It’s true, they do. And the ones that they don’t steal, well lets not discuss what they do with them.

Didn’t really plan on talking about monkeys, I just really wanted a post where I could use this picture.

So, Paul has been pressuring me to go out this weekend and do something. Problem is, I am still broke. Funny how that sort of thing doesn’t go away easily. I have been staying in and not really spending much at all yet for some reason I still am just scraping through. I know this next paycheck isn’t going to be much, I can only hope the ones afterwards are better. They should be, I have been working a lot trying to wrap up some projects here.

My Goal for this weekend is to finish really cleaning up the house. I want to clean out the Den, (That den is now my Bane!) and get it really ready for Andrew to come out. Theoretically he is not coming out until August, but I want it as much ready as possible. This means cleaning out the closet that’s in there and finding places for all the excess crap. It’s that or throw it away. I figure if I haven’t seen it or needed it in the last year, I probably won’t need it in the next year.

My Other goal is to go out for a drive and maybe a walk at one of the State Parks. I have been sitting around the house too much and need to get out, but I am not ready to be social yet. Is that too weird? I honestly didn’t think I would fall into this big of a rut, and I am going to work myself out of it. It’s just a matter of Re-focusing my priorities. I know I will get to the point where I will enjoy going out and being social again.

I know if Amy were back here we would probably be going out and doing things a lot more, or even by myself. That’s one of the problems I have, if I can do that when she is here, I should be able to do that alone. Keep in mind, this in no way means I don’t want her to come back. I Desperately do. But I don’t want to have to rely on her being here to do things. See, now that I have correctly identified the problem, and worked out the solution, it’s time to start implementing.

Ok, so I am not a big coffee drinker. Come to think of it, I really don’t like coffee at all. I have tried to drink it and it just doesn’t appeal to me. I like the smell of Coffee, Just not the taste. Something that I do enjoy though is sitting in a coffee shop and conversing with friends, or just relaxing. There is something about the atmosphere of a good, down to earth coffee house that is just so invigorating, yet soothing at the same time. Is that even possible?

So this brings to light two problems.

1: What does one drink in a coffee shop that isn’t coffee? (Sounds like a riddle doesn’t it, “When is a door not a door”) (p.s. when it’s a jar)

B: Where do you find a good down to earth coffee house?

Well just because I am weird and hate doing what society tells me, I am going to explain number B first. Why? Because I can, it’s my freaking blog! (Ok that was mean, I’m sorry, I’ll be good, I swear.)

Sorry to say, but Starbucks is just not the best place to hang out. I mean, every now and then they have some decent drinks, and they have some good music playing, But every time I go in one I think I die just a little. Something about the corporate monopoly of the effervescent conglomeration while overpowering the commonality of the under-impaired working class….. Where was I going with this? You know I really shouldn’t step away while I am typing in mid thought. So I think I was trying to say that Starbucks is a corporate shell. That’s why there is a Starbucks on every major street corner, in every mall, and attached to most businesses like a cancer causing leach.

Now there are a few places that are trying to bridge the gap between a corporate leach like Starbucks and a good wholesome coffee house like, umm well, uhh Damn, I can’t even name one because it’s been a while since I have seen one. Not to mention their names vary so much it’s usually like “Joes Coffee Shack.” You know the place, worn out chairs, a scattering of magazines across the tables. (Wow, I just noticed, MSWord doesn’t attempt to tell me that Starbucks is spelled incorrectly. Does that mean that MSWord comes packed with the word Starbucks in the internal spell-check?) Again with the Tangents! Ok, so there are places like Caribou Coffee and Panera that are getting close to comfy while still maintaining their “Big City” guise.

Does this mean I don’t venture into a Starbucks? Sadly no, there are times when I am thirsty and want something, but yet there are no other places to go. In that respect I give credit to Mr. Bucks, he saw an opportunity to bring Coffee to the masses and he jumped it like a perverted lion learning about female zebra’s for the first time.

So then, the Next question, (or was it the first question, I am not to sure any more) what do I drink in a coffee house if I don’t like coffee? Well, I suppose you could drink hot Chocolate, or Order some hot water and bring along a tea bag and some sugar. But that’s just lame! I mean, you go to a coffee shop to stand in line with all the other yuppies and order something that takes at least two breaths to say, and involves a major mechanical device that will drain the power and water pressure from a third world country. Something along the lines of “A double large triple Mocha low fat Café Espresso served in a dirty ash tray.” Walking up to the counter and ordering a Hot Coco, just doesn’t have the same flare and Mr. Bucks frowns on that.

