Time You Enjoy Wasting Is Not Wasted Time

Well, the weekend is over. Tomorrow starts a new semester at work. I’ll be busy on the phones for the week. Also start my class, I’m looking forward to teaching again. It was Farm Fest weekend in Fredonia. There’s two things that I never understood about that. First it is held on move-in weekend, when all the college students are moving back into their dorms and apartments. Makes for a very busy time downtown. Second, it is held in the Barker Commons, which if you are not familiar with the area is like a small park, except that a very busy street cuts it in half. I don’t understand why they can’t close the road for the weekend. It wouldn’t be too confusing with proper signs posted. And then people wouldn’t have to risk being run over. Weird.
So anyway, I wonder how many phone calls I’ll handle this week. I don’t remember my numbers from last year, probably because I blocked it from my mind. My throat kind of hurts tonight, so that doesn’t bode well for a day on the phones and talking to a class. It’s funny, there really isn’t any way to easily transition from summer work to the start of the fall semester. It’s so different, especially the first week. But Karen is done with work, so tomorrow when I get up I don’t have to leave early to take Gillian and Isabella to daycare. That’ll be weird. I live about 15 minutes (not even) from work, but with driving to daycare I had about an hour commute. So now I can sleep in a little longer, take a little longer getting ready and leave a little later. Pretty nice. Plus I should be using a lot less gas (which just went back down to $2.99/gallon). The girls and Karen are looking forward to their extra time together. Aside from the positives I just mentioned, I will however miss my extra hour with my girls on the drive there and home. We had some good chats and fun on those drives. Funny, I never thought I’d miss it as much as I do. But on the plus side we can be more relaxed together at home in the morning, instead of rushing around to get out on time. I guess it all balances out in the end.

Karen bought me the Animaniacs season 1 on DVD. Just about done with disc 1. I absolutely love this show. I distinctly remember the first time I heard of the show my friend Justin came in and said “I just saw the weirdest show. It was about a mouse, dressed as a country singer, trying to take over the world.” Enter Pinky and the Brain and the Animaniacs, which became a part of our daily routine in college. The funny thing is I thought that was in 93/94 which would have put that in the first season. But I don’t see that episode on the this collection. Maybe it has another name that I don’t recognize. I’ll have to see as I get through the collection. But we watched every episode that year from that point on. It’s funny how some things keep their appeal. I still find them hilarious. Plus they have the whole nostalgia thing going for them. I’m going to have the theme song stuck in my head for days. LOL. Next episode starting…

go ahead and Google it. I wonder how long that will be up. That’s pretty funny.

UPDATE: Here’s Google’s explanation.

Zune’s Wi-Fi has it bass ackwards by ZDNet‘s Russell Shaw —  TWICE (This Week In Consumer Electronics) Magazine’s Amy Gilroy reports that Microsoft’s forthcoming $299 Zune digital audio players will have Wi-Fi, but not for the purpose you may be thinking.Retailers interviewed by Gilroy tell her that Zune will allow users to bookmark songs that can be shared with other users via Wi-Fi, but that the [...]

This doesn’t make any sense to me. It sounds more like general Microsoft bashing than an actual competant well-formed opinion. If Apple did this on the iPod people would be raving about how great the feature is. Realistically, I don’t want to purchase songs over wireless. There are too many issues, security and reliability being at the top of my list for why I wouldn’t do this. However wireless transfers, between PC and player and between players, is a wonderful feature. Just one less cable to deal with on an overly cabled computer.

So the summer is almost over. Karen is done with work in less than a week. Classes start in a week. Bella starts at her new pre-k in 2 weeks. And Gilli turns 2 in a month. It seems so hard to believe that the girls are growing up as quickly as they are. Gilli has started potty-training and is doing quite well at home with it. I have no other point of reference other than Bella, so to me it seems normal timing since that is around the age Bella showed an interest in getting out of diapers. But some people are surprised, they think maybe she is too young. But it’s not something we forced on her. It was her own decision. Sure we encourage it, but she initiated it.
I feel bad that we haven’t had a camera for the whole summer. I really miss taking pictures, and would have liked to have more pictures of the girls as they grow. I’m sure when Gillian is older she’ll wonder where all the baby pictures of her are. It’s funny how things turn out sometimes. I guess since Isabella was the first we (and everyone else) just tended to take more pictures. We went to the photographer on a regular basis. We’re going to take Gilli for her 2 year old pictures, but that will only be the fourth time, and only the second set of pictures. Hopefully as Gilli gets older she’ll lose some of her fear of people who she doesn’t see regularly. Note to photographers: if the parents tell you that the child is scared of people she doesn’t know, don’t get all in her face before you try to take the picture.

Some relief from the heat, it was 55 outside at 6:30 this morning. A nice sunny day on the way in to work. I think I’ll go outside after I get done typing this. Get a little fresh air on my lunch break.

We watched 3 new (as in unseen by us previously) movies this weekend, spurring the question of whether we actually watch more ‘tv’ since cancelling our sattelite service. It probably averages out. It just seems longer since movies are generally at least 30 minutes longer than a TV show.

Fun with Dick and Jane: “Hey I didn’t know it was a remake.” Pretty good movie though. Had some very funny parts and had a fairly interesting theme.

Kingdom of Heaven: “Why does Liam Neeson’s characters always die?” OK, fine just this one and Star Wars: TPM, but still. A good movie though. I have no idea if this is supposed to be historically accurate in any way or not, but an interesting topic.

Mr. & Mrs. Smith: I’ve wanted to see this movie since it came out. An amusing/ironic plot line, good action,  plus it stars Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie. All around enjoyable!

So I used to have a blog on a domain I’ve since given up. I got tired of maintaining it and moved to Blogger. I quickly grew tired of the limitations (no categories especially) and slowness of their service. Not long ago I registered this domain and put up a basic page. And now I am back to maintaining my own domain and my own install of WordPress. I don’t know why I switched in the first place. Actually I do. I hated my old domain name. I orginally wanted a dfferent name, but it got cyber-squatted before i could register it. Then they wanted some ridiculous amount of $ for it. Yeah right. Around that time too my friend Dave registered a domain as his full name. Since I was already blogging under my name anyway this was a logical step. Plus it gives me a nice ownership of my digital self, Google doing a better job than Yahoo! for me. Have you googled yourself recently?

So the Fredonia gas cartel seems to have broken up. All the gas stations are back to charging different prices for gas. It’s still high, but there is variance. From $3.02-$3.09 for regular. I was thinking back to when Karen bought her car last December. Not even a year ago. It cost us about $55 to fill the tank then. We found that out because the cheapskate dealer gave us the car with an empty tank of gas. But anyway, $55 not even a year ago. And I thought that was a lot. Now it costs around $70 to fill it. My car went from being able to fill it for $25 to $40. Now do that every week, sometimes every 2 weeks if we’re lucky. That’s around $1,500 extra a year in gas alone. How obscene is that? If my math isn’t too far off that’s around $300 TRILLION dollars more for the American people (based on 200 million people X 1500 – I know there are more people than that but I rounded down instead of up) just since last year. No wonder Exxon is doing so well. And that is probably a low estimate. I am basing my figures off of cars that get about 22 mile per gallon and gas costing $3.09. There are a lot of people with cars that get worse mileage and who are paying more for gas. But you get the rough idea. Did it really cost the oil companies and all involved in that racket $300 trillion more these past few months. Highly unlikely. I can’t wait to see these companies and the people behind them brought to task for the fleecing of the American people in the name of the almighty dollar. I would assume that until a certain oilman is gone however we will continue to have to bend over and take it at the pump.