I think I am ready for Spooky GameFest. With one notable exception which I will fix at coffee break time. I forgot to pack my damn pills again! It seems like every week I forget something when I pack at lunch, to leave right after work. And about 60-75% of the time, the thing I forget is my stupid pills. Pill taking is the bane of my existence!!! Actually its not. I really don't care that much, one way or the other, about pill taking. Its just, something I do. Now if I could only come up with a fool-proof system for remembering to pack them on weekends. . .

My system is packed, my games are in the bag, I don't think I've missed any cords, cables, controllers or other paraphenalia. All that is left is the gaming. Woo Hoo!!! I'm actually excited about a GameFest again. This is a nice occurence because the last few I was kind of in a, oh whatever, kind of mood. This time I'm really jazzed about gaming. A fair majority of that is probably the desire for a stress relief after doing nothing fun last weekend. This is going to be good. We had a poll, administered by Greg, earlier in the month on what games we wanted to play. I think we got a decent enough consensus that perhaps this time we can do more gaming, and spend less time staring at each other going, what do you want to play, I dunno, what do you want to play? WarCraft III, Dungeon Siege and Age of Empires II were the clear winners so hopefully we'll just bunker down with those and game until things start to bleed.

The only sad note is, Dean won't be there to play. That is a disconsolate realization. The group is going to short a member. Maybe we'll put up a little shrine next to an empty computer, in his honor. :-) Hopefully it will not bring the event down. Maybe we'll even be able to incorporate him, across the internet, on Friday or Saturday night. All of that will be dependent on his schedule. I just want to say at this point, that I think school sucks!

So I'm at home at lunch, trying to get ready to leave. I do up the dishes so I can take all the empty plastic containers home to my mom. They are hers, and I wouldn't use them anyway, so I might as well take them home. There is the added bonus that she'll probably fill them again, and send them back with me, thus saving me the inconvenience of cooking whole meals for myself. Just pop some leftovers in the microwave, yum, yum! The big poppy seed container was empty, which is really what spurred me to do the dishes. I sort of see that as a hallmark that I should be washing my dishes. So I do that, then I have something to eat, tear down the computer and try to pack it up. I need to throw clothes in a bag, and make sure I pack my eye glasses and drugs (which I ended up forgetting). I'm in a flurry, trying to get all of this done during my 1 hour lunch break when the doorbell rings. Well what the hell could this be? I thought, trick or treaters. No, can't be, its 1:00 in the afternoon. Who else would be at my door? I'm tossing back and forth in my head whether to answer it or keep working. Back and forth, back and forth I go. Finally I decide, at this time of day its gotta be someone who actually wants to talk to me. So I go open it. UNICEF kids! Good grief I don't need this right now! So I scrounge around in my coat and find a buck to give them. This mollifies them and they're on their way. Isn't it just the way it goes though? When you least have the time is when you end up with unnecessary distractions.

I admit, I kind of caused my own situation with running out of time at lunch. I turned the TV on, and Little Nicky was playing on Movie Central. That was a movie I wanted to go see, but never got around to watching. So I probably stood and watched about 10 minutes of it, without accomplishing anything. Thus putting me behind schedule, and causing the situation that erupted with the UNICEF girls. I wandered into the living room and noticed Reese Witherspoon in the movie, as an angel. I thought to myself, how the hell did Adam Sandler talk Reese Witherspoon into being in his stupid movie!?! So I watched for 10 minutes because I think Reese Witherspoon is cute. Sue me, I'm male. :-) I actually considered skipping work this afternoon. On a Thursday afternoon there was a good string of movie on TV. Little Nicky (not a great movie but at least a feature; better than the dreck that they usually play on a weekday afternoon) followed by Planet of the Apes and The Mummr Returns. I just looked up the schedule on the internet and Bedazzled is after that. So an afternoon of first run offerings on a Thursday. That is uncharacteristic. Usually they play crap I've never heard of before. Daytime TV is usually pretty sad. Most days I end up watching PB&J out of sheer futility. I got lucky once and a good movie was on at lunch so now I check every day. I don't think I've found something on there worth watching between that first time and today. I wonder if I should write a letter to someone about that?

