The Simpsons...movie on the big screen

I saw The Simpsons flick after work today. Had to go by myself because no one else wanted to see it. =( I actually kind of like going by myself. Except paying $3.50 for a 20 oz bottle of water. I actually felt guilty paying that much.

Anyway, it was hilarious. And I've decided if you want to feel old, go to a movie where you're surrounded by tweens (not really surrounded, there were probably 25 people, if that many, in the theater) and you're the only one laughing at Kennedy and anything from before 1987.

Makes me wonder how many of those tweens were alive when The Simpsons first aired back in '89. Two thumbs up here!

Same as it ever was

I think I'd like to see DMB cover a Talking Heads song. Specifically "Once in a Lifetime".

That is all.

The what the sh#$ moment of 1989

uh bop bop bop - bop
bop bop bop bop

"Straight Up" was just on the 80's Music Choice channel. Seriously, how did she have a Billboard Top 100 album with that? It sucked. I will admit that my first "girlfriend" (quotes are necessary because it was 6th grade, and well you don't really date then, you just say "Hi. You want to be my girlfriend?" and then you talk on the phone and pass notes. No dating is involved.) danced to "Straight Up" in the Briarwood talent show and my wife claims to have danced to "Cold Hearted Boy" or whatever it is in her talent show. Still, what the sh@# ladies??!!

Here's how my day went-
Flat tire when I went to the garage this morning...followed by
Airfare going up for our trip to Dallas, and then the credit card we were going to use won't let me make 2 payments within 3 days of each other. Sorry Chase, I didn't expect airfare to go up overnight. And then...
The meeting was what I predicted - too much internet. I got a verbal. The boss and I are cool, I think she did it to save face with the current employees. She knows, as well as I do, that I'm going to kick ass once I get out of training. Couple that with the fact that she took some responsiblity; realizing that she was out of the office and has a boatload on her plate. She also mentioned that she didn't expect me to hang in her department too long, as I kick too much ass to be there. The surprising, and I'm still dumbfounded over it, I moved my monitor to the edge of the outside of my desk so I'd see people coming rather than focusing on the inside corner. She said I have to move it back. And delete anything, repeat ANYTHING, on my computer. Bye bye photos of Oliver, bye bye seating chart of Sandstone and Riverport, and most importantly - bye bye budget. For those who don't know I keep a spreadsheet of our bank account. It's a hell of a lot easier than Microsoft Money or anything else I've tried. Oh, and I have to delete the folder in my Outlook called "funny stuff", i.e. jokes and videos people send me that I watch when I need a good laugh.

That was the end of my bad day. Now I'm waiting for the Royals game and I'm having a kick ass dinner - ribeye, baked potato with butter and sour cream (I'd like to put chives and bacon bits but I forgot about them), iceberg salad and garlic bread. Yes, Shayna's gone. She has a good heart and is doing the Relay for Life tonight. God bless her and her friends. Seriously. I'm not doing it. I'm sitting at home drinking beer, eating steak and watching the Royals. Her and her friends are good people.

With that said there will probably be more posts as the night goes on. Peace is love. =)

Trouble is...

A few things-
1. Right before I left work I went to the bathroom and when I got back to my desk there was an invitation to a meeting with my manager. Just me. It said "I need to meet with you tomorrow. Does the above time work for you?" FYI, the above time was 1. That's when I usually go to lunch, and Fridays are no exception as that's when Stump the Chump is - a sports trivia show on a radio station here. Anyway, like I'm going to say no. So I hit accept. Because I'm paranoid I try to get ahold of Shayna to ask her if it would be bad if I ask her what the meeting is about. Of course I get no answer...until I'm across the street at the grocery store. She said she most definitely would've asked about it since it was so vague. Rather than go back across the street I try to catch Joy via phone. Tried twice, no answer. I'm paranoid that she's going to say I spend too much time on the internet. Partially true, but only because I'm new and I have no work to do. She's been out of the office A LOT and naturally when she gets back she has a billion emails. In one meeting 2 weeks ago tomorrow she said to everyone "Work on renewals - give your new biz to John." Good strategy if everyone there wasn't so anal about others working on their stuff. There are a few who give me their stuff but mostly everyone keeps their own. So to sum up-
1. I have a 1 on 1 with my manager tomorrow.
2. I figure if it was "How are things going?" the subject would've said 1x1 or something of that nature. It didn't so I'm freaked out that I'm in trouble for either being on the internet or because a couple of times when they came to my desk I had a game opened that someone sent me via email, NOT on my hard drive. Don't even get me started on companies that remove Solitaire, Hearts, etc. from PCs.
3. The reason I'm in trouble is because she's never around and/or too busy for me and my colleagues don't like other people to work on their stuff.
4. Did I mention the program is slow which does not match with my ADD so well? So when I'm waiting for the stupid thing I have a tendency to open IE and glance at something real fast - OR if I have somewhere to go after work I might punch it into Google maps (which, being the geographic whore that I am, I find very addicting) to see how far it is.

I've been freaking out all night and Shayna's been trying to calm me down but it's not working.

On to 2. Why do people go 40 in a 45? Even when I'm not in a hurry I go 5 over.

