What's going on with me?

2-26-06 - Back at the end of June (the 22nd?), my employer held its yearly Safety Expo at the Oak Ridge mall. While wandering around, I spotted a DDR booth. I don't know what this had to do with safety, but I wanted to play, especially since there were metal pads there. Well, I and the people I was with ended up playing a couple times. Everyone there was playing light, but I played heavy just because I could. It was my first time on metal pads, so I didn't do as well as I could have since I wasn't used to them. The guy that was running the booth, a really tall and goofy-looking guy named Jeremiah, gave me a weird look when I told him I wanted to play on heavy, but he let me. Afterwards, he was giving me a "that sucked" look. We walked by later and he was playing some insanely fast one that had 1200+ steps in maybe 4 minutes, and he had a 500+ combo in there somewhere. It was very impressive, but at least I have a bit of a life.

Fast forward to October or November. My friend Clark is talking about running in a 5k race, I think. Well, he had to go to Jeremiah's office to do a safety observation on him (those are dumb, but I have to do them, too). While there, Clark saw his entry form and told him that he could take it since he was one of the people that were collecting them. Jeremiah gave it to him then asked Clark how fast he could run it. Clark told him his time, which I think is a somewhat fast time. Jeremiah just looked at Clark and said, "I can probably beat you. I play DDR." All of us at lunch had a good laugh at this, and we talked about it for weeks. We even imagined him doing a run that resembles playing DDR. Good times. For the record, Clark beat him by a minute and a half, but he resisted gloating at him in front of his kid.

Fast forward one last time to Thursday. I was talking to Clark in my office about him and his wife (both of whom I went to high school and college with) moving to Smyrna. Not one minute after Clark left, the phone rang.

"Hello, this is Tony."
"Tony G_____?"
"Yeah."
"I heard you play DDR."
"Who is this?"
"Jeremiah." (It took me a minute to realize who it was, since I only heard his name a few times and hadn't talked to him since the Safety Expo.)
"Oh. Well, I haven't played in a while." (It had been maybe three weeks, but I played at the arcade with a friend on Friday night. 'Twas fun and it was her first time playing. I resisted, but she talked me into it.)
"So you're not very good then?"
"I'm alright. You saw me at the Safety Expo. I played 'Tsugaru' on heavy."
"Oh, I think I remember you."
[I can't remember the next thing or two that were said, but then he chimed in with:]
"Well, I just wanted to maintain my supremacy around here."
"Well, I doubt it'll be hard."
[I then asked who told him and he said he didn't know the person's name, but it turned out to be Dale the co-op. The conversation then ended.]

A bit later, I went and told Clark about it, who laughed heartily. I also started telling Elijah, but he already knew about it from Dale. Apparently Dale was standing right there when Jeremiah called and when the conversation ended, he said to Dale, "I remember him. He wasn't very good." What a dork...and that's coming from me.

I got home from work on Thursday, went to check my mail, and as I was walking back, I saw my neighbor Jim walking toward me. I said hi and he smiled and said, "Thanks for keeping your karaoke down." I laughed and said, "Was that you?" He was the one that banged on the wall (I thought it was my door) a couple weeks ago. We talked about it and I told him I'd been doing it for six months and that surprised him (which makes me wonder if he got the apology letter that was meant for him. Anyway, he said the only reason he heard it the two times he did is because he was sleeping on the couch those days, for whatever reason. But it's all good, and we're cool now. Word.

Friday morning, I woke up at about 9, rolled over, looked at the clock, rolled back over to go back to sleep, and then it happened. I got the worst charley horse I've ever had. It was in my left calf, and it was all I could do to not scream...at least I don't think I did. I'm sure I made noises of some sort while I was writhing in agony. But the weirdest part was the fact that I woke up about 5 seconds before it happened. It was as if my body was giving me a tiny bit of a warning.

Needless to say, I didn't go back to sleep. My calf was sore from 9am Friday until about 4pm today (that's at least when I noticed it was mostly gone). What pisses me off is that I wasn't able to go snowboarding with some friends yesterday morning because of it. Oh, well. There's always...any time.

