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I enjoyed reading the writings of James Lileks and especially liked the his Fargo, ND site. I was born in Fargo, ND back in 1969. I don’t remember much about Fargo, we moved before my first birthday. I found his site thanks to The BradLands where he mentioned TiVobligation: The feeling one ought to watch all those old Miami Vices you taped, even though you really don’t want to. I know how that feels! I was also amused by TiVomission: That’s when the machine should record something based on your preferences, but doesn’t.

Oh Say Say… I am laughing so hard over the whole rant on the double standards about homosexual behavior. “Oh, watching two women together … that is so hot …” Yeah, ok. Whatever. I don’t like double standards.

Amazing what you will find with a little browsing… astro(b)logy: the fault lies not in the stars … which I found at Zippylog which I found at Graphically-Virtual. I find it rather interesting to study the links I follow that lead me to certain places.

It’s a quiet day at work today without Kymberlie here. I miss having her on the other side of the cubicle wall. Speaking of people at work – shameless plug here for Laura whose new site is looking beautiful. She has a webcam sitting at her desk and she was making faces for me earlier through it (the joy of IM, she told me when to go look). I want a webcam. Or two. One for work, one for home. Don’t you guys want to look at me all day long? I am soooo jealous – Laura got to go see Barry Manilow on Saturday at the Rodeo. Yes, I really did want to see him, although the Astrodome is not the venue I would choose. A nice concert hall would be much better. “At the Copa … Copacabana …”

Kymberlie… we miss you, mopyfish.

A little tale I forgot to share a while back… about a week or so ago I got an e-mail from a guy in Alabama named Dan. He did a search for Bad Windsheim, Germany – a town 3km from where I lived, Illesheim. He said he couldn’t figure out why my site came up, but it was funny and he liked what I had to say. So we exchanged e-mails back and forth, and come to find out he is going over there because he is “the Quality Test Coordinator on the Armys Apache or AH64 helicopter. You may remember it from Desert Storm. Thats why I’m going to Germany to head up the transfer of ten Apaches back to the states.” May remember them from Desert Storm??!? I lived with them! That is what the ex-husband worked on, day in & day out. They flew over my house twice a day. Well, Dan of course didn’t know that – but I thought it was amusing. He went to Germany over the weekend – hope he is having a good time! Hey Dan – if you read this – don’t forget to have that shot of tequila for me at the Green Goose!

Well kick butt. We now have a new excuse to be whiney, crabby women! First there was PMS … but now I can have PMDD too! Yes, I too suffer from tension, sudden mood changes, sadness, overwhelmed, bloating the week before chick week. Think it’s PMS? Oh no, think again! It’s Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder. And it can clearly interfere with my daily activities and relationships. “A distinct medical and physical condition” Thank goodness for Serafem, which contains the same active ingredient that is in Prozac. Ok, but here’s the catch. Side effects include tiredness, upset stomach, nervousness, dizziness, and difficulty concentrating. So what’s the point? Why on earth would I want to swap one for the other? Do they bother to even tell you what the difference is between the two in the commercial? No! That just annoys me. It’s hormones, people!!! Accept it! If you are human, you have hormones. I really question messing with them – what is going to be the side effect 5 or 10 years from now? … Sorry, I just saw the commercial again and I just had to rant. I think it is simply insulting to women that the fact that we have hormonal swings means we need to be medicated with a prozac-like drug. Insane.

Well, what an interesting week. I have been too busy – and then had PC problems which kept me from posting. Let’s start with Wednesday. Chelsey & I went to the rodeo to see Jo Dee Messina. Jo Dee rocked. Before we went in to the Dome we went to get my funnel cake (I told you they were good) and some food for Chelsey. We went to the stand with the Onion Blossoms, which were pretty tasty too. She innocently asked what came with the Catfish dinner. The chicky-poo behind the counter told her it came with rice an a roll and then proceeded to tell her that they were out of rice. Listed her alternatives – including Gumbo. Chelsey said she wanted the Gumbo. The woman working at the other register said that the gumbo wouldn’t work because they put the food into a to-go box with the one main compartment and 2 small compartments. So Chelsey asked if they could put it in a cup. Now mind you… we are watching the cook scoop gumbo into a cup right there behind the counter. And chicky-poo had the guts to say, “We don’t have any cups”. Ummmmmmm… “what are those?” we both ask in unison. We are looking at the cups! She then says, “those are limited.” I asked her if we could pay extra so they would just put it in a cup. She looked at the other woman and said “Aunt Shirley, do I have to deal with rude people?” RUDE??? Because we want to pay for a cup??? THEN… she tries to wait on the people in line behind us. Oh no, I don’t think so. Chelsey stepped in front of her and said “excuse me?” I then said that we wanted what we ordered. So chicky-poo slams my bottle of Sprite on the counter, making sure to shake it up some first. I was trying to open it gently without it exploding on me when she did the same thing to Chelsey’s Coke. Ohhhhhh no she didn’t. You don’t jack with my Chelsey. First we are going through hell just trying to get gumbo in a cup, then that??? I proceeded to try open my Sprite over the cash register then just slammed it on the counter and stormed off. I was soooo mad I was shaking. If I didn’t walk off I would have probably punched her. Poor Chelsey – she stuck it out and got the food and two fresh drinks for us. At least she had better not question the loyalty of my friendship – I was ready to *kick her ass* just for messing with my Chelsey. Poor chicky-poo didn’t know what she was asking for! She was goin’ down!!! Poor Chelsey – she didn’t know I had it in me. All these years, I have been so even tempered most of the time. I don’t normally get angry – it’s actually pretty rare. We got our tasty food, and I settled down. Back to being my normal self. The rest of the evening was pretty uneventful after that, but a lot of fun!