So Mr. Bucks flew to the Magical Mystical Planet of In-dia and asked Mr. Dia to create something that coffee haters can drink while visiting the Conglomerate stronghold of Starbucks. Mr. Dia said “Umm ok” Which actually came out completely in-comprehensible because Mr. Bucks didn’t speak Swahili which is an Indian language. So Mr. Bucks clobbered Mr. Dia in the head and took a bunch of Mr. Dia’s house plants on the way out. Ironically enough, Mr. Bucks over watered the house plants and the leaves turned the water into a brownish water. This was just like normal water only brown, and it tasted funny. (Well I guess that isn’t like normal water at all then is it.)

Mr. Bucks asked his Indian guide what the water was, and the Indian guide claimed that if Mr. Bucks smoked a peace pipe with the left over leaves from the house plant, his eternal answer of life would be revealed to him. Not being one for smoking, Mr. Bucks instead said “I’m just gonna call it Chai.” And So Chai was born and brought to the masses in Venti sized cups. Except that Real Chai is a tea and All the coffee houses add things like Milk and honey and methamphetamines.

So the Moral of this Story is, If you really want to make a lot of money, start up a website that offers not to kill your pet if people send you a donation. But if you want something to drink in a coffee house. Find a nice coffee house and Order a Chai.

Ok, Rant time. (hey, it’s been a while since I have had one of these.) I just got back from lunch at Applebee’s. I HATE when I order something and it comes out screwed up. Here is what happened. We get there and I start looking at the menu. I am not in the mood for a salad, but yet not in the mood for a sandwich or chicken strips. Nor am I interested in a full blown meal. So I see this Wrap that looks somewhat appealing. Problem is, it’s got almonds in it. While I am not allergic to almonds, and I don’t necessarily despise almonds, I don’t really like them and didn’t want to eat them. (If it were pecans, which would be a different story, those should be abolished buy the supreme order of crap that tastes crappy no matter what crappy way it’s prepared!)

The waiter comes by and gets us our drinks, I order a Pepsi. (yes, a regular Pepsi, it’s been a long day.) He asks me what I want and I say

“I think I will have the Oriental Chicken Roll Up, but I see that has almonds in it, can I get it with no almonds?”

He responds with a cheery “Sure, that will be no problem” while inside I am sure he is saying “Great so he wants me to hand pick put every freaking almond in the whole gawd damn thing”

So he runs off along his merry way and about 10 minutes later he comes out with out food. Now, I saw in the picture on the menu, this nice little wrapped up salady looking “Rollup,” what I got was a salad that looked like they threw a tortilla on top of it. Worst of all, it had almonds in it. Not just a few almonds, it’s almost as if it had extra almonds in it.

/sigh

Now, it was lunch time and I didn’t really want to spend 3 hours in an Applebee’s waiting for them to re-do my “rollup” so I just trudged along and ate my freaking almonds. When the waiter made his mandatory “Lets wait until he has a mouth full of food and then stop by and ask how everything is going,” I made it a point to say how there were a lot of almonds in it.

“Oh, I’m sorry, I asked them to not put any in.” He tried to say sincerely “Would you like me to have it re-made” (and I could swear I heard him say under his breath “Which I will have them take 45 minutes to do”)

“No, It’s fine” I said with a grimace on my face as I bit into another almond.

I managed to keep the wrap shape form together for the first half of the meal, but looking at the second half, I just gave up. I proceeded to rip up the tortilla and sprinkle it on top to eat it just like a normal salad. I was so tempted to start having an “Allergic” reaction to them and cause a great big scene, but I guess I am too much of a whuss for that. I am thinking about starting a personal Boycott of any of the Applebee’s/Denny’s/TGI-Friday/Chilies Type restaurants as I just don’t think they care anymore. When you go to a small “Ma and Pa” place, they tend to take care of their customers a little better. Their business really depends on you and your reviews. These other places have a big corporation behind them and if you don’t come back, it’s no big deal to them.

Bah!!!

Ok, 2 weekends now gone by and I haven’t done squat! I mean, I went to Marc and Lori’s place for the Saturday meeting. It was a good meeting, and it was great to see everyone there, but I was lonely. For the first time since she has left I really missed having her there. I know I miss her all the time anyways, but, I could really feel her absence at the meeting.