For a while, I've been wanting to play around with my computer's microphone and the mixing program that I have and record some songs. The beauty of recording is that no matter how crappy you are, you can do things until they sound right :-D

I've started working on the song "Smoke" by Ben Folds Five. I have the rhythm part to the point that I like it, and I have 2/3 of the rhythm completed. Then, it'll be time to try the vocals, which will probably be scary. Being that it's my first song attempt, it'll probably be fairly low quality, but if it at all resembles the way I want it to sound, I'll probably record a bunch more songs over time. I'm excited!

I was actually somewhat productive tonight. In two hours, I did my laundry, worked out, and went grocery shopping. Whilst shopping, I decided to buy a small frozen pizza. It looked good, and it was on sale, so I figured, "Why not?" I got home and made the pizza, and then I remembered why I hate frozen pizzas. I don't know why I get enticed occasionally, but I'm always disappointed.

I love the smell of burning wood. I don't know why, but I always have. It's been my favorite smell for forever. If a chick was wearing perfume that smelled like burning wood, I'd probably propose to her on the spot.

Also, my "What Song This Is?" game will be starting up again on Wednesday the 1st, but it'll be different than before. Hopefully more people will play it this time. Tell everyone you know!

2-20-06 - Sometimes I�m just unsure of things...[luckily between writing this and posting this, I�ve become more sure about one of the things I was unsure about!!!]

This story is going to be fairly long. If you get sick of reading it (though I promise it is funny), then skip down to where the next double line break is and continue reading.

So I had training on how to use a certain drafting program last week. In the first two days, we were able to cram everything that Stephanie, our instructor, wanted to cover from what is normally a four-day course. Friday was the last day of the training, and Stephanie devoted that to answering specific questions that we had. Well, I actually had none, but two or three of the other four people did.

I just sat and watched as they did stuff, not really feeling the need to follow along, as I didn�t really understand what goal they were trying to achieve, so I didn�t feel I would really get anything out of it. Apparently, Charlie felt the same way. Then again, maybe he was just lazy (ok, I admit it � being lazy was part of my motivation for not following along). But what I do know is that he had an insanely difficult time following along with the rest of the class on Wednesday and Thursday. I, definitely, took notice of his inability to keep up because he bothered me every few seconds to ask what she just did. And then he repeatedly accused me of not helping him at all. Not cool, man. Anyway, everyone noticed that he was just being somewhat bothersome.

At about 10:30 on Friday morning, he got up to go to the bathroom. I jokingly asked Stephanie if I should switch our mouses (which some don�t know is an equally appropriate term for the plural of a computer device) while he was gone. She got an intrigued look on her face, and then walked over and unplugged his mouse and plugged mine into his USB port. Beautiful. So Charlie came back from the bathroom and sat down...and didn�t touch his bloody mouse for ten minutes! All five of us had gotten pretty antsy waiting for him to do something.

I almost blew the whole joke before it even started. By default, everyone�s mouse was on top of his computer desk, which was above the sliding keyboard tray. It was somewhat uncomfortable. On Thursday, I moved my mouse to the keyboard tray, which barely gave enough room to use it without it being a nuisance. When the tray was pushed in, though, you had to really maneuver your hand around to get it to work since the top of the desk was so close to the top of the mouse. Anyway, when I realized he wasn�t going to move his mouse for a while, I took my hand off mine (which, again, was hidden because the tray was pushed in). I then realized that if I was going to move mine when he went to move his, I needed to have my hand on the mouse because it would take a while to get positioned before I could have control over it. I quickly threw my hand into the space above the tray and tried to grab the mouse. I knocked the stupid thing off the tray and it just hung off the back of the desk. In the process, it caused Charlie�s mouse pointer to jump a few inches, and he barely saw it out of the corner of his eye. This posed a problem, because I needed to get the mouse back into position not only before he touched his mouse, but without causing the pointer to move since his eye was now on his screen. Don�t forget about the little amount of space. I think there was a centimeter of clearance with which to get the mouse back in there and not have it move the pointer. Oh yeah, and the cord was pulled taut since his computer was just barely within reach of my mouse cord.