Moving on to Thursday – payback for complaining about the toilet? My PC conspired with it and died on me Thursday night. Just to get revenge. I am sure of it. This is how it went down… Thursday night I was watching my Defensive Driving videos. I went online to do the test after the first segment, and it locked up just as I finished. Hmmmm… ok, reboot. Ctrl+Alt+Del didn’t work – so I did a hard boot. Click-click-click-click-click … nothing. Dos prompt. So yesterday I got the emergency start-up disk, rebooted and reinstalled Windows98. (Yes, 98 – I want to make sure my son’s games are supported by ME or 2000 before I switch.) It reinstalled but was glitchy, so I got the photos off that I wanted and reformatted the hard drive and then reinstalled again. It was up but not running well when it went down again. I gave up & went to bed. This morning with Doug’s help (Chelsey’s boyfriend) I did an fdisk, and then when I went to reformat it again it started to give us error messages that it couldn’t recover allocation units. Damn. Doug came by a little bit ago and pronounced it dead. Fortunately, I did a big backup in December, but still… the laptop doesn’t have access to the cable modem and it is missing the “M” key – makes it pretty interesting to type. So now I have to get a new hard drive and some RAM (may as well upgrade that while it is open!) and find my CDs so I can reinstall all the drivers when it is up and running. The only good thing about all of this is that I wanted an bigger hard drive anyways – now I can’t procrastinate any more. I am thankful that I have the laptop to hold me over – I just hate this dial-up, it’s sooooo slow. Oh! And the laptop won’t let me see this site! It is so strange – my friends can see it, I know it’s here. I can see my other site on this server. Just can’t see this one. If you have any suggestions on how to fix it, let me know!

On a side note, I have on “Donovan’s Reef”, an old John Wayne movie right now. Hey, it was on A&E and I just left it on. I just have to say this – I have a hard time believing the Polynesians all wore nice cotton dresses and shorts out of coordinating fabric like they do in this movie. Then there was a scene just now at the end where John Wayne, in true manly form, said to the gal that “now I wear the pants in the family” and swung her around, put her over his knee and spanked her. Ok, what is up with THAT? Man, no wonder our society is so twisted. Look at what my parent’s generation were watching!

Friday was a very sad day at the office. They laid Kymberlie off. I am soooooo bummed. She has been my cubicle buddy for 6 months now. She was my protege. I feel like I let her down. I am quite stressed over it. Although, I will say that with her talents I am positive she will come out of this in a much better place. Kymberlie, I won’t forget about you and we will all be missing you! I’m here for you!

My cat, Murphy, is just chillin’ now – sleeping on the chair on his back with his paw over his face. What a riot. I would take his picture, but I don’t have any film. I have a digital camera, but I lost the software to get the images off with the death of the PC. Actually, it was corrupted before. Another thing to add to the list! I want a webcam too. Not sure why, other than to satisfy my gadget addiction. I was up at Best Buy today wandering around – had to pick up a cable to connect the VCR to my receiver – and I was drooling over the webcams and the digital cameras. I have too many other bills to deal with right now!

Added my AOL IM contact info over there. If you see me online, drop me a note. Speaking of IM, Super J and I were just chatting, and he was telling me I have to go see “Rent” when it comes to Houston. He said the messages changed his life. Live every moment like it is your last – because it could be. Don’t judge people based on superficial things. Good messages. I am going to have to watch for when it comes to Houston again.