my coffee mug is cooler than yours
when the highlight of your week was buying a new coffee mug... it was a pretty boring week
although i will say, i am thrilled to death to finally have a high-class coffee mug. now i won't look out-of-place amidst the rest of the commuter drones making their way to work in the morning. i have finally arrived!
i've finally gotten over the hump of a nasty cold i've been battling most of the week. it's been making the rounds at work, and i'd managed to stay out of it's grasp for a while until it finally caught up with me, and then pulled me down to the ground and kicked me in the sinuses a few times. but the worst is finally over.
the red sox will be the death of me yet. i stayed up to listen to them finish an extra-innings game last night, only for them to lose in heartbreaking fashion in the twelth inning. ugh. yes they're still 11-7 on the year, but they still have that unique red sox talent of snatching defeat right from the jaws of victory. harumph
i need to get my bike out, and it needs to happen soon.
-noonan-
charlton heston is my president
i'm sort of half-watching
the ten commmandments on tv right now. i almost expect moses to break out a rifle and start wearing an "NRA" belt buckle at any moment, but he hasn't yet. there's still time though
i'm pretty psyched about tomorrow being easter. i may even get up to go to the sunrise service... but we'll see about that. eager ambition may bow before sleep deprivation. i actually got up early this morning to go visit someone, but then got a call just as i was heading out the door that something else had come up for them. d'oh. such is life
dad had a couple of kids from his sunday school class over for supper tonight. i, of course, took the opportunity to introduce them to epic duels. they, of course, loved it. they seriously need to put that game back into production, because i know of several people who would love to buy it, if only it was still available. but no... it's not. except on ebay, where it fetches a rediculous price. ugh
i hit my funny bone pretty good at work last night. my arm tingled for about half an hour... and it still feels a little fuzzy from time to time. why do they call it the 'funny bone' when there's
nothing amusing about when you hit it? this puzzles me
i got out of work early last night, so i figured i'd swing by the mall and hit up the taco bell in the food court. bad idea. not because the two chalupas and steak quesadilla weren't good - they were - but because i forgot how much i hate going to the mall. especially on a friday night, when it's filled with high school kids showcasing the latest in preppy fashion. it almost made me puke. but i was proud to be the anti-fashion statement, covered in sweat and dirt. i was so out of place it was funny
bedtime.
-noonan-
the gecko was wrong
just for kicks, i went to geico.com the other day to see if they really could save me fifteen percent on my car insurance in fifteen minutes. they were right about the fifteen minutes part... but that's about it. their quote came in at over
double what i'm currently paying. i probably wouldn't have switched over anyways unless it was significantly less expensive, but even so that's just crazy. evidently eliminating the middleman doesn't necessarily mean lower prices. so i guess the moral of the story is... never trust an animated advertising campaign frontman, especially if he can lick his eyeballs with his tongue.
(i realize that you can't make general assumptions based solely on a single experience. but even so...
twice as much? that's just rediculous)
my entrance song would have to be "final countdown," by europe. they're a classic eighties hair band, and the song is pretty rocking. plus it conveys the sense of "i'm here, the game is over, so deal with it." and that's pretty important in a relief pitcher
speaking of baseball, the red sox are off to their best start
ever at 6-1. at least until tonight... good ol' david wells was getting knocked around last i checked, so chances are they're on their way to their second loss. memo to wells: being fat is an advantage in sumo wrestling. baseball is not sumo wrestling. so lose the inner tube around your waist, unless you incorporate your largess into your pitching motion somehow... maybe rolling around on the mound or something. anyways, do the world a favor and put the donuts down. thank you
work is going swell. i'm feeling more alive during the day, thanks to adjusting to new sleep schedules and weaning myself slowly from my previously uninhibited sleep cycles. now i'm a man of discipline and routine... and coffee. sometimes things sort of blend between the two jobs... like, i'll see boxes from delorme come through at UPS. it's sort of surreal for some strange reason that i can't really identify
some girl scout cookies just re-surfaced... and they're calling for my attention.
bye.