Anyway, that paragraph was longer than it needed to be and I got it back into position without causing too much movement, so everything was still good. A couple minutes later, he put his hand on his mouse and I was luckily ready. He moved his mouse, and I moved mine. He got a confused look on his face, picked up his mouse, looked at the bottom, sat it back down, and moved it again. I then moved mine again and right clicked. He looked even more confused and then just exclaimed, �I think my mouse is broken!� or something like that.

Stephanie did a good job of not laughing, but the other four of us cracked up. I had to turn my head because I was laughing so hard. Stephanie came over to look at it while he was moving it, and I kept doing odd things with it. The first thing I did that really freaked him out was to open the drafting program that we were studying and causing it to process the drawing, which takes about a minute or so to do. Each time it finished, I kept reprocessing it. He said, �It must want this drawing processed pretty badly.�

He then got the idea to restart his computer, so he pressed Ctrl+Alt+Del. When the menu popped up, I went and clicked cancel. He did the three-key again, cancel again. This happened probably about ten times in just as many seconds. This really got him to start worrying. I eventually let him restart.

When his computer was ready to go again, he tried moving his mouse and nothing happened. I then went down, opened the program, and started processing the drawing again, which pissed him off. After that, I slowly moved the mouse to the start menu. He yelled something about how it was about to start something. Jeanne, who was also sitting next to him, was watching and laughing. Elijah and Jim were a couple seats over and were just dying. I managed to keep a straight face at this point.

I tried to think of something that would be found in the start menu that he wouldn�t have been likely to know about, and then it hit me: magnifier. It�s a program in the accessories/accessibility folder for people with poor eyesight. When I ran that, it, of course, made his screen look a bit strange. He and Jeanne kinda freaked out, but it was all great. He said, �That�s it! I�m turning it off!� I tried to talk him out of it, but he reached down and turned it off, anyway. By this time, about an hour had passed since the mouses had been switched. It was time for lunch.

Most of us got back before Charlie. I said that since he and I had the same type of mouse, and they plugged into USB ports, the computer might run both of them at the same time and allow the single pointer to be controlled by both devices. He came back, turned on his computer, and while he was logging in, I moved my mouse...and nothing. [�Pickle� is the code word.] I figured we�d had our fun and that was that. His mouse worked, though, which was good. Well, Windows started up and I tested my mouse again, and it worked!

So Charlie, being the smart guy that he is, placed the pointer on a certain cloud on the desktop. As soon as he looked away, I moved it ever so slightly off the cloud, which almost caused a panic from him. He made sure everyone knew that it moved. This happened a couple times, always while he was looking away. A couple times, he looked down between our computers, where there was the obvious cord running from my mouse to his computer, and I thought he figured it out. He was always looking at something oddball, and we were safe. There were also two instances when he went and looked at the back of his computer (still missing the cord, somehow), and while he was back there, I�d start up the program and process the drawing. He never caught on that it only happened when he�d walk away.

On more than one occasion, he asked me to check something on my computer, so he could compare it to his. This kinda worried me because he thought it odd that I used my keyboard to navigate instead of my mouse. It�s a good thing I do know how to navigate with my keyboard! Also, though, I couldn�t pull the keyboard out far enough to see the keys, as it would�ve caused the mouse to fall off the back of the tray, since the cord was pulled taut, anyway.

Well, after a few more times of moving it while he was looking at it, he decided it was time to run Spybot: Search and Destroy. He went to the Start button, programs, the Spybot folder, and then went to click the icon. I batted my mouse to the side when he got close, which caused him to exclaim, �It knows I�m looking for it!� He kept trying to run the program and I wouldn�t let him. It was pretty fun when an all out fight ensued to try to keep him from clicking the icon. Dualing [sic] mouses, awesome. Then, he stopped and just stared at the screen for a minute or two. He then started sneaking up on the icon, but every time he�d get close, I�d just move my mouse away.

I finally allowed him to start and run the program. He then proceeded to run antivirus. Not long after he started it, I started sneaking up to the red X in the corner to shut it down, but he saw it each time and smacked his mouse to get the pointer off it. This occurred several times. At some point while it was running, he went to go see what Elijah was doing and he told me to watch it. I watched it click pause and then open up the program and start processing the drawing again. [�Alligator� is the code word.] He turned and looked and said, �I thought I told you to watch it!� I told him that I did watch it and I didn�t want to bother him since he was watching Elijah.