I'm too excited about going home to Saskatoon for gaming to write anymore. Have a great day world! Toodles!

I know this joke is blasphemous. Nevertheless, I couldn't help myself when I laughed at it, upon first reading.


Q: How do you get Jesus to cross the road?
A: Nail Him to a chicken.

You know what? Today has kind of sucked. Not in that monumental way, like if your dog got run over. Now, it has sucked in all the little ways. Those niggly little things that come up during the course of a day. They stuff that bugs you a little bit on its own, but a whole lot when looked at in the cumulative.

First piss off, Dean can't come to Spooky GameFest. This almost qualifies as a big piss off. If I were Dean, it would be a big piss off. But I'm not Dean, I'm only Grant, so it has to fit into the more minor piss off category. Whatever its global rating, it is annoying. I was looking forward to the gang all being together again, for an epic battle of good against evil. Now we will we short one player. This is sad. I'm sure Dean wishes it could be different. I know I wish it could be different. I guess this is why they invented the saying, life sucks, wear a helmet.

Second piss off, we're not going to an Edmonton Oilers hockey game at the end of November. This has to go in the minor piss off category because we hadn't really planned for it or anything. The feeler just went out last week to see if anyone was interested in going. I guess, since not enough people could/would go at that time, it got shelved. I suppose I can understand that but its another thing to make me sad. One of my goals for the future is to have more adventures. On that list was going to an NHL game. Also on the list is going to a Montreal Expos game. I hope against hope that the team can stay in Montreal for one more year so I can go. I wanted to go last year but too many things came up, on my way from idea, to realization. The whole new job, moving, living on a budget, thing interrupted my plans.

There was third piss off to go here, but it was so minor that I'm not going to go into it. Long story short, I didn't enjoy the soup I had for lunch. I am now pulling for supper to rescue the meal situation from the doldrums.

That's all for today. Any further thinking about what has happened today will only depress me. I choose to live for the moment.

Toodles!

It has not been a stellar morning so far. First of all, I was late getting to work. I didn't get up until 8:02 this morning. My alarm didn't go off. I was screwing with the plug-ins in my bedroom yesterday. Six and a half months after I move in, I'm finally getting around to decorating. I put up my blue lights in my bedroom. I did a very nice job of the whole ling. I ran the extension cord along the base board and then along the door frame, so the switch for the lights was right by the switch for the overhead light. I meticulously stapled the lights to the wall, along the roof line, and the whole project looks good. I got severely choked because I was about five staples away from being done, and I ran out of staples. Then I couldn't figure out how to load the staple gun. That's not entirely an accurate statement. I figured out how to load the staple gun fairly easily but I had the wrong size staples and it wasn't working. I fussed with that for maybe half an hour before trying the other box of staples and getting it to work instantly. Needless to say, I threw out the staples that didn't fit.

Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah, why was I late for work this morning. I put a box on the plug in near the door, to convert it from two plugs to six. To do that I had to unplug the lamp and my alarm clock. This, of course, reset my clock to a blinking 12:00. I set the time but it completely eluded me that I would need to reset the alarm on the clock. So, when I turned the alarm on last night, it was a wasted gesture, since the time wasn't set for it to go off. And thus, it didn't go off this morning, and I was late getting up. In my haste to get going I couldn't find my watch either. I've been having trouble keeping track of stuff. I looked around for the dongle for my laptop network card for 10 minutes or more last night, only to find it right beside the chair, on the opposite side. I'm sure the watch is in a similarly easy to find location. I just haven't found where that is it.