And 3. When did water become such a scarce resource? I go to the Royals game and ask for ice water (because I *HATE* bottled water. Given the option between bottled and tap, I choose tap). You know what she gets out? What can only be described as a plastic shot cup. I swear it was only 6 oz. I go to McDonald's, ask for 2 double cheeseburgers and a cup of ice water. A little bit better, as they give me a 12 oz. Taco Bell, which I could swear always gave me the cup that's like 842 oz, actually gave me a 16 oz the other night. I get the environmental thing and what not, but come on big corporate a$$holes - not all of us want to rot our teeth with 95% sugar/5% corn syrup. And before you say diet - it tastes like goat piss.

I'll let you know how the meeting goes tomorrow. From home.

Oh, and on a side note, I hit my high water mark back in late April, early May - 239.1. Needless to say we went on Weight Watchers. It was alright, got me down 10 pounds. But then we hit June and all heck broke loose. I had Tribal Feast, the next weekend we had Pat's wedding, then we went to the Royals game the following weekend (the 15th for those playing at home), courtesy of Roxy and the Marlins, and to top all of that off my birthday was the last weekend of June. I went off Weight Watchers, went on my own fat flush and I'm somewhat happy to report I'm down to 223 as of this afternoon. The goal? 185. Anything beyond that is a bonus. I'd be really happy to fit into the shorts I wore in 2001. Stay tuned.

Paper or Plastic?

More like "Little plastic bag or big plastic bag?" Hen House really bugs me when it comes to this, at least the one by our house that I frequent. They refuse to use big bags. Example: last week I buy ice cream, grape tomatoes, cucumber, and 4 peaches. Point is everything I bought could have all fit in one big plastic bag. Do they use a big one? No, they use two little ones. I'm not sure if they're overstocked on little ones and they've been pushing them for the last 15 months. At any rate it makes more economical and environmental sense to give me one bag. And yes, it bothers me that much.

p.s. DMB's cover of Down by the River is pretty sweet. Tour starts in 5 days! Sandstone (hopefully not the last time, I need to post about that later) in a month! Starplex (or whatever it's called now) in two!

An Anakin Skywalker Moment

Ever had one of those moments where you did something and then looked back and thought to yourself "What have I done???", i.e. Anakin cutting off Mace's hand, thus allowing the Emperor to use Force lightning to kill Mace. I had one of those times this morning. It's not the first one I've had, but it seems worse this time. Probably because it's out there for a LOT of people to see.

There's this drama going on right now surrounding Scouts here. I've been a little irritated with them for a couple of years now and I guess since it made the paper on Saturday I decided I should polish my letter and shoot it off. Well some of the things in the letter were meant only for the eyes of the executives over at the council office. Yesterday I was reading through some of the comments left for the article on Saturday and thought "I should post something here too." Rather than editing the letter I just copied and pasted it in, hit submit...and then I came back to the other screen. I tried again and same result. I figured my comment wasn't stored or Travelers has some weird firewall where I can't leave comments. Went on about my night and watched 5th Grader and Hell's Kitchen. This morning I pull up the comments to see who posted last night and lo and behold, there's mine - complete with secret stuff that isn't supposed to be talked about. Enter into my head the "OMG!!! What have I done????" I just ran to the bathroom because I felt like I was going to throw up, not to mention I was sweating like a contestant on Hell's Kitchen.

There's 70,000 people in this organization that I feel I let down. I reported my post as a violation and asked that it be removed but since I didn't use any profanity or attack someone personally I'm worried they won't take it down. I wish there was something else I could do other than sit and wait. I wish I could hack in to that webpage and remove it.

Guilt sucks.

time for a change

i need to make a better effort on this. the world needs to know how i feel about things. so from this day forward i vow to post here at least once a week. i also need to come up with a new name for this. with that said i have a few things to touch on-

1. i think it's time for a makeover, and probably a name change. i'll work on all that later.
2. the new job is pretty boring. for those who don't know i started at travelers on may 7. i decided to get out of group insurance and make the switch to property. however, the way this job is going, i think i really need to go back to school so i can get a bachelor degree or something in a geography related course, then go work at garmin. garmin is the gps company that's 10 minutes from our house. gps isn't going anywhere, i *heart* geography, and when i was a kid i wanted to be a cartographer. i guess you could say it's always been my dream. since playing 3rd base for the royals (as of today the 4th place royals! woo!) is out of the question.
3. we got showtime specifically so we can watch big brother after dark.
4. with that said we should probably get rid of dvr. all we do is watch tv anymore. yesterday i mentioned in the morning that we should go to the dog park. of course all we did was watch tv. sort of, i had to go to mom & dad's and hook up their printer. that took 3 hours because i couldn't find the stupid installation cd. then found out that it wouldn't work because the disc was only valid with me, 98 or xp. had to get a patch from the hp site. an. noy. ing.
5. i found shayna's twin in kansas. she lives in wichita. she watches scott baio, run's house, and hates noisy people. hopefully she'll give me permission to link her permanently. in the meantime, her website is A California Girl in Kansas, Part 2. i've been laughing pretty hard at her musings. oh, and her name is shea. coincidence?

oh, and speaking of the royals, they have all-you-can-eat seats now. nachos and hot dogs. i've decided my first move will be to get extra cheese and dip my hot dog in it. it sounds gross, but i want to make up for all the money those bums have taken from me over the years.