He came and shut down the program, restarted the virus scan, and walked away. He came back right before the scan was completed and I gave a nice performance with a spazzing mouse pointer. Luckily, he understood what I was trying to accomplish with the wriggling that would�ve made Michael J. Fox proud. He watched it for a few seconds and then said, �I think I�m killing it! Look!� Yeah, there was much laughter at that statement. I shook the mouse around for a few more seconds and then just stopped. �I killed it!� Then the antivirus program finished running and it said that no viruses were found during the scan. When I saw that, I started moving it some more.

At some point, he was convinced that the best thing to do was to go to the counter at the front of the building (we were offsite at a local business) and tell them that one of their computers was messed up. We somehow talked him out of it, which was good.

I wasn�t planning on telling him that it was me the whole time, as I figured he�d probably get pretty mad. Instead, I did something which I figured was sure to give it away. I moved the mouse down to the start menu, which again freaked him out, and then I started MSPaint. In retrospect, I think it would�ve been hilarious to write, �HELP ME!� What I ended up writing was his name. He got an odd look on his face, and then he turned to me and asked, �Are you doing this?� And I said, �It�s about time!� and everyone laughed. He seemed kinda pissed at first, but he quickly got over it. Then he kept saying, �I found my virus. He�s right here!�

I told Stephanie that if that ended up being my crowning achievement in life, I don�t know that I�d be disappointed. I just wish I remembered some of the comments I said during the whole thing. They were all worded so that Charlie thought I was sharing his confusion, but to everyone else, there was a hidden joke about the situation that Charlie didn�t notice. Oh, well. That�s life. That was fun.

At the beginning of training on Friday, I had a bagel. Why is that special? As far as I can remember, that�s only my second bagel ever. I don�t remember when the first one was, but I did realize why I had something against bagels. My parents used to always get these French onion-flavored bagels, and the smell flat out disgusted me, not that I have anything against that particular flavor. I just had a problem with it, for some reason.

On my way home on Friday, I heard the song �Dick Cheney�s Got a Gun� on the radio. Good stuff.

I went to see MacBeth at the Arts Guild this weekend. It was mildly entertaining, but I couldn�t expect anything more from Shakespeare. I saw Dustin there. He�s gay. I told him he was my date. He just laughed and said ok. I felt like more and less of a man simultaneously.

Hook was among the many old-school movies I watched over the weekend. There was one part that particularly weirded me out. Everyone knows that Robin Williams is a hairy guy. Jokes are always made about this. His hairiness was prophesized in the famous Nostradamus quatrain

Funny man named as a bird
And louder than the flock
Has enough voices for days
And insulation for the ice age.

Anyway, while watching the movie, which I saw in the theater way back when and have seen many times since, I noticed something I�d never noticed before: during the scene where the lost boys paint his chest right before he learns to fly, his chest was completely bare! Holy crap, they probably blew half of their budget waxing that crap! (And that�s saying a lot, because there were a ton of custom sets and costumes that had to be manufactured!)

And now for something silly:
I was walking through the halls today at work. I walked by the copying machine, which was making copies. No one was around except for me, and I didn�t make the copies. No big deal. I looked at the copying and saw an apple sitting on the copying machine. It looked like the apple was making copies :-)

2-14-06 - Last Wednesday, I think, I made myself some biscuits and sausage for dinner. I tell you what, those biscuits would�ve made Martha Stewart shed a tear, even if they weren�t homemade. They were that perfect. Saturday evening, I decided to make myself some scrambled eggs. I haven�t made any in probably a decade. Let�s just say that I somehow screwed it up, but not too incredibly badly. I just had to scrape the pan a tiny bit to clean it, but the eggs were still yummy. If they somehow weren�t fully-cooked, then let me just tell you that salmonella is officially delicious. I�m by no means turning into a chef, but I was definitely pleased with the results of these endeavors.

In typing this, I remembered a couple alternative names that I gave vegetarian meats when Kate ate them: sausage was �soysage� and bacon was �fakon.� This honestly wasn�t meant to be funny, just informative.