-noonan-
i love sleep
i took a brief nap thursday afternoon, and when i woke up i thought that it was friday. i got all excited for a few minutes, thinking that i only had one more shift to go before the weekend (and uninhibited sleep) arrived... but then i realized that it was thursday. and i still had a day and a half to go. it was a mildly depressing moment, but it was quickly cured by a dose of mt. dew
i've gotten over 12 hours of sleep between last night and this afternoon... and i'm still jonesing for more. mmm, sleep.....
there are waaaayyyyy too many people getting married this summer. not that there's anything wrong with getting married, necessarily, but i know of at least five different couples tying the know in like a three-month span. that's just way too many, way too fast.
luke h. and i were talking earlier this week, and the subject of "baseball intro music" came up. most relief pitchers, and a decent amount of hitters, will either pick out a segment from their favorite song, or sometimes have one picked out for them. thus mariano rivera has "enter sandman" by metallica played every time he comes into the game, trevor hoffman has an ac/dc tune, and so forth. so the question of the hour was/is, if you were a major league relief pitcher, what song (or, more accurately, part of a song) would you want played upon your entrance? i'm still thinking about what i'd pick... that'll come soon. but in the meantime, what song would you want played to pump up both the crowd and yourself? it can't be too obscure or too popular, and it has to have an easily identifiable segment that can be extracted (maybe 30 seconds long... just a guess). surprise me
red sox are 3-1 and in
first place. woot
i changed a lightbulb on the audi today. it ended up being incredibly difficult, so i felt very satisfied to have completed the task. i was slightly less successful in attaching the license plates... i only suceceded in getting one on, so the other is propped in the back window for the time being until i figure out how to attach it (i know, screws would be the obvious choice, but there weren't any in the bracket on the car. so i need to get some). i also got some vanillaroma air fresheners. the car now smells incredibly delicious
i was looking for my pirate flag the other day, thinking that it'd be pretty sweet to have it draped across the trunk space... and then i remembered that it's being held hostage in ohio. rats
you need to go visit
the onion radio news. why? because it's downright hilarious. occasionally it's slightly off-color, but it's almost always laugh-out-loud material... and it's there every day, and it's less than a minute. you have no excuse not to listen to it. so do it
i tried some coca-cola zero today. supposedly it taste just like regular coke, but with zero calories. i have to say, it's way closer than most diet sodas, but it's still not quite the same. impressive effort by their cola chemists, but it's refreshing to know that they still can't quite duplicate the real thing. also it's nice to know that my very discriminating taste buds are still up to their high level of performance
there's nothing like being a working stiff to make you appreciate the weekend
-noonan-
only in maine...
it's snowing out. in april. the funny part is that this is nothing out of the ordinary. crazy weather is the norm
i got to do some actual "mapping" today. it's tedious, but interesting. the program they use to edit their mapping database is alot like photoshop and illustrator in some ways, so those classes with greer back in the day are showing some slight dividends. basically you compare the existing data to satellite imagery, and make changes and move stuff around and add roads and stuff like that. wild stuff
since i'm always scrounging around for change to pay for tolls on the way to work, i decided to get one of those fancy
ezpass systems. so i stopped by the turnpike office today to sign up and everything, and after filling out all the paperwork they told me that it'll get
mailed to me in
seven to ten days. good heavens... what are they doing, making them to order like burger king or something? maybe they have their own production facility in the back room. so now i'll still have to constantly be scrounging for change. earlier this week i realized that i didn't have any money on me, so i stopped at an ATM on the way to work. unfortunately, that did nothing to resolve the situation since the ATM was
out of cash. now, correct me if i'm wrong, but that's pretty much it's sole purpose. that would be like me going to work at UPS and saying "gee, i don't really think i'm up to moving any boxes tonight." so since i was en route to work and under pressure to find money somehow, i emptied out the minuteman (my coin bank, whose twin brother lives with dave), knowing that all i had left in there was pennies. that is, pennies and
