Rant: My new cat has utilized his recently granted privilege of being able to leave the guest room by regularly shitting on the basement carpet. Worse, since I'm transitioning him from kitten food to adult cat food he's been having diarrhea. Gonna rent a steam cleaner tonight or tomorrow.
Rave: I stepped on the scale about 3 or so weeks ago, and was disgusted because I weighed the most I ever have. Since then I've more or less cut beer and pop completely out of my diet, and I've already lost 10 pounds. Damn.
Rant: Had a date with a girl who seemed really cool, I thought it went well, and she said that she wanted to see me again...and then stopped responding. Go figure. Rave: With a little help from the rents I'm looking at buy a condo or townhouse within the next few months. Hopefully my days of renting will soon be over! Rave: I'm really excited about next month. I'm taking the weekend of the 7th off from my second job for the Bob Seger concert, then the next weekend off for my and my nephew's birthday, and then the next weekend off for my friend's wedding on Jekyll Island and the LCD Soundsystem concert. And since I have this coming Tuesday off work I'm going to see XEB (the ex-original members of Third Eye Blind). The next month or so should be great! Rant: I hate to admit this, but this will be the first wedding that I've ever been to (the only other one that I was ever invited to was my cousin's shotgun wedding back when I was in high school). I won't know most of the people there, so I'm hoping that my really bad social anxiety won't get the better of me. Thankfully it's not a dry wedding!
Rave: Rodney is 14 weeks old, and so far he can on command: - sit - down - jump up (low heights) - jump down - recall to “come!” Or a whistle - shake a paw - housebark Oh and he can be trusted alone, unkenneled up to five hours and sleeps through the night with no fuss or accidents. Also unkennelled. WHAT PLANET IS THIS DOG FROM?!
Rant: I just found out yet another one of my old friends from my punky teenage days OD'd yesterday and died this morning. I'm going home this weekend for my reunion and my next writing project is going to have a lot to do with that time so I've been extra nostalgic lately and thinking about them a lot so even though it's been years since we've talked the news is still hitting me in a soft spot. I'm mostly mad because when I make the rounds of those people on Facebook to check up on them now and then, many of them are still drifters and squatters and not really doing much with their life, but he seemed to be doing okay. He had a real job, he bought a house, he cleaned up his look, he had a band, I think he was married at some point. Now I look at his page and last week he was talking about how a girlfriend left him, then how he needed to find a place to live because he couldn't afford their apartment on his own, then he shared a post about having sympathy rather than disgust towards heroin addicts, and then a slew of posts from other people asking around for updates from the hospital and then sharing grief. It's just dumb. I couldn't be further from that group of people now but I'm always going to feel connected to them and hurt when one of them goes.
Rave- I made a concerted effort to cut back on caffiene. After 4-5 days of terrible vision blurring migrane headaches they've finally subsided. Not a total worlds change as far as energy goes, can tell the crash is not affecting me as much.
Rant: I thought I hated roaches until we got a rat. Yes, it's a rat. I spent quite a few minutes GIS'ing rat and mouse shit.
Rave: Took my CISA exam this morning. It'll take 10 days before I get the official results, but the preliminary analysis says I passed. Considering it was a pure multiple choice exam I'm not sure how much more analysis there is to do, so I think it's safe to presume I passed. Holy shit.
RANT: So many BS phone calls at work today, from Generational Equity, and too many other "junk" phone calls to list. RAVE: It's fun being an asshole on the phone sometimes.
Rant: Apparently my bag never made the transfer on my way home today. So now I have to wait for the next flight in from Baltimore to see if it arrives. I also was bringing home 4 very rare bottles of beer and now am worried one or more of those might magically go missing or get broken.
RANT: Mom had a mini-stroke yesterday. Nothing showed up in a CAT scan or MRI, so that's a good thing... more of a wake-up call than anything. She's not happy right now because, go figure, the Stroke Clinic is now recommending massive changes to her lifestyle; almost vegetarian menu until she drops some weight, very little wine, daily exercise, etc., etc.. She was not really expecting retirement (she's just transitioning into it now) to be this life-changing... so yeah... she should be really "fun" for the next little while. RAVE: It was really nothing more than a wake-up call.
RAVE: My big, white pig of a truck passed it's smog test today somehow. Yay. The guy actually looked underneath at the exhaust and I told him "Don't worry about that. What is the computer reporting?" My exhaust system dumps straight from the manifolds into a couple of glass packs. The catalytic converter is long gone. The truck is running like shit, but the computer isn't throwing any codes. RANT: I make good money. I can easily afford something better, so why don't I? I hate owing money and I hate paying full coverage insurance, so I keep driving my piece of shit. I'm an idiot.
Rave: Got my official exam results for my CISA. Passed that fucker with authority. Now I just need to get my work experience all squared away and I'll have my certification in hand.
RAVE: I've mentioned before what an awesome employer I have. Every year I tend to get bonuses in the high 4 figure/low 5 figure range just for doing my job. Recently our company was sold from one investment group to another. They gave us a "Dividend" from the sale based on how long we've been with the company....mine was in the 4 figures. That was a nice little surprise and will help pay my land down.