I�ve got good friends. Two of them stood out on Saturday night. I was pretty depressed and, in talking to Kate and Carol Linn, I was cheered up quite a bit. In a surprisingly early meeting for us, Carol Linn then came over a little before midnight and we watched The 40 Year-Old Virgin. I tell you what, that was some good stuff. I was almost floored by the old Arab guy. Holy crap, especially the part toward the beginning where he was listing...things. Unfortunately, I admitted to Carol Linn that I knew what the first one was and I had to explain it to her. Luckily she knew the second, but then I said something about another and had to explain that one to her. I just need to keep my mouth shut sometimes.

So for the past month or so, I�ve really wanted to increase the amount of RAM in my computer. I finally wised up and started watching the ads that Best Buy puts out every Sunday. I saw that they had sticks of 512 MB PC2700 DDR RAM for $45. I have two sticks of 256 MB. I decided to buy two. Long story short, it didn�t work. My computer would not even begin loading Windows with both of the sticks in, which was upsetting. What did work, though, was one of the new ones and one of the old ones. So I now have 768 MB RAM. I was surprised at how easily Best Buy took back the unused one. They asked if it was broken, I said no. I then briefly described my problem, and I was out of there not a minute later. I hope that wasn�t a fluke, because that was a really good experience.

So later Sunday night, I decided that learning a new song on my guitar was in order. For those of you that don�t know, Ben Folds does a cover of a certain Dr. Dre song. Yeah. I learned it. What now?

So today, I had a couple people tell me that they saw me on a poster that�s starting to show up at various places around work. As some of you may know, I won a $50 dinner because of some program that I participate in at work. The poster shows me and two other winners of the monthly prize. Both of them are looking up and smiling. The woman that came to take my picture, for some reason, had me do some serious poses, so I�m in a pseudo-Thinker pose. I�ve got my hand on my chin instead of on my forehead. (And yes, just the pose. I�m not naked in the picture.) I�ve already gotten crap from people for it, but it�s all in good fun. I�m sure I�ll hear a lot more. Actually, a few people a week or so ago acquired a copy of the picture � after I sent it to them � and they printed it out and asked for my autograph. It�s currently on the bulletin board in one guy�s office. He now has two autographs from me, among various somewhat-humorous news articles, on that board.

I donated blood for the 26th time today. Go me. For those of you keeping track, that�s 3 gallons and an extra quart. I went with Cecilio to go give blood. We were both sitting on the chairs, waiting to get our arms stuck and I jokingly said to him that we should race. He laughed and said, �Go ahead, you win.� I then told him that I could lap him. Anyway, by some miracle, we were both started within seconds of each other. He beat me by at least a minute. It was a sad day in blood land.

So today is the first Valentine�s Day since 2001 that I haven�t been in a relationship or had a date otherwise. Kate and I never made a big deal out of it, which was good. In fact, our third one (in 2004) was spent just going to Sonic and getting a meal and going back to her house to eat it. Actually, that�s when I had the picture taken of me with my hand inside a balloon with the dude hanging on with his eyeballs. I think it might be in the pictures of me section on my site. Valentine�s Day 2002 is when Kate gave me Lovebear, the loveable dog. Little did we know that that simple gesture would forever change history! Last year, I tricked my good friend Michelle into a Valentine�s Day date. We went on a double date with Martel and Annie to go see Hitch. Yeah, we accidentally sneaked into the movie that night. It was a great night, despite all the backwards talking that Martel and Annie did on the way back to the dorms, holy crap.

I hate that I mean to make posts for days upon days and then I never do and I have to make relatively long ones like this to make up for my laziness.

And for those of you wondering, nothing in the last post is true, of course. I only had three people comment on it, so either not many people read it, or everyone else understood that it was fake.

Later, kids.

2-8-06 - Ok, so four or five days ago, I got a call from a number I didn�t recognize. I didn�t think much of it when I answered, but I am REALLY starting to regret doing so.

On the other end was a shaky female voice. I couldn�t tell her age. I suppose it could be anywhere from 20 to 45. She sounded very distant and airy.

The woman claimed to be from the Knoxville area and said she was just dialing random numbers in an effort to try to make contact with a sprinkling of Knoxville�s population. Why she had to dial mine, I�ll never know.