Once the meeting was over, we partied a little bit, but I started getting tired so I headed home. The rest of the weekend was pretty much a wash. I gamed a lot (again). And I did manage to clean house a bit. I never really left the house much though. I really really need to get out of the house and do something. I don’t want to spend any money. I have been trying to save money since the whole Tax thing.

I am still trying to sort out the whole Tax thing too. See, here is my problem, and maybe some of you Tax Wizards out there can help me. I was officially married through September of last year. So my W4 form reflected that I was withholding at a rate of 1 with a status of Married. So my Withholdings were at a married rate. But since I was divorced before the end of the year, they want me to file as single. Ok, I can understand that. But what about all the time where I was withholding as a married guy? Thus the reason they want me to Pay 2 grand. So in a word, HELP!

So, in light of all this, I need to find a way to get out of the house and enjoy some me time, without spending a bunch of money. Things like Movies, or Museum would be fine, because most of them are a minimal amount of money. But things like going out and drinking, clubbing, and strippers are way out. I suppose I could get wrapped up in work, I have tons of that to do. I guess we’ll see what happens, but if I don’t get out and do something soon, I am gonna go Stir Crazy!

.

I Have Found the Secret! I now hold the eternal knowledge that has eluded man kind and plagued the brains of scientists for eons! Behold the power and glory of this all empowering wisdom!!

The True Secret to Saving money………….

Don’t Go Anywhere or Do Anything!!!!!!!!

It’s true! It’s been a week since Amy left for TX and I haven’t gone anywhere or done anything. Amazingly enough, my Bank Account hasn’t taken any big hits out of it! I should write a book!

About the only thing I have been doing lately is playing WoW online. I did manage to take a break from playing and watch “The Bourne Supremacy” last night. It was a great flick. I liked the first one, and the second was just as good. Very action filled, and it hung you on that “Plausible Believability” nail. Let me explain that one. In 24, we See Jack Bauer fly in a chopper from Mexico to LA in about 5 min. Pretty much everything in 24 Takes 5 min. They should probably relocate CTU because all sorts of bad things seem to happen within a 5 min radius of that place. With the Bourne Movies, the time frame fits, the technology is close to fitting. It’s like, you know there actually might be a way to do what he is doing. Anyways, great flick.

This coming weekend is our first Organizational meeting for the Garrison under new management. Lots of talk about a number of things to go on through out the year. Will be nice to get out of the house and hang out with friends too. If anything else exciting happens, I’ll let you know.

This was pretty much a weekend of nothingness. Before Amy left we sat and watched an Episode of Friends. This was the one where Chandler was going through his Split up Phases. Phase 1 was the sit around the house in your sweats and mope. Phase 2 Involved going out with the guys, and Phase 3 was seeing yourself with other women. While I realize that Amy and I are not broken up (and no plans to that I know of), we figured that I would just be in Phase 1 and 2 while she was gone. Well this weekend was completely Phase 1. I didn’t even step out of the house on Saturday.

What I did do was play a lot of World of Warcraft. And I mean a lot. I think my character was level 26 on Friday and I am now ¼ to 30. I have to say, now that I am getting to a decent enough level, the PVP Aspect of the game is great. It would seem that 30 is the average level for most of the characters running around so it makes it a little more dangerous when you are trying to finish your quests. Being a rogue helps a lot with this as I can stealth my way through a lot. And Oh the Ganking! As a rogue I can stealth and most of the Players can’t see me, Unless 1: They are Higher level than me and 2: They are right near me. So this allows me to sit on the side of the road and wait for people to run by. As they do this I can asses their level and skill. If I think I can take them, I step out and Slaughter them. The true rogue way. Is it mean? Well yeah, but that’s what Rogues do.

Sunday I did manage to get some cleaning of the house and dishes and laundry done. I played a lot again, but did it in a little better moderation. I Stopped by the Mall with Paul and just walked around. It was nice to get out and do something. We were planning on hitting the movie Constantine, but never got around to it.

Monday was a holiday, so I got the day off. It was nice to relax, cause you know I didn’t do any of that this weekend. Heh, Ok so actually Paul and I headed out to look at Sofa’s. I guess he is getting tired of the Futon he has. So we headed out to a few furniture stores to see what they had. I think he found one he likes so I imagine he will want to borrow the truck. While we were out we stopped by Guitar Center (one of Paul’s favorite places.) He went about checking the guitar stuff, and I headed straight back to the drums and percussion section. Maybe now would be a good time to mention that I love drumming. While I don’t actually know how to play a full drum set, I do, however, play the doumbek. It’s a Middle Eastern hand drum. They had a great variety of hand drums back there so I was looking over them when I saw this little electronic beauty. The Roland HPD-15 HandSonic Percussion Controller. For a guy that likes to play hand drums, it was amazing. It could simulate almost all hand drums and more. I tell you I was in love! Paul had to pry me away from it so we could leave. If I had a spare thousand bucks to drop on something like this, I probably would.

