Due to my utter insistence on knowing what I’m doing at work, I connived myself some training. I start Monday with a class Monday about “Building COM+ Applications Using Microsoft .NET Enterprise Services” or something. I’m not sure I’m really all that qualified for it, but here’s hoping. Either way, I’m looking forward to training - it’s always like a vacation.

No real plans for the weekend except for a barbecue we’re having for my dad’s birthday. His birthday was actually a couple of weeks ago, but he was out of town. Better late than never, I guess. I’ll probably go over early so I can wash my car. It’s really dirty, and I need to Rain-X my windows again.

Other than that, there’s nothing exciting going on. Work’s stressing me out enough that I can actually feel my own blood pressure and I don’t see any end in sight for that. Money’s tight because Jenn’s in the throes of her pharmacy technician externship (six weeks of unpaid work). I drank a lot of coffee earlier and had a pretty harsh crap. That’s about it.

Speaking of coffee, I really don’t like it, but with this getting-up-too-early crap that Jenn’s got me doing, I don’t see much alternative. The deal is, she has to be at work by 7:00a. If she takes the bus, it takes two hours to get there, so she’d be getting up at 4:00a to get ready… at which point I’d be up. She can’t park at work because they won’t give her a permit (if you’re not a full-time, permanent employee who carpools, you don’t get a permit), so she can’t drive herself. What does that mean?

It means I’m up at fucking 5:45a every morning so we can both be ready and out the door by 6:30a, getting her to work on time. Then I just continue on to work, and I get there by like 7:10a.

I’m not a morning person. I fucking hate the morning. I really start functioning around 11:00a or so - getting up early is not my thing. If the world worked swing shift, that’d be easier for me. Instead, I’m up too early and have started a coffee habit. Of course, it’s more of a luxury than a requirement or addiction; if I don’t have it, I don’t get headaches or withdrawals, I’m just more tired. Tired like someone who gets up too early. Blarg.

I’m out the week of May 5 and will return May 12. If you send me email… I probably won’t get it or respond. Too bad, folks. See ya in a week!

I’ve been pretty addicted to this Seattle radio station, C89.5, since my trip to Bellevue. Thank goodness they broadcast online.

I hate normal radio for several reasons:

• Too many commercials. For every minute of music, there are like two minutes of commercials. This is worse during most morning shows, where there are three minutes of commercials for every minute of comedic drivel.
• Radio “powers.” Songs that are considered “power” on the radio get repeated over… and over… and over… Most of the time I hate those songs. Who says payola doesn’t exist anymore?
• I’m WHITE. Let’s be frank - most of the new stuff coming out is Ebonic-laden hip-hop. Admittedly, I can dig some of it, but not as much as is getting cranked out. Pronounce your words, people. And make it something I can hum along to. You can’t hum to hip-hop.

C89.5 overcomes all of these obstacles. It doesn’t play commercials because it’s a public radio station, run by a Seattle high school. It does repeat songs, but they’re songs I can get into and enjoy. I understand all of the words to all of the songs. And I can hum or whistle along. Added bonus - all the tunes are danceable.

So I’m digging it.

Anyway, they’re having a pledge drive because apparently the school has pretty much cut their funding and they have to raise their own. From what I’m gathering, they’ve had to do this in past years, but this year’s a little tighter because they’ve gone online and the funding has been cut (as is standard with school funding nowadays).

I started thinking about school funding. From what I can tell, they cut the drama departments and the libraries before they cut sports. That’s cool if you’re into the sports thing, but I’m not. I’m the guy the jocks picked on. I’m the guy who went to the library. I’m the guy who loved the drama department.

I’m pretty sure the kids in the radio broadcasting program want to be there. I wish my high school had run a radio program. I’d have been there. And I know that I’d be pretty pissed off to see that the assholes playing football still got to run around on the field where they’re learning no marketable skills while I’m trying to learn something and my program gets shit-canned.

So I went to the pledge site (which I encourage you to do, as well), checked out the different things you get for different pledge levels, and really wanted the custom dance mix CD… but didn’t want to pledge the $89.50 for it. I like the station, but I’m not going to single-handedly support the place.

Instead, I threw in $50 to get the t-shirt. You can get a “can-cozy” for $35, but… I don’t need a can-cozy. I’ll wear the shirt with pride, though. So a shirt it is.

I’m sure I’ll hear about this when I get home. We really are pretty strapped for cash lately, what with Jenn working pro-bono at her pharmacy technician externship. I figure it as an investment in something I believe in, though, and it’s tax-deductible, which is a Good Thing. (Of course, I don’t own a house or anything, so my contributions rarely actually make any difference on my overall deduction at the end of the year.)

Anyway, listen to the music, love the station, then go pledge. It’s worth it.

The Ironic Email of the Day award goes to the spam I just received to advertise… anti-spam software.

Morons.

This weekend went, as most weekends do, altogether too quickly and now that it’s Monday I can only wonder at the speed with which the weekend sped by.

Honestly, I barely remember what I did. I know that Saturday morning I vacuumed the apartment and dusted stuff. That sucked. The rest of Saturday… I don’t remember. We eventually ended up going to Hollywood Video and renting some movies and the PS2 game The Sims.

Saturday night we ended up playing The Sims too long and didn’t watch any of the movies. Jenn and I discovered that The Sims is specifically engineered to appeal to the micromanagers of the world. The stupid characters you create require so much attention that it’s almost hard to have fun with it. We played it forever, just trying to figure out how to make the characters happy. What we decided is that it’s too real: There are just not enough hours in the day to actually keep your characters happy and meet all of their needs adequately. Just like life, huh?

Sunday we made the rounds to visit parental units. After a quick stop at Jenn’s parents’ house, we went over to my parents’ to hear about their recent trip down through Reno, NV, to Las Vegas, then up through Provo, UT (for my sister’s graduation), then home again. As far as I’m concerned, yuck. I’m not one for car trips, and this one is no different.

At one point, they went to Scotty’s Castle in Death Valley. Dad told stories about how the place came to be and what it was all about. Mom told a story about how bad she had to poop on the way there. I think that pretty much sums up how that trip went.

While we were there, we watched Ghost Ship, one of the movies that Jenn and I had rented. It was actually pretty decent, with a good ending and everything, sort of like a big Twilight Zone episode.

After that we went home to finish up the laundry while we watched another of our rentals, Wasabi. That was a French comedy/action movie from Luc Besson and was pretty good. Great soundtrack, too. I find that I like to watch foreign films in their natural language with English subtitles rather than with English overdubbing. There’s something about overdubbing that just doesn’t work for me. Unless it’s Jackie Chan.

After Wasabi was a new Alias, which was probably the highlight of my weekend. It ruled, and I can’t wait for next week’s two-hour season finale.

And… now it’s Monday. Ugh. I’m sooooo tired. And I have a headache. Someone just shoot me.