Rave: Today I am celebrating the life of my beautiful, funny, kickass best friend who passed 10 years ago today. After I study for a bit I'm gonna grab a Vanilla Coke from Sonic (maybe add some rum) and watch "Pulp Fiction" for old time's sake. (We were obsessed with it). Seems appropriate.
Rant Were you aware February is skunk mating season? All of Southeastern Ohio currently smells like an asshole (or at least more so than usual).
Rave: 60 degrees and sunny in February Rave: Bahamas in 2 weeks Rant: 3 midterms and 1 paper between then and now
Not sure yet: For the past few months, I've been hitting a wall of utter fatigue and exhaustion every afternoon around 1-2pm. I'm not talking just feeling sluggish, I mean "I really need to go take a fuckin' nap and sleep til next week" kind of feeling. Unfortunately, I'm in my office on campus when it occurs, so "naptime" ain't an option. I'm sleeping 7-8 hours each night undisturbed, and I take a med for ADHD each morning (a dexamphetamine), and I typically drink coffee throughout the day. Getting this feeling 4 hours before a 3-hour class even begins isn't boding well, and it's been getting progressively worse. I nearly fell asleep in my thesis meeting last week. It's not a good thing when your advisor asks if he's keeping you awake. I spoke with my PCP and he's ordered a sleep study which I'm doing tomorrow night to test for sleep apnea, which is his suspicion. While I can't say I'm thrilled with the idea of sleeping with either a mask on or air tubes up my nose, this "walking dead" feeling and concentration problems are driving me nuts. On the other hand, if it's not sleep apnea, we'll be exploring some possible neurological issues (I also been having olfactory hallucinations on and off, so he and my psychiatrist said there's a possibility of temporal lobe epilepsy). At least it'll be cool to see the test results and how quickly my brain waves move between stages, achieve REM and for how long, etc.
RAVE: We won our season opening rugby match yesterday 22-15 over our division rivals. We hadn't beaten them in 3 years (with each of the past six matches decided by less than a try) and we capped the match with a disgusting 5 minute goal line stand that I don't remember much of after going head to head with an opposing flanker. This team kept us out of playoffs last year with an identical goal line stand in the last 5 mins that we couldn't punch in. Great feeling to be 1-0 and have the monkey off our backs. RAVE: The new flanker we got from the Cincinnati Greyhounds is disgusting. Between him and my roommate (another flanker) they tore up the defense in loose play. This is going to be a helluva season if we can stay healthy and congruent. RANT Probable concussion. I haven't been puking at all but the last 5 mins of that match are hazy and my pupils were unevenly dilated about 2 hours after. I'm blaming the beer.
RANT RIP my Levano Thinkpad. It was a faithful and reliable companion to me for the last 4-5 years. Never gave me any trouble, always there and ready to go when I needed it, helped me through the hard times (also knows as grad school), we had some good memories. Last night, I may or may not have spilled some wine on it (I was quite drunk and the event of the end of the evening get a little fuzzy) resulting in it being totally lifeless this morning. You deserved better, my friend. RAVE Got me a shiny new laptop. It is sleeker, lighter, and faster. Now to customize it with all of my crap.
RANT: The BMW I ass-rammed last year apparently had $2500 more of damage than my insurance company will cover. That's also $2300 more than I have in my bank account. Even better, I found this out via the OTHER insurance company. My adjuster still hasn't called me back, despite me leaving messages with her. Going back to school would have been nice. Too bad I didn't do it while I still had a chance.
RAVE: Good weekend. Make that a great weekend. Hell, let's just call it fucking fantastic. RAVE: Sushi three days in a row. Tonight's Fire Roll - spicy tuna, avocado and tempura flakes topped with a spicy aioli. Heaven.
RAVE: I thoroughly enjoyed the new episode of The Simpsons tonight. Rant: it's 2:30 in the fucking morning and I can't sleep.
Rave: Much needed new tires for my ATV and my wife's care. Rant: Another fucking coolant leak on my truck. One that I can't repair myself.
Rave: My day-after-new-years resolution to move my workouts to the AM has been immensely rewarding. More energy for the workout and more energy/drive after the workout that carries through the day. A just added addendum to the resolution is to NEVER take work calls while I'm mid-workout. Very distracting and it's never a quick call. Rant: Retarded customer called during my workout and being a dummy I answered. He was upset and demanding to know why we switched out a massive piece of the physical structure on a piece of equipment we just rebuilt/upgraded for him... Uh, we didn't. In simple terms it would have been like replacing the steel hull of a Deadliest Catch boat. Such a huge piece of structure that it would have made more sense to junk it and start from scratch. We did however repaint it. Apparently that confused him. Dummy. Rave: Will be done doing my taxes today. Thank god.