After guitar center, and my love affair with a drum machine, (ok, now that just sounds perverted), we headed to Borders Books. Paul started look at the cooking books while I jumped in line to grab a Chai. While standing in line I take note of the people sitting over in the sitting area (that’s what you do over there I hear.) One of them is this kid with his HP laptop sitting fairly close to the wall. He had his power Supply plugged in and it was run across the floor, but the area was very narrow and no in anyone’s way. Anyway, Some Jacka$$ decided to try and squeeze through that area and trips over the cord yanking it out of the laptop, then proceeds to yell at the kid for draping it there screaming for a manager, claiming that “he used to be a safety officer and that sort of thing is illegal!” Call me kooky, but if I were a safety officer, I would know not to try and squeeze through an area when a perfectly open area is available, and 2: I would watch where I was walking. People like this steam me. He was probably hoping to Sue the kid or even the store. If I were that Kid I would have probably been very Irate, his power supply is probably borked now because of this idiot.

After borders we headed home and I did some more laundry. About 20 min later, probably more, but I wasn’t paying attention and time has no real meaning to me,) I get an IM from Paul saying how Glorious the new grocery store “Wegmans” is. Now, he knew I needed to go to the store, and had wanted to see Wegmans, so I talked him into going back. (Actually he talked me into it). All I have to say is, WOW. Wegmans is truly glorious! It is the Utopia of Grocery Stores! Shopping carts descend upon you from the heavens, a Choir Sings to you hymns, of lettuce and cantaloupe, Jesus himself Pops out of one of the Isles and says “try the Lamb!” I never thought I could get so excited over a grocery store, (and I am probably a little too excited, but hey what are you going to do, no really, what are you going to do, put that knife down, hey now, it’s just a store, stop!!! Oh wait, I was writing here….) I can’t even really describe it enough, that’s one of those things you will need to experience.

I came home from the epiphany that is Wegmans, to eat my, newly bought, grilled shrimp, cooked on my Forman grill. I proceeded to get ready to watch my favorite show, 24. Jack Bauer is the Bomb! And I think we have decided that there is no definitive plot line in 24, it’s a Plot net. It’s so intertwined it just craziness! Also learned, things you don’t say to Jack Bauer: “I think your bluffing.”

After 24 I logged into WoW for just a little while, managed to take out a Level 29 Rogue who came to visit Horde territory. I love this game.

What a week! It has been nothing but crazy in the world of Wizzer this week. (Of course, when is it not crazy?) With Farpoint last weekend, Lee in town, Valentines Day Monday, Amy’s Last night on Tues, Her leaving on Wed, My Tax info, The Website crashing……. Can I take a Break? NOPE!!! Well sort of, it’s a three day weekend so I get to kind of relax for a while. I have no plans and will probably sit around the house moping in my sweatpants.

I did get some good news, I will be attending a MCSE boot camp here in the DC area come March 13th. What does that mean? Well, for 13 days I will have 6 Giant books of information pounded into my brain. They said classes start at 8am and go until as late as 9pm. Needless to say I don’t know how much I will be able to post during those days. But it’s defiantly good for my career. Thusly, (such a fun word to use) I become one of the primary Windows guys in the shop.

It donned on me that I didn’t write much about Amy’s last night here! I had to work, of course, and didn’t get home till around 5ish. Once I did we changed clothes and headed to H&R Block to get Taxes done. That’s when I found out the GREAT news about my Taxes. Amy got her stuff taken care of and we got back in the truck, but instead of driving home, we drove out to Alexandria. Amy had no Idea where we were going. I stopped and parked just off of N. Glebe Rd (Yet another great word!) She was still baffled on where we were and what we were doing. She didn’t know until we walked into the restaurant that I was taking her to “The Melting Pot.” If you have never gone there I HIGHLY Suggest it. The place is phenomenal. They start you out with a Cheese fondu, then a salad, then your entrée is different types of meats that you cook in the fondu pot that has different oils and spices. After that you get a chocolate fondu with fruits and cakes to dip in it. It was truly amazing.