She asked me if I would answer a few questions for her. I told her that before I did, she�d have to answer a couple for me. I asked her how many people she had called prior to me and how many more she planned on calling. She replied by saying that though she had dialed about 10 numbers, mine was only the second that actually worked, and I was the first person that answered.

She started to ask me a question, but then I told her she still needed to answer my other question about how many other people she was going to call. She said, �Until I get all the information I need for my survey.� Fair enough.

Her first question was what my first name was. I told her, seeing no harm in giving my first name only. She then asked if I was over 25 years old. I told her I wasn�t, and my worries kinda began to calm a little bit. These were non-intrusive questions and I figured if they got bad, I could just hang up and block her number.

Next, she asked, �Do you still live at...� and rattled off my address, apartment number included. I said I did, and then quickly started to say, �Wait, I thought you randomly dialed my number!� but I only got the first couple words out before she hung up.

This had me very worried. I ran upstairs and made sure the door was locked. I checked the sliding door and the bedroom window, as well. I slowly, and in a daze, wandered back to my couch, plopped down, and unpaused my DVR so I could continue watching Malcolm in the Middle as I had been when she called, but I found myself unable to concentrate on the show. I was almost scared to the point of shaking. This was probably the most scared I�d been in my life. How could I have been so dumb?

This feeling of uneasiness lasted, but dwindled over the next couple of days. Not once did I think I was continuing my run-in with the breathy lady until this morning. If you read yesterday�s entry, then you read the story about my neighbor banging on my door while I was showering and how I left an apology note outside my door when I got home from work yesterday. Well, this morning when I woke up, I found a reply. It was apparently from the unknown caller/stalker/whatever-er.

I froze, my jaw probably dropped, a tear probably ran down my cheek, I was probably clinically dead for a few seconds, there�s no telling. All the reply said was, �It had nothing to do with the music, but thanks,� and it was simply signed �Surveyer.�

So I just stuffed it into my pocket and proceeded to work. While I�m at work, my belongings may not be safe, but at least I am. On my way home, I stopped by the police station to tell them the story and show them the reply. The policeman went back and got his superior and gave him a quick, but surprisingly accurate and condensed, version of my story and asked what he thought of it. The superior had been taking notes for the sake of having it on record. When he finished writing, he looked up and told me, �Don�t make up stories for your website, no matter how bored you are.� James Frey made me do it. I should sue him.

2-7-06 - Yay for change :-)

Sunday morning I was taking my shower and I heard a pounding on the door of my apartment. I decided to ignore it. I had just started my shower and I had no intention of getting out until I was finished. I figured if it was important enough, the person would come back another time. A few seconds later, a few more pounds on the door. All in all, the person probably knocked seven or eight times. When I finished my shower a few minutes later, I got dressed and walked up the stairs to my door. I peeked out the peephole and saw no one. I opened the door to see if they left a note in my little binder clip, and nothing. I just kinda shrugged it off, but continued to wonder what it might have been. I came up with a theory that I didn�t think much of until this morning when I realized I was right.

This morning, I was taking my shower at 5:45, which is when I usually do when I�m getting ready for work. I was in there for maybe 15 seconds and the pounding happened again. �Crap,� I thought, because I knew I�d have to change something in my daily routine.

When I take my shower, I like to listen to music. Since about August or so, I�ve been turning my computer speakers all the way up so I can hear my music while I�m showering. The first couple days, I did it gradually louder and louder in hopes that I wouldn�t piss anyone off, especially since I was doing it fairly early, most of the time. Well, it seems that either someone has recently moved into an apartment that can hear it, or they�ve just started noticing it, or they�ve just now started to get fed up with it. I feel terrible, because I don�t want anyone to be pissed at me, especially people that I don�t know. I�m going to write a little note and leave it on my binder clip with the words �To whoever knocked on my door,� even though it�s grammatically incorrect. I don�t want to sound pompous in my apology.

It�s the end of an era. I just hope they don�t get upset with my occasional guitar playing and nails-on-a-chalkboard voice.

So I was planning on going home this weekend. I have to take my W-2 home so when my parents� tax lady comes, she�ll have my stuff right there and will be able to do my taxes at the same time. I then found out that Gus�s play opens next weekend, so I decided to postpone my visit a week to go see it...no big deal.

