Question for the Masses...

Apparently Blogger now offers a comments functionality. It didn't before, which is why I'm using Haloscan.

If I transition over, I lose any existing comments.

Does anyone have any opinion if the native Blogger commenting is compelling enough to switch over from Haloscan?

Web opinion is mixed.

Man on Fire

I have a cold right now. It's been going around the office.

It was mostly just a scratchy throat. Until last night.

I woke up shortly after I went to sleep. My head felt like it was on fire.

It's been a while since I had any sort of real fever. I thought my brain was melting. I had a flashback to the anthrax scare of 2001. I started thinking about which urgent care facilities were nearby. I could feel my IQ dropping as brain cells died.

Then I found my thermometer.

102.

I popped a few more Tylenol, put on a cold compress and went back to bed.

Ironing In Problems

Was patching some holey jeans last night, with ugly hand-stitches and iron-on patches.

Some of the holes were inside the back pockets, so you're supposed to cover the hole with a piece of paper to cover the glue.

It helps if you use a completely blank piece of paper.

Not a mostly-blank piece of paper that was printed off a laser printer.

This is mostly because if you hit the printed part, the iron will transfer the ink off the paper and bake it into the jeans.

Oogh.

There's a reason why it's not unusual for me to skip doing shots with the other kids.

Pre-emptive Entry

We're supposed to get four to eight inches of snow tomorrow.

Damn snow.

I am still going to do my regular Friday workout, which is back and biceps.

The more observant of us out there realize that both of those muscle groups are substantially involved in snow shoveling.

In the words of one of my old chemistry teachers, "I predict pain."

In a Family Way

I have had the opening theme to 'Family Guy' (mp3) stuck in my head intermittently for weeks now.

I hardly watch the show and don't even care for it very much.

Lost Weekend

Here are things I didn't do over the three-day weekend commemorating the life and legacy of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.:

* Go to Ikea for their Winter Sale
* Shop at the outlets (any outlets)
(These two aren't necessarily a bad thing)

* Substantially clean or reorganize anything in the house
* Buy a new cellphone
* Dine at Restaurant Week
* Go bowling
* Take my sister to the shooting range
* Go skiing with my kickball team

Things I did do:
* Finished Mechassault and Ghost Recon 2
* Went to the gym on Sunday (but it was actually a makeup for skipping Friday)
* Read the Sunday Washington Post
* Bought groceries

A wasted three-day weekend.

23

You remember how, after the 2-hour premiere of '24' on Sunday, they had 2 more hours of episodes on Monday to remind people that the show was moving to Monday?

I didn't.

Wraparound Runaround

I don't like headphones that wrap around the back of your head. (They hurt my ears after a short while.)

Yet somehow I keep accumulating them.

This Just In...

Apparently, if you put stuff on the Internet, people may read it.

An Hour Has 60 Minutes

Just read one of my prior entries, about only taping the last 2 minutes of an episode of 'Lost.'

Experts everywhere are in agreement: taping 2 minutes of an hour-long show leaves 58 minutes remaining, not 48.

Diversions

The shower I use in the on-campus gym has a handheld head in addition to the standard one, so it has a flow diverter valve.

Unlike other flow diverter valves I have used, if you inadvertently turn the valve too far in one direction, the handle will come loose and be forced out by water pressure, you will get hit in the chest with a stream of water, and you will let out a yelp or other exclamatory noise.

After a split second trying to push the handle in against the water pressure, I turned off the water and screwed it back in.

Lost Again

Managed to tape the last 2 minutes of the new episode of 'Lost.' Which of course means that I didn't tape the prior 48 minutes [duh, 58 -- Joe] (42 not counting commercials).

Did manage to tape the 2-hour premiere of 'Alias.'

Now I remember why I stopped watching it.

On the plus side, the feeling is starting to come back to my pinky, if you recall the self-stabbing incident from November.

Put That Coffee Down! Coffee Is for Closers...

An independent observer agrees...when a beautiful twenty-something girl from [redacted European Community nation] is practically throwing herself at you at a [redacted December/January holiday] party, one should avail themselves of the opportunity and close the deal, because it might not happen again. Ever.

Even if one has been told repeatedly "she has a boyfriend." (Apparently not an issue at that particular moment in time.)

Even if she's a friend's sister and it could get a little awkward later on. (A. You know, it is possible to overthink these things. B. We're all adults here. C. Anything is preferable to mercilessly beating oneself up afterwards.)

Other relevant sayings:
* It's better to ask forgiveness, than permission.
* Man up, nancy.
* A-B-C. A-Always. B-Be. C-Closing. Always be closing, always be closing.

5 Means "Five"

I missed the Duke vs.Princeton game yesterday (in Cameron, broadcast on ESPN).

This is despite the fact that I have 2005 calendars now; plus the men's basketball season schedule printed out and in my field of vision.

I just failed to connect 1/5 = January 5th = Today.

Wild & Wooly [sic]

A few weeks ago, rolled out something that had "wooly" in the name. Of course, the word is spelled "woolly." We got called on it, but were able to chuck everything into the memory hole.

Random Dumbness

* Taped the two-a-day reruns of ABC's 'Lost' so I could catch up (it was one of those shows I theoretically should have been watching, but wasn't.) Ended up taping over episode 3 before I watched it, leaving me with a minor but annoying gap in my knowledge of the storyline.

* My washer & dryer are stacked (boy, are they). Opened the dryer door, bent over to get something from the washer, stood up and smacked my head into the dryer door. That hurt. A lot.

* Taking a page from News of the Weird's "No Longer Weird" category -- Leaving the Car Unlocked Overnight no longer warrants an entry. Unless my stuff (or my car) gets stolen.

* Each day, I find myself getting closer and closer to succumbing to the dreaded "unforgivable use of superfluous apostrophes when pluralizing a word"; e.g. show's vs. shows above, which I fortunately caught in Preview.

* In 2004, had exactly one entry in my paper diary. Considering that very little goes into this here journal, there's a lot I'm not capturing.

Then again, maybe that's not a bad thing.

Timeless

Right now is the gap time between the end of the 2004 calendar and just before the 2005 calendars get marked down 80 percent (I refuse to pay full price for cubicle calendars), so I'm down to using Netscape Calendar for now and hoping to keep my dates straight.

Another dateless wonder, so to speak.

I also forgot my watch this morning -- I took it off to wash some dishes, and neglected to put it back on.