I am deeply saddened to announce that Leah and I have just broken up. Before anyone asks, I was the dumpee, not the dumper. Now, if you will excuse me, I am going to go and throw up again.
Having been influenced by Becky and Leah, I changed my mind about not using my LiveJournal. That doesn't mean I'm going to stop using my blog; on the contrary, I want to be certain it doesn't just gather dust. What I put where I will have to figure out as I go, as I have few hard and fast categorizations in mind; but be aware that there may be updates there in addition to the ones here. I will probably be posting more quick and dirty stuff in the LJ and lengthier things in here. Another route I may go is to relegate day-to-day updates to the LJ, and put comprehensive pieces in here.
Dad thinks I'm crazy for not taking one of his spare watches, but I have good reasons for not taking them. He has three.
One is a dive watch. I've been wearing it in the meantime, but it's really, really heavy, looks ridiculous, so on so forth. It's just not an everyday watch, though it is a very nice SCUBA watch.
One is a really pretty watch that I would have taken except that it loses time, a lot. Dad apparently doesn't consider this a drawback -- you just have to reset it every so often, he says. This is usually the point where I call the asylum and tell them he's escaped again.
The last is also a nice watch, but completely not to my taste, and it's not water-proof or -resistant. This leads me back to the problem of my watch neurosis -- I never, ever take my watch off. Ever. This means that I would have to take it off when I shower and so forth, which is just not going to happen. If I took the watch, within a week it'd be broken.
Dad showed up at the store where Mom and I were looking at watches shortly before I bought mine, for no other apparent reason than to heckle me. He complains that I'm "wasting money" and so forth. This has helped me, I think, to put my finger on one of the biggest things that pisses me off about him. This is a subset of the issue I've mentioned before, which is that everything is always about him.
In the Dad worldview, when a purchase is made anywhere in the world, it can always be placed into one of the following three categories:
1. Gifts. (This applies only to gifts either from or for Dad). Purchases in this category are exempt from most of the rules that will follow. These are generally okay, as long as they're not too expensive.
2. Things for Dad. This applies to purchases made by Dad, for Dad, since anything else would fall into the Gifts category above. Anything in this category absolutely must be the biggest, best, and any other relevant superlatives on the market. This appears to stem from some sense of entitlement due to age, regardless of the relevance of age to the purchase in question. (Example: "After fifty-some years, I think I'm entitled to cable modem service." ... I've been trying to convince him of this for years -- sometimes he reminds me of the pointy-haired boss from Dilbert. Now that I've finally given up, he can pretend it's his idea and do it.) Neither the expense nor any lack of actual need for the product or service is relevant here; all that matters is that it be the best.
3. Things for anyone else. Anything not fitting into either of the above categories falls in here. If something is in this category, then no matter what it is, it's too expensive and a foolish purchase and/or a waste of money. This applies equally across all levels of necessity, be it something frivolous but fun, like a movie, or something vital for survival (i.e., food). The fact that many of the purchases made in Category No. 2 above are frivolous and horrible ideas is not relevant.
Man... between work and dealing with family, I wish I could still look forward to summer vacations. I work my ass off a helluva lot more now than almost anyone does at school. (The primary exception I can think of here is Pete, who does a frightening amount of work.)
My hours this week kick ass; I'm working today from 3:00-9:00, off tomorrow, and working non-morning hours again Tuesday and Thursday. Working at 9:00 and 10:00 on Thursday and Friday, but that's okay, and the 9:00 day isn't eight hours long.
Had another gaming night last night; Tom and Andrew couldn't come, but Mike, Jamie and I had a good time.
Finally updated the current picks on the right-hand side to reflect changes in the last, um, several months.
Taste test
I've never liked coffee, despite attempts to acquire the taste for the sake of the caffeine. At my job, though, I grind coffee for customers sometimes, and the hazelnut coffee always smells really, really good. So today I asked Mom to pick up some for me to try, which she did, and with sugar and cream it's really quite good. So I guess I'm joining the Evil Empire.
My cell phone randomly decided to not work last night, obliging me to creep as silently as possible into my parents' room where their phones were charging so I could call Leah. It still wasn't working this morning when I got up to make a mad dash to Blockbuster before my movie was late, so I called Verizon customer service. Like the other time this happened, it started working again in the middle of my conversation with the Verizon rep. I'm thinking they just randomly turn of people's service for fun to make us feel dumb.
That's about it for now, I guess. Leah in T-6 days. W00t.
As per requests, I have added Seth and Claire #2 to my Friends' Blogs list. Leah didn't leave me a link to Claire's journal, but through my intrepid investigative skills, I found it on my own (read: I went to Seth's and saw the link there).
