huffington Post, so my blog entry won’t make a difference.  This is what she said:  “I was going to comment on John Edwards,’’ she told the crowd here at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference, “but it turns out you have to go into rehab if you say the word faggot.’’ It was in reference to that knucklehead from “Grey’s Anatomy”, Isaiah Washington, calling T.R. Knight a “little faggot”, but it has me totally baffled.  First of all, the Ann Coulter audience laughed.  I don’t get it.  At all.  What was her point?  John Edwards is straight.  Was she trying to insult him by calling him a “faggot”?  How?  Why?  It’s not funny, it’s not accurate, it’s just a mean-spirited stupid thing to say.  It’s not even something that could make John Edwards mad, except because of the stupidity of it.  It’s not insulting to him.  It’s not like talking about his money and his big house and calling him a hypocrite.  That also isn’t true, but he might find it insulting, instead of just dumb.  Does anyone else know what her point was?  Am I’m missing part of my Gay Agenda playbook, where we have anything in particular to do with John Edwards?  I mean, he isn’t even in favor of gay marriage. 

Someday, some conservative with a spine will stand up to the Ann Coulter rhetoric.  They’ll say that it doesn’t represent their political viewpoints and that she’s basically a namecalling bully who happens to have long blonde hair and wear mini-skirts.  Someday people will be ashamed that they even listened to her, much less laughed at her namecalling.  We’re ashamed of children who act like that, and she’s supposed to be a grown up.  She’s not stupid, surely she has better retorts than “faggot.”

Bob Geiger does such an all-around better job of this than I did.  Luckily, he’s one o’ them professionals.  Anyway, read what he wrote.  It’s good, and it’s important.

Friday, March 02, 2007

the wee hours

Windows Vista - Flippy Likes It!!!

I got a new Dell laptop in December (for work - I couldn’t watch sports on tv, and those games are loooong, and get any work done) and it came with a Vista upgrade, which I just got yesterday. It’s Vista Home Premium Upgrade - there a several different versions of Vista. It was nice to get it for only $10.78. I’ve been looking forward to it for months. It was a slight pain in the butt to install (lots of deleting, reinstalling, and rebooting...which were automatic things, nothing I needed to do other than read the screen), but I really love it. It looks nice, the windows open and close smoothly, the gadgets on the sidebar are nice and there’s one that tells you how many new emails you have waiting for you in Outlook, which is handy. Mind you, my laptop has very very few things added to it because I mostly use it for work (my work programs are all web accessible, so I haven’t needed to download anything), so my desktop might be another story for upgrading. As soon as I have some money to throw away, some time to burn, and a huge amount of patience, I’ll upgrade my desktop.

My Norton trial was expiring for my laptop, so I had to look into getting something new. I decided to try Windows Live OneCare because it has a 90 day trial (mmmm, three more free months) and because I’ve decided that I’m not crazy about Norton or McAfee, which I’ve been using for years and years. Both programs are kind of intrusive. So far, I really like OneCare - it updates quietly in the background and it takes the place of both my anti-virus program & Counterspy. If you have anything expiring, I’d suggest giving the OneCare trial a shot before you renew your old program.

Thus ends my Microsoft commercial.

Now, a brief commercial for Logitech.  When my old Microsoft Intelli Explorer mouse got possessed by demons (every so often, the cursor would move by itself, even after I rebooted - it would float randomly across the screen, it kinda freaked me out, AND it rendered my mouse almost useless), I decided I needed a new mouse, or a whole lot more meds.  I bought a Logitech VX Revolution Cordless Laser Mouse.  It’s made for notebooks, but it felt good in my hand and I’m really really picky about my mice, so I bought that one instead of the MX Revolution for the desktop, which Leigh-Ann bought.  When I just went to Amazon to get the link for the mice, I discovered that they both dropped in price by $20.  Grrrr, that’s $40 we’re out, but that’s big savings for you.  We’ll try to look at it that way.  Regardless, we both love our mice, so if you’re looking for a new one, go to a computer store to feel one, then come home and buy it through us.  Although, if you’ve had an Intelli Explorer, it feels very similar and I think you would definitely like the Logitech.

Thursday, March 01, 2007

terribly early in the morning

Oh, I Miss My Blog

I’ve been so busy with work lately that that’s about all I’ve had time for, well other than attempting to sleep, watching tv (and working at the same time), and going to doctors’ appointments.  Also, I’ll bet you’re jealous, the people at my pharmacy now know my name when I walk up to get my prescriptions.  Yes, I’m there that often.  Today, I picked up my free one month trial of my new pee-pee drug, otherwise known as urinary urgency.  Yes indeedy, it’s totally fun to pick up a drug like that at the pharmacy - at least I’m not having to buy any diapers.  I think I’d feel better about it if I was in my 90’s.  Anyway, I’ve been taking Enablex for two weeks (got a sample bottle from the urologist) and even though I’m still having trouble in the car and on the couch, I’m doing better at my desk.  I’m also better after showering, which used to be one of my really bad times for some unknown, and I’m sure stupid, reason.  More than pain, I hate this nasty bladder problem.  I’m hoping that the Enablex will be the answer, although I’m not thrilled that my insurance doesn’t cover it.  Oh, speaking of doctors and insurance - I need to write a ranty blog entry about my cystoscopy.  It took maybe five minutes total.  The urologist billed it as surgery for $650.  That’s a mere $7800 an hour.  I’d be mad, but not as mad, if he’d found something.  But no, a couple of expensive tests later, I’m exactly where I started, only now when I ask for the drug I wanted months ago, they’re giving it to me.  Hmm, I guess I got the ranty part out of the way.  I still have to write about the cystoscopy experience because I keep getting people finding my blog for that search term and I’d like to give them some idea of what it was like.  Until I get around to it - it was unpleasant, but not unbearable.

Anyway, I miss you guys and I miss rambling about nonsense and calling people idiots and stuff.  I’m going to try to take time out of every day to write, even if it’s nothing lengthy or fabulous.  I also miss reading the blogs in my blogroll.  I now realize how spoiled I was before.  I was able to keep up with almost every blog on my blogroll, and now, I keep up with those I know well as often as I can and I try to keep up with those I’d like to stay at least blog-friends with.  I’m missing good puppy pictures and kid stories and I don’t like it one bit.  I really do like my job though, so I can’t complain about the work I do.  There isn’t any job I’d rather be doing, and I can’t tell you how happy that makes me.  A job...that I like...that I can do from home...that pays well if I work hard, and get a little lucky.  You’d be surprised at how hard it is to get people to fill out a form that will take them maybe five minutes.  Seriously, it’s like pulling teeth.