Back again for 3 months. Yay for free promos!

Just sulking in the cold weather and wondering when they'll stop calling it december and just call it christmas...

Just wanted to mention, I hate going to the doctor. It's not some kind of phobia oranything of thst nature. It's just that it's never a pleasant experience. If I'm going then I'm usually sick in some way or another which usually makes my short tempered and generally unpleasant to be around, and that makes the whole thing worse as well. Then you have to wait with all the other sick people and when you finaly see the doctor they poke and prod you just where the problem is. Yes, it hurts when you do that! I told you that already!

In any case, my latest medical experience, the biopsy sucks even more then most. I know that some people might dig it, but for me having someone carve a chunk of my skin out with a straight razor is probably the lowpoint of my day. It doesn't help much that the chunk cut off is in the middle of an itchy rash (probably not poison ivy as it turns out) and now I am accidentally scratching at the wound.

Aside from that things are just swell. I'm off to my new house to go paint and spackle and sand and perhaps even help replace bathroom hardware.

Poison Ivy SUCKS! I've had it for over 3 weeks now and it just won't go away. I thought I killed it but then it just popped up somewhere else.

So we got a house now. It needs a bit of work since the old lady who used to live there (before she died) wasn't so great about maintenence. Plus, the color scheme isn't really us. So I've been spending a lot of time scraping paint and wallpaper so we can repaint. So much fun. At least my brother is helping since he's not doing anything these days. Gotta get everything done by mid-October since the baby is due at the end of that month. I wish I had taken pictures of my father-in-law ripping the ugly bushes out of the front yard with his 4x4. What a great way to make a first impression with the neighbors.

Spent last week in a classroom doing prep for the SEC Series 7 exam. It wasn't as bad as the time I got sick on absinthe in a sleeper train in Spain, but it was close.

I still have to take the exam, but I'm afraid because if you fail you have to wait 30 days before you can retest. Plus, I'd feel like a moron failing a multiple choice test.

Happy Birthday to me

The whole birthday thing seems to have lost it's impact. Getting older at this point doesn't really have any advantages for me. I can already drive, vote, drink. I can even rent a car. I think I'm going to see about eliminating my birthday entirely.

But then I wouldn't get to collect social security and medicare when I get old. Which is fine, really, since neither of those programs will last. Unless we have another baby boom to have people to pay for our retirements.

I need to stop listening to NPR.

Exciting media week though. New Harry Potter and Wonka too.

Oh well, I have to drive to Philly now. Buh-bye

Was listening to the radio while driving between Baltimore and Philly a couple days ago and I hit the area where I can't get a clear signal on any of my presets for either city. (I make the journey far too often since I am in an apartment in Maryland and most of my family and friends live in or near Philly. Plus, I have been trying to find a job up there so I can be closer to said friends and family.) In any case, I hit the scan button to see what turned up and I heard someone talking about porn. Naturally, I was curious to see what it was about so I hit the button and listened. It turns out that I had found myself tuned in to one of the many, many religious/family values broadcasts clogging the airwaves these days. I usually can't listen to these stations for more then a few minutes before either becoming bored with the lack of content or perplexed with the veiwpoints expressed. However, in this case they brought up something I hadn't thought about before. The woman on the show was saying how she realized that the soap operas and romance novels that she used to be so interested in were really porn for women. Then she went on to explain how they were immoral because they promoted adultry by romanticising it. How the female characters always are married to terrible, boring oafs and meet some fantastic guy and start having terribly romantic affairs.

While I clearly don't think that porn is a bad thing, I think that they might be on to something. It's unfair that traditional porn is scorned and yet romance novels and soap operas are merely laughed off as drivel. Especially since I know of several women who take issue with their men looking at pictures and videos, while they are watch their soaps and Lifetime and all that. It seems to me that if one member of an exclusive couple isn't allowed to get off thinking about someone else, neither should the other.

However, it seems to me that in most realistic, honest relationships there are going to be times where the fantasy of something different is more appealing then the reality. That's OK, just as long as the people in the relationship work it out with their partner(s?). Otherwise, the relationship is in trouble anyway.

Trying to attribute the huge divorce rate we have nowadays to porn in any form is silly and myopic. It also requires people to think that divorce is inherently bad. It's not. Some relationships just don't work.

Now I'm rambling

The point is, don't be a hypocrit. Oh, and right wing talk radio is funny.

I don't usually pay attention to celebrity stuff, but I am visiting my parents house and sleeping on a pullout couch and there's a tv right in front of the couch. So I felt inclined to turn it on and there was Lindsay Lohan on Letterman. At least that's what they claimed. I thought she was a nice curvy redhead, but the chick on the TV was beached, scrawny, and overly madeup. Yuck!

Had an epiphany the other day. It was some kind of large scale grand fantastic idea that just absorbed my thoughts for over an hour. Unfortunately, I was in bed trying to fall asleep and didn't write it down. Now all I have is a faint recollection that it had something to do with socialism and how poorly humanity is coping with this modern world that we created. I mull it over and maybe it will come back to me. I'm pretty sure it came about as a result of reading Evolution by STEPHEN BAXTER and a few comments about the value of entertainment (re: Star Wars 3 = $10/person!). I think I need to get a voice recorder since my memory is crap for that kind of stuff. Maybe one of those ones that can be plugged into my computer and converts the speach to text. Better yet, someone needs to come up with a thought scribe (like Leto uses in God Emperor of Dune to record his memoirs). Although, to be honest, if they're going to pull some tech from the Dune series I'd rather the big brains work out the subvocal communcators so I don't have to listen to strangers yelling into their cell phones whenever I go out.

Not sure if I actually wandered off topic there or not since the orignal thought was pertaining to coping with the modern world and cellphones are part of that modern world.

Any thoughts on the situation humanity has created for itself? It on my mind so I'm sure I'll return to the subject.

I've got my wedding anniversary coming up on the 9th. Yup June 9th, 6/9 by American reckoning, 9/6 by the rest of the world. The DD/MM/YYYY thing makes more sense, but in this case I prefer MM/DD since the number is easy to remember. I'm pretty sure it's my 3rd anniversary, what is that? A clock? I was thinking about getting the wife a wafflemaker, since she is a big fan of waffles lately and most of the time I would be the one making them. Usually, I just get jewelery, but that always feels like a cop out to me. Maybe it's because I don't wear any, but it doesn't seem very personal. Plus I've gotten to the point where the jewelery I know she really wants is out of our current budget. So is that a nice romantic gift? How about if I wake up early and use it to make her breakfast in bed?