RAVE: Sushi came out awesome, I don't think I'll ever order it at a restaurant again, the mark up is so painful. RANT: Bought WAY too much fish, it only lasts three days. RAVE: Sushi for lunch (and possibly dinner) today and tomorrow! RAVE: It's like 45 degrees out, I was able to snowshoe in a t-shirt today.
Rave: I'll be the only TiB member standing in a couple months. Rant: Everyone's posts suck because of mercury poisoning.
Rant: Bank of America is pretty much the definition of "Institutional Incompetence". Every time I've had to deal with them, they are incapable of providing information that is either accurate or timely. Unfortunately, my home loan happens to be from them (and we signed all the paperwork before things went to shit) so I'm stuck with them until I can refinance or whatever. Some fun examples: - Requiring FLOOD INSURANCE for a condo unit on the SECOND FLOOR. - Not letting me know about this requirement until less than 24 hours before closing. - Any kind of customer service is nearly unreachable, you pretty much have to track down people's personal phone numbers and call those to get any kind of information. - Being unable to process some simple fucking insurance certificates despite me sending the damn things over at least three times to three different fax numbers that three different dipshits told me. - Any time I have to deal with their voice recognition software, it's completely incapable of detecting ... words. No matter how much I enunciate or yell, it's always "PLEASE REPEAT". I guess they're competent enough for small scale personal banking but when I have to deal with large amounts of money in the future, I will not be using Bank of America under any circumstances. Fucking incompetent morons, I hope they get put out of business.
RANT: Fucked up my brief today. I studied the stuff I needed to study for my written procedures exam and didn't focus on what I needed to brief for my actual flight. It was all stuff that was obscure and hard to remember with a bunch of numbers. Max flight speed above 3000lbs at 6000 pressure Alt? Really? Max rear rotor movement engagement speed? Max fucking sideward flight speed at 10,000ft? Who the fuck will ever, ever do any of this shit? Cmon!! Rave: I passed my written test. And my instructor gave my flight partner and I a bye because my partner is has some virus. Gave us the benefit of the doubt, but when it comes down to it... Rant: I didn't know my shit. Rave: I worked a good deal on an exhaust for my car. Got a slightly used, $1500 system for a grand. These setups are built by hand by a specialty shop that deals in my car and the 370z. Rant: I have to spend all of today memorizing obscure numbers. Rave: I will be overly prepared for my brief tomorrow.
Rave: Just got back from my first day at my new job building race cars. Seriously. My employer was kind enough to overlook how woefully under qualified I am. He's also kind enough to let us drink on the job, towards the end of the shift at least. Having friends helps. So I guess I'll finally learn something about cars. Had to eventually I suppose. Might as well start with 60s style race cars.
Rant: Got a B on Microeconomics exam; was only a cunt hair away from an A. Rave: Extra credit was given because everybody did so poorly on this exam. Posted this in another thread, please help if you know the topics: Spoiler Looking for some quick assistance on an "extra credit" question that will increase the grade on my Microeconomics exam from a B to an A. It should take no more than five minutes, I've done half of it but want to be sure on the rest. It involves budget constraints and drawing indifference curves based on the price of two goods and consumer preferences and finally, sketching a demand curve based on the indifference curve points. I can do everything with 100% certainty except for the drawing of the indifference curves. I have a scan of the assignment to send to anyone that wishes to help me. It's due Wednesday morning.
Rave: Pens/Sharks hockey tickets for next week. RIGHT ON THE MOTHERFUCKING GLASS. Row A, baby. I've never been to a hockey game before! I'm so freaking excited! Double Rave: My Dad is even more excited about this than I am. He reminded me that the last time we went to a sporting event together was when I was 14. I remember that...it was a Braves game. And we had so much fun just watching baseball and eating pretzels- why did I ever stop doing that? I think I got "too old" to spend time with my Dad (or whatever bullshit reason a teenager comes up with in order to do stupid shit with her friends instead) and started opting out so often that he just quit asking. After looking at his face when he told me about our tickets this afternoon, I realized that this was a mistake. I mean, I'm living at home and I'm in school...when else am I going to have this amount of free time to hang with my Dad? Probably not ever again. So...yeah. More sporting events with the old man. Awesome sauce.