Back to the weekend at hand. I have a funny feeling that I am just going to be lounging around the house playing World of Warcraft. I have to say, the game is great. I didn’t get a chance to play much at all this last weekend and Mon-Tues, so I got a great XP multiplier . You see WoW has a cool system that if you “rest” and logout, when you come back in you get 200% XP. The time that you get to keep that is directly related to the time you spent logged out. Well I was logged out for 4 days. So I got 2 good evenings of 200%. It was great! I know Lee has been sick lately and not been in game so I imagine that he will do quite well with that bonus. I also need to clean up. Haven’t done much of that since Amy left. I will try and post during the weekend. Have a great Friday people!

What a day it has been. You have probably noticed that all day today the website has been down. Well it turns out that, my Old host, V3, still had control of the domain www.wizzer.org and that Blue host was just the Space host. Well, my year expired with V3 so they shut down the Domain. I thought that BlueHost had transferred everything, but it turns out that they did not. So I have spent all day E-mailing and Calling between the two to get it all worked out. Hopefully it’s taken care of and in a few hours the DNS will propagate and we will be back to normal.

This Comes on top of the latest news of my Taxes. Turns out when I went to do my taxes for 2004, they are saying I owe like $2k. I was like, “Excuse me?” Yeah well, it’s true. What happened was that on my W4 I was still listed as Married. So I wasn’t withholding enough. Because you know, what I really need is another bill.

Want some more bad news? The thing I have been hinting about for the last month has come to fruition. Amy went back to TX. She has a ton of stuff that she has to deal with back there and we weren’t sure how long it would take to deal with all of it. So we bought her a one way ticket and she left yesterday. I tried so hard to be the rock and convince myself that, logically this was the best course of action. In the end though, it killed me to watch her leave. We decided to keep the information off the blog until after she arrived in TX because didn’t want all the questions. She is planning on coming back as soon as her affairs are in order, and I hope it’s soon. I know she is gone for a good reason, but damnit, I miss her.

I have some other things to write about but for now I am going to wrap it up and head home. With all the crap that went on today, I am gonna take a break.

So, I have been feeling down in the dumps lately, every knows this. It’s Valentines day yesterday so, Like any other guy, I wait till the last Minute to do anything. While on my way home I stop by the local Hallmark store and line up with about 50 other guys who just got off work to do the same thing. We pick through the cards that have been gone through all day long, and I find two cards. One of them is a Nice romantic card with lots of sentiment, and the other is a fun card (it whistles!) I also Picked out a small Box of chocolates and Some small Balloons with a Flower in them. Next stop was Damons to get some Tuxedo Cheesecake, because I know that’s what Amy likes (that and she asked me to get it).

Needless to say, when I got home I felt like I had just bought her a Spongebob Pez Dispenser when I saw this:

And this:

I was stunned. No one had ever done something like this for me. She made me a candle light dinner. She adjusted her events to account for the fact that at 9pm I always watch 24 on Mondays. After 24 was done, she made a bath for me to relax in, with candles and flowers. (No Pictures of that for you!) After the Bath she had rose petals leading into the bedroom and was sitting there with the Tuxedo Cheese cake for us to eat (It was on a plate you sickos!) She even put our names on the plate and the candle holders!

She is so amazingly sweet! I feel like such a smoo for not doing more for her because I know she deserves so much more. I do love her so much!

Well, I just wanted to share with you what My Super Girlfriend Did for me!

Oops, I forgot

Ok so I left out a bunch of stuff from the weekend, Sorry. I was very distracted with work. Sue me!

So Thursday night Lee got into town for some stuff that he had scheduled. For this, I took Friday off and we pretty much just hung out around the house. After his appointment, I was getting things ready to go for the Convention and was making sure all my Phones were charged when I noticed something weird about my regular Cell phone.

The Meter would say that it was fully charged but the Battery would still be dead. So I took it to the verizon store and had them look at it. I felt bad because Lee and I basically stood around in the Verizon store for about 2 hours doing nothing. They had to swap out my phone thought because of a software issue. It Sucked. But I did manage to buy the PC cable I have been wanting so I can hook up my cell phone to the PC and download and upload things. No longer do I need to download and Pay for ringers! There is a great program called BitPim that does it all!

I am pretty sure Lee had fun at the Convention though, even if he did have to sleep on the floor the first night. He crammed into the bed with me and Amy on Sat night but still couldn’t sleep. He got to hang out with the 501st and party with the Ghetto Guys!

Ok, so it’s Valentines day and I am off to Try and do something special for Amy. Wish me Luck!