All of that is superfluous though. The real topic I want to discuss is, the internet. Am I the only one noticing that it is sucking hard lately? I can barely do anything on it anymore. Web pages don't load reliably, my news server is continually timing out. The only thing that seems to work reliably is chat programs. But don't get me started on that because that is another thing that is severely pissing me off. Stupid MSN!!! I'll be using the program and suddenly, for no explicable reason, it will log me off. I'll be typing a message and suddenly, 'you are not signed in'. WTF!!!! That's not the worst though. What really drives me up the wall is, I'll be in a conversation with someone, and they'll have to go for some reason. Bathroom trip or whatever. That will be my only active conversation, and so I'll be sitting there, waiting for the person to come back. But they never come back. I'll start wondering what's going on and what has happened is, MSN has logged me off, but has not bothered to alert me to this fact! Now THAT is something that really yanks my chain. The absolute worst is when it will still let me type messages to the person, but it simply flips them into neverland. Most of the time it will tell me message is not deliverable at which point I'll know to restart MSN. But when it just tosses my messages completely I get annoyed. I can't even tell the damn thing isn't working! I'll think I'm just being ignored. I was in a conversation with Greg a week ago or so, and this happened. We didn't even pause in the conversation. I typed a message and was waiting for a reply. And I waited and I waited and I waited and nothing came back. Finally I restarted MSN out of frustration. Turns out it Messenger had booted me right after I sent my last message. Thanks for telling me you stupid piece of crap!!!

So that's my rant for the day. MSN sucks, bites, blows and a lot of other icky things I could say, but none of which would matter. Have a nice day everyone.

Toodles!

First off, an apology. I screwed something up on Wednesday, and the post that I wrote, didn't get uploaded to the web site. I'm not sure exactly why this happened. I may have hit the 'Post' button and not the 'Post & Publish' button. Thus I did save the submission, but did not put it on the web site. As you can now see, I did write something for Wednesday, as I've fixed the problem and got Wednesday's blatherings up for the world to see.

Continuing with the apology theme, I'm sorry I didn't write anything since Wednesday. I have a reason, if not an excuse. I was working for Kevin at the rodeo. I probably could have found plenty of material to write about, from the experience. Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights I did not get home until very late, so even though I had ideas for things I could write, I didn't have the energy. My standard mode of operation was to come home, do a couple of things, then pass out in my bed. I slept like the dead every night. It doesn't sound that tiring, when you talk about being a bartender at Sask. Place. Pour some beer, make some mixed drinks, stock a fridge, etc. But when you do that for hours at a time, at a full sprint, it wears you down. Monday morning has arrived and I am still tired. I think today is going to be a slow day, go home and rest, rather than ride the bike, and get my strength back. I'll try and make myself bushy tailed for tomorrow. :-)

One thing I do remember wanting to discuss was the topic of these cabarets. I have tried to understand why this is fun but an explanation of it has always eluded me. If anyone out there can tell me why being crammed into a room with several thousand other people, until it looks like a high density feed lot, is a good time, I would love to hear it. Thankfully I was spared much of the cabaret experience. I was on ticket counting duty for both nights. That was a good job because otherwise I was pretty tired. My legs were cramping from being on my feet so long, and bouncing back and forth between the fridge and the table, from in front of the bar to the back, fetching more cases of beer. My hand is all chewed up today too, from opening beer bottles. Its better now but it was red, raw and ugly yesterday afternoon when we started the final showing of rodeo.

Which brings to mind something else about the weekend. Why the hell were people drinking so much yesterday!?! Sunday at the rodeo, in my memory, has always been a slow day. As I recall it, by Sunday afternoon everyone was tired from rodeo-ing or partying at the cabarets afterwards. By Sunday afternoon they were down to a single beer, with Clamato, to settle the stomach. Yesterday they drank like fish! We went through over 30 cases of beer yesterday afternoon. It was ridiculous. It was as busy as Friday night, and we had less staff. Everyone was running their ass off, trying to keep up at intermission. We just barely stayed ahead of the game. That was bizarre. It was the same basic crew at the highball bar where I was, all weekend, and I don't think I would be talking out of turn if I said, none of us were really up to the challenge of a busy Sunday. I think everyone was ready to just coast through the final show and go home. When they started doing awards before starting the second half of the show, a collective groan seemed to go spring out from everyone.

That was my weekend, in a nut shell. Had I had the ambition to write when I came home, I'd have plenty more, and better, stories to tell about the rodeo. But I was, and am, tired so this meagre contribution will have to do. Have a great day people!

Toodles!