Welcome to the land of the Mundane

So, Saturday was my birthday. I spent about five hours hanging out with the girlfriend.

We then drove to the Spring Hill mall to have dinner with my parents. First time meeting her. That went well.

After that, she had a bachelorette party to go to, and I had to meet friends at Famous Freddies up in Fox Lake. Had fun with that, spent a few hours dancing, talking and drinking horribly weak overpriced drinks. Seriously, five drinks should be enough to get even me at least somewhat buzzed. Nothing. After that ended, I decided to go meet up with the girlfriend again.

I drove out to Schaumburg and spent another hour or so dancing with her at the Bamboo Room. Cool place. On the way though, a coyote decided it'd be fun to play chicken with my car. Seriously, what's a coyote doing on I90? Needless to say, it lost. Unfortunately, so did my car.

So I decided to follow the woman back to her place to make sure she makes it home. On the way, I notice my heat's not working. Huh, where's it gone? Oh, it's all in the engine, which is now red lined on the temperature gauge. Nice to know I don't have any kind of warning light for that sort of thing. I pull over on 90 with my car smoking. Jennifer (the woman, for those that can't figure it out) pulls over in front of me. Turns out the coyote had a rather hard head. I'm still waiting to hear from the body shop, but I'm guessing it knocked a coolant hose or some other connection loose when it attacked my car. I stand there shivering while the car leaks coolant all over the road. Fun times.

We spent 40 minutes waiting for a tow truck. My car ends up in Des Plaines, and I end up spending the night at Jennifer's house. I'm very glad she was there, It's suprising how much comfort one person can be just by being there in a situation like that. So now I'm stuck without a car for probably a week or so while the bumper gets replaced and the internal problems get fixed. Fun times.

I suppose it didn't technically ruin my birthday, since I didn't hit the darn thing until after 1:30 AM, but it certaintly put a negative spin on October.

Oh, and I don't like the fact that I hit the coyote. I would much rather have avoided it, even if it hadn't damaged my car. But sometimes you just don't have the time. Damn thing came out of nowhere.

Oh, and for those keeping track. Woodstock, to Waukegan, to Spring Hill, to Fox Lake, to Schaumburg = a hell of a lot of driving for that thing to just happen to wander into my path in the 10th of a second I was in that spot. Sometimes you just have to wonder if things happen for a reason. Maybe God's telling me to get a Mustang.

There's hope for me yet.

So I found my cubicle yesterday. Not really close to any of the people in my training class, but it's near a couple of people I have sat with, so I'm not totally alone.

Now I just have to get some goodies to make my cubicle my own.

Ehh.. make that, settle on just a few things to get. Stupid massive thinkgeek selection.

So, what should I get?
http://www.thinkgeek.com/geektoys/cubegoodies/6a7c/
http://www.thinkgeek.com/geektoys/rc/833d/
http://www.thinkgeek.com/geektoys/rc/81cf/

This of course is a given.
http://www.thinkgeek.com/geektoys/games/69fe/

Maybe I'll get one of these and pretend I'm feeding the callers to it.
http://www.thinkgeek.com/geektoys/science/76c9/

Ok, enough for now.

So today was my first day at my new job. Got there way early. Now if I can just find a way to avoid taking I90.

The place seems cool. It's a secure building, so I'll have to use my as yet nonexistant badge to get in any door other than the main entrance, but that's to be expected, considering the type of business. The people in my department seemed to enjoy their job. There's a cafeteria with a suprisingly good selection in the building so I don't have to leave for lunch. They've even got a stamp vending machine and ATM's.

I've still got training for a couple weeks, but I'm confident this job will work out fine.

So I've been looking for a new job. Did a little driving around, did a lot of online looking and applied a few places. Apparently it's that easy. Now, exactly one week after I started looking, I've got a new job. At least, as long as I don't fail the drug or background tests. Yeah, like that's a worry.

I'm doing phone support for employees at JPMorgan. Basically the same as the helpdesk at OD. Don't know how I'll like it, but it's a job, and it's in a line of work that I'm more familiar with.

So I got called into the office yesterday. Apparently Office Depot doesn't take kindly to trying to generate business by occasionally lowering the price a little on a copy job. After about half an hour of questions and writing statements, I was sent home to await a call from my manager. The call came, and it's official. I'm now unemployed.

I've known for a while now that I was in a rut, that I needed to get out of that place and find something different. I guess subconsiously I've been waiting for some kind of push. I just never expected to be booted out on my ass.

I guess on the upside, I'm out of retail.

Yeah, I know it's been a while. Ok, so it's been a LONG while, but I just got back from something that I feel I should probably share while it's fresh on my mind.

I spent most of the day today at what I suppose would be called a massive tailgate party. I went with a guy from work to the Dave Matthews Band concert in Alpine Valley. Only we didn't actually go to the concert. We got there about 2:30 PM, and spent about 11 hours hanging out with a bunch of his friends, and random people, in the parking lot. It was quite an experience. I met a bunch of nice, crazy, people, and had a lot of fun. We were part of a group of four cars. Between us all, I think there were about nine coolers, all full of food for the grill that was brought, and drinks. Spending seven hours drinking is quite the experience. Thankfully, I can say I handled myself pretty well, unlike one poor guy that fell asleep in his car. By the time he woke up, his face was covered in permanent marker. I didn't get too wasted, and didn't lose control at any point. I even ended up walking one girl to the restrooms because she was in no condition to make it by herself. Oddly enough, after all that drinking, I was the only person who had stopped drinking in time to sober up before leaving. So I ended up driving everyone back to Crystal Lake. Hooray for self control.

I would have gotten a picture of the sea of cars, but I couldn't get a good view of it on my camera phone. As we got there at 2:30, the lot was starting to fill, and there were still lines of cars coming in at 6:00. I was told the attendance is somewhere in the 60-80,000 people range. I don't know how accurate that is, but it was definately packed with people.

I had a blast, and given the chance, I would definitely do it again. Now if I could only fall asleep...

Here's a fun story.

I've got a couple accounts on various dating websites. So about two weeks ago I get a message through one of them from a girl living in Arizona. So I figure, what the hell, someone to talk to at least. So we start talking. About three sentences into the first conversation, I get the feeling everything's not kosher. I think it was the less than stellar grasp of the english language. Here's a sampling.

"any Girl Friend lover you Dating"
"i live alone and i dont have a boy friend lover i am dating i am single and seeking for a loving and caring honest Man"
"someday i belive we would be partinal so we can travel together"

All that, from the first conversation. Sounds just like she lives in Arizona doesnt it?

Being as bored as I was, I decided to see how long it takes for this person to give themselves away. Two weeks. It took two weeks, maybe five rather short conversations, for this person to think I was gullable enough to be scammed. She, if it's even a woman, wanted to have a "client" send me a traveler's check since she would be out of the country at the time, and not at home to receive it. I was then expected to cash it, and send the money to her where she was.

I can't help but think that anyone foolish enough to fall for something so obviously fake and full of holes as that, deserves to lose their money. I don't know whether to be pleased I caught on so quickly, or dissapointed that it's back to being bored for me.


Oh well, there's always thinks like this to amuse me.


Cyanide & Happiness @ Explosm.net

Just some things I found amusing.


Cyanide & Happiness @ Explosm.net


Cyanide & Happiness @ Explosm.net


Cyanide & Happiness @ Explosm.net


Cyanide & Happiness @ Explosm.net

Ok, that's enough for tonight.

This is an interesting little thing. I suppose it would work better if I had more friends though. One entry had one person in every dang spot.