Well, today my supervisor told me that he wants me to go to some training next week to learn how to use and be an administrator for a drafting program that�s used where I work. That�s cool and all. It shows that they�re ready and willing to put even more trust on me, it might be fun or interesting, and it�ll look great on my next evaluation when it comes up!

The downside? It includes a Friday class. That doesn�t bother me, because the location is only like two or three miles from my apartment, and they�re eight hour days starting at 8 am, so I�ll be able to sleep in that week. It just sucks because I�m not going to change the weekend I go home, so I�ll get one fewer day at home. Oh, well. I�ll live, I guess.

2-6-06 - I had a thought this morning, and a conversation I had a bit later at lunch kinda underscored the thought. At the lunch table, I was talking with some people, including my friend Dale. He said something about having been on a date this weekend in Cookeville. I said, �With Sarah, or someone else?� and he replied, �Someone else. I�m not with Sarah any more. Did you not know that?� �No.� �Oh. I broke up with her, like, a month ago.�

If it took me this long to find something out about someone I talk to just about every day, imagine what I don�t know about people I haven�t seen in forever: some might be married, some might have kids, some might be on their way to fame...and some might be dead.

This leads to the thought I randomly had this morning: how long would it take people to find out if I died? I�m sure news would spread quickly through the people I know in Knoxville, Cookeville, and Columbia. I know plenty of people online, though, and we have no mutual friends. I know there are several ways around this, the best probably being giving someone I know the passwords to my e-mail, MySpace, etc. accounts and having that person notify the people in my lists.

I�m running nowhere with this. It was just a thought.

Another thing that ran through my head this morning is that I think I�m just ready for some changes in my life. Moving to Knoxville was a huge one, and I�m finally starting to settle in. I think I can consider myself a member in two groups now, which is divine *flips wrist*

I mentioned in my post from yesterday that Juliana moved over the weekend. That, along with a couple other things, prompted me to temporarily (I call it �temporarily� for now, anyway) call it quits for DDR night, which I�ve been doing almost every Thursday night since August. I�m ready and waiting for someone to date (actually, that�s been true for a while). I�ve been eating slightly better and losing weight little by little. I�m slowly starting to dress a bit better than I normally do. I actually felt the desire to clean my apartment the other day.

I guess I�m growing up.

2-5-06 - Today was another great Sunday.

You know, I liked the fact that I was able to record the Bowl of Super on my DVR and just fast forward to the commercials.
-The first AmeriQuest one was AWESOME. The second one was good, too.
-My friend Amber said that I look and sound like the Blockbuster.com dude.
-The Stunt City one kinda upset me. That's a great commercial, but it was originally a British (I think) commercial from at least half a year ago. It was for a deodorant that's not the one shown in the ad (Degree?). Also, they chopped some things out of it and showed a couple alternate takes of scenes in it. The worst part, though, was all of the words and disclaimers and crap on the bottom. The real one was the way tv should be: no logos, text, or other distractions ANYWHERE.

I watched an episode of Doug the other day. That show is still surprisingly entertaining, though I wonder if it's just because I actually remembered a lot about the episode I was watching. Either way, I'm glad I watched it! I hopped on IMDB after watching it just to see what some of the actors had been in besides that show. I knew about Billy West (Doug's voice) doing the Cheerio's bee, Ren, Stimpy, Fry, Farnsworth, Zoidberg, Zap, and other various characters throughout the years. I didn't know, however, that the woman that did the voice of Patti was born in Johnson City and went to UT. Cool beans :-)

Well, Juliana moved away. I haven't thought much about it yet, though I know that she did make it up to Wisconsin safely. It hasn't yet sunk in that she's not around here any more, but I know it will before long :-( Best of luck to you, Juliana. We'll all miss you.

2-1-06 - So yeah, I was reading more Apples to Apples cards today and I saw one for Americans. The quote at the bottom said, "How many Americans does it take to change a lightbulb? That is not funny! You are SO sued!" Yay! Dumb Americans!

Well, the "What Song This Is?" game is on hiatus for a while Nicole won, the end. Thanks to all who played. I had fun with it for a while.