Vote, Baby, Vote!

Election Day is here. Please exercise your civic rights as American citizens (those of you who are, c'est à dire), and vote today. That's all I'll say.

But I will say that I played hookie yesterday. I spent Sunday night challenging Roommate to a battle of the liver, so to speak. We had an awesome cassoulet with a double magnum of chardonnay, and we both wanted to finish the bottle. So it was a game of one-upmanship, sort of, kinda like, "It's 9:00 and I'm still going. What can you say to that?" And then it was "It's 11-fucking-thirty, and there's still a lot left, buddy." We both had our respective iTunes blaring out random tunes, and by the end of it all, we both knew that Monday was going to be a sick day. I woke up with a nasty headache that went away fairly quickly. But I was still so sick I just couldn't think of driving to work and teaching templates. Bor. Ring. Whatever. I'm entitled to call in sick once in a while. It's not like they roll over next year anyway.

Oh well. Talk to you soon.

Happy T-Day (in advance)

I'm wishing all of you fellow Americans, be you red or blue, a warm and bountiful Thanksgiving in advance, because obviously I can't come by to post that often anymore. And for all of you non-Americans, Happy Thursday...also in advance.

I wish I had more to write about. I got new tires on my car. That was a necessary $800 to spend, although I would much rather have bought this awesome pair of Mephistos that I saw at Nordstrom for $250 and then saved the rest or something. Or maybe I would have then bought SCTV on DVD. My god, I forgot how much I love that show! Andrea Martin is fabulous. But the tires were so needed. There was a puncture in the tread on one, patched but constantly leaking; a minor, but growing, hole in the sidewall of another; and a couple of weeks ago, I had an altercation with a half-wall (which lost), but which skinned one of the tires to the point a bubble was forming in the sidewall. So, rather than suffer an explosion on I-880, I bought new tires. And of course, they were a custom order because no one stocks 225/45HR17 tires for regular sales. What. Ever. I don't know what it is about that car. In my Rabbit and my Golf, I never had so many problems running into things. I used to be able to parallel park like magic, but since I got this new car, I have lost it all. My rims are scraped. I drive up onto the curbs. The wheelbase is a little longer, but the car feels about the same if not a little smaller than my Golf. So the tires are in the wrong places, so to speak. I guess that's my excuse.

Anyway. It's also good because I'm on a road trip this week. I am not a holiday person (as perhaps you can tell by the theme on the site again this year), and I'd prefer to retreat until they pass by. So this week, thanks to a four-and-a-half-day weekend, I'm on the road going down to Palm Springs. I have never been there, and I thought it would be interesting to see the place for once, and especially when it's not 110°F (43°C). So, looking forward to that. Then the following weekend, after seeing The Divine Miss M down in San Jose on Saturday (her "Kiss My Brass" tour has returned, thankfully because I was unemployed and broke the last time she was here), I'm driving down to San Diego for a short conference on the eCTD and the benefits of XML. Geek alert, I swear. I'll have to remind myself to buy some Vivarin before that one. But it's three days in La Jolla, which, if I recall correctly, is perpetually sunny and 72°F (21°C), and I can't pass that up. By the way, speaking of returning divas, Cher is back in the Bay Area again soon. I saw her in Concord last, what, October?, and she's come back. I totally love her, don't get me wrong, but her final tour seems to be lasting forever. What's going on, doll? Need a new house? Just kidding, of course.

I think I've finally made my peace with this job. For the last few months I have been absolutely unbearable to be around. I hated my job, my boss, the whole company, and then something happened, I don't know what, probably a bad dream, and I snapped out of it. It's not like I'm all gung-ho corporate rah rah, but I don't feel so miserable about being here anymore. Maybe it was that our Halloween pumpkin tied with Clinical for first place and we got a pizza party out of it. I can't really complain anymore. I'm lucky to have this job. So then, after I'm all peacey about it, one of the directors in our department up and quits and transfers to the small start-up that Muscle Man started. She's not gone yet, but it just sucks because she was sort of the glue holding things together until we became a more cohesive group. Now who knows what's going to happen. I'm not looking forward to seeing her go, especially after I've been resolved to sticking it out until my stock vests...in another three and a half years!

What else? I've been toying around with the Firefox web browser lately. It's sweet. If you haven't tried it, you should. Internet Explorer might be the default browser in Windowsland, but it's just not as good as the others out there. I have grown accustomed to tabbed-browsing and the built-in search field having used Safari for so long, and IE seems never to add either feature. If that were the only nice thing about Firefox, I'd be happy enough, but I finally figured out that the big swoosh of flames around the globe of the Firefox icon is actually in the shape of a fox! How cute is that?

If you haven't heard Keane yet, you should give that a listen as well. I found them while listening to Virgin Radio through iTunes, and liked what I heard so I bought the CD on iTunes Music Store and haven't stopped listening to it. I don't know how to categorize it, it's not exactly rock or pop, but it has a soothing quality that puts my commute a little more at ease.

OK, that's it, yeah, cheers, thanks a lot.

Why Do I Bother?

It's that time of the year again.

I spent Thanksgiving in Palm Springs, did I mention that? It was a spur of the moment thing, and I'm so glad I did it. I had a great time. Although, both on the drive down to SoCal and during my stay there, I met more people from the Bay Area than anywhere else. It's like, I'm trying to get away from you all. Oh well. I'm about to make a reservation for the same place later in March. I was so impressed with the people who run this little resort that I can't wait to go back and see them again. They were so friendly and accommodating. I arrived on Thursday afternoon. It was Turkey Day, but I didn't care. So Paul lets me in, shows me to my room, and then goes off to his party. He comes back later that night and asks me if I have eaten. He says that he brought a plate home for his partner but he knows that he won't eat it, and he didn't want to let it go to waste, so he offered it to me. I was truly impressed. And then I met some of the other guests there and was surprised at how friendly these people were. Paul told me that "once you visit us, you become part of the family and we'd love to have you back." So, I'm going back. I'm not driving though. Two other guys I met there, who live in San Jose, fly Southwest to Ontario and then rent a car to drive the hour or so from Ontario to Palm Springs. It's much easier than the drive. It took about nine hours getting there, and eleven hours getting home. Eleven hours! All because of traffic! And I'm going to do this again next Sunday when I drive to San Diego for a conference. WTF? I said, WTFF? It's cheaper than flying and renting a car for that long. So whatever. I had a great time. I really really did.