a gold doubloon! bingo! i hate spending classy coins in such a manner, but this was for a worthy cause. i knew that it was destiny that placed it there, because i had exactly enough money (down to the last penny) for the entire round trip. needless to say, my day was made
i don't think i use the word "scrounge" unless i associate it with looking for money. i guess it's the only use i really have for the word... scrounging for change
six hours of sleep per night is not enough. hence, my current morning dose of caffeine takes the following form: two tablespoons of instant coffee (recommended does: two teaspoons) and one packet of hot chocolate. it's strong, it's bitter, but boy does it do the job. of course, a midday nap does wonders for the psyche, too
i'm loving the fact that i've been able to catch almost all of the red sox's first few games. i love listening to baseball... it's the best. luke h. and i combined efforts to put together a fantasy baseball team this year, which we've already spent approximately 2,384 hours working on. good stuff
(i love baseball)i'm also loving the fact that i get to rock out to 5+ hours of music every day at work. that might be my favorite part of the job: it's a perfect opportunity to listen to tons of songs while getting paid. i don't think it gets better than that. tomorrow i plan on enjoying:
- illinoise, sufjan stevens
- spider man 2 (soundtrack)
- twin cinema, the new pornographers
- two lefts don't make a right, relient k
- underdog, audio adrenaline
- why should the fire die, nickel creek
- young and the hopeless, good charlotte
i figured it out... if i listen to five hours of music every day at work, i can wade through my entire library in about a month. splendid
2-1 red sox in the eighth... i'm going to have to stay up to follow this one to it's conclusion. they better win
-noonan-
two for the money
so i think i like my new job at delorme. i have my own cubicle (which is actually quite spacious), my own phone and computer, and it's a really laid-back place to work so i can wear jeans and a t-shirt to work. that's a huge perk right there. plus, i get to see EARTHA every day. probably the only people who have a better view of the world from their workplace are astronauts. so that's pretty cool
basically what i'm doing right now is updating their database information for different national chains (i.e. arby's, holiday inn, golden corral, etc). it's pretty mindless work... i just sit in front of my ginormous computer monitor (i've never seen one this big before) and copy and paste and edit and try and figure out where companies bury there store location information on their website. a trained monkey could do my job, in all likelihood... but he'd have to be a very well-trained monkey. not just any run-of-the-mill oraguntang or anything like that. anyhow, aside from the early start time (work starts at seven, which means i have to leave the house by 6:30 and wake up sometime between 5:30 and 6), i like it. best part is that i can bring in my ipod and rock out to several hours of music every day. i'm lovin' that. i also realized that caffeine is an important part of my morning routine... i tried to forgo it's wakening influence for the first part of the week, but i was dragging so much for the whole day that i finally caved i. now a super-strong cup of mocha (two tablespoons instant coffee, one packet of hot chocolate) is a must for the morning. mmmmm, mocha.....
the job at UPS is going swell. they've been having me do some loading the past week or so, which means i have to scan and stack and remember about a billion zip code combinations to double check about what goes where. well maybe not a billion... but it is pretty intense. but i'm getting there, slowly but surely. i'm also now an "official" employee, since i made it through my 30-day probation period without seriously screwing up. i'm also a union member now, too, so that's sort of cool i guess. go teamsters
baseball season starts tonight... red sox play their first game sometime tomorrow. needless to say, i'm stoked. can't wait for the games to start
the weather has been sunny, sixty, and super for pretty much the entire past week. i'm lovin' it
daylight savings time is retarded. i mean, seriously.... why don't we just keep the time the same for the rest of the year? all this switching back and forth is just plain inefficient and stupid. plus my sleep cycle is fragile enough as it is, and throwing a monkey wrench like "spring ahead, fall behind" into the mix is enough to throw me for a loop. let's start a movement: "people who like the time just the way it is, without switching back and forth every six months." can we vote on this? who decides stuff like this, anyways? let's stop this tomfoolery
yesterday was april fools day, and i totally forgot about it. jokes on me, i guess
-noonan-
