It's Friday! Woooo-hoo! Pizza day!

I'm kind of annoyed by Netflix lately. I used to send a DVD back and have the next in my queue in about two days. Now for some reason it's taking 2-3 days for them to receive the disc back from me. I think it's got something to do with them changing the return mailing address from somewhere in Melville to "Nearest Netflix Shipping Facility" in White Plains. Either that, or they've gotten much more popular in this area and they haven't upgraded their receiving staff or something. Anyway, it sux. I returned Sin City on Tuesday, and they still haven't received it back yet. I hope they get it today. This is gonna make it really hard for me to watch every episode of Lost that I missed 'cause dumb-ass me was busy watching Smallville. Dammit! Season One releases on 9/6 and the new season starts 9/21, giving me 15 days to watch five discs (cause fucking ABC didn't show reruns of every episode this summer and obsessive me needs to watch EVERY episode). With a four-day turnaround and two discs out at a time (cause the kids get disc #3) and assuming I can sweet talk B into letting me hog the Netflix stuff for two weeks, I can maybe accomplish watching every episode I've missed.

Or I could just try to watch the final six ehp!isodes of Season One as ABC doubles up on them over the next three weeks, and read up on what I've missed on TWOP. But no, that would be too simple.

I guess it's slightly disturbing that this is occupying more of my concentration than the fact that I have a shitload of work to do over the next week, or that I really need to register for another class, or that my car is about to explode.

Speaking of car, my Havard-trained Lawyer Sister just contacted me. She's getting a new ride, and said her '96 Corolla is up for grabs if I want it. Seeing as I'm in a '93 Geo with about 180K miles, and I'll be down south next month anyway, I think I'll take her up on that offer. I feel a little like a mooch, but hey, I ain't making Harvard-trained Lawyer money.

Now - to work! Invoices to post! Capital projects to assign! Tax forms to fillout! Checks to write! I'm so thrilled...

I'm actually working quite hard. The month has flown by once again. The whole summer, actually. Can't believe Labor Day weekend is coming up next week!

Looks like I'll be spending this weekend digging a hole. Steve is putting in a new, larger pond in his backyard and I got enlisted to help. So I'll be getting a little exercise, but I'll probably counteract that by ingesting a lot of beer.

The boss is out until next week! Whee! Time to slack!

Ok, maybe not. :P

So yesterday I was freaking out 'cause I thought B's bank card had been stolen...turns out a store we shopped at a year ago had some glitch that recharged our card...fuckin' brilliant. Like the money situation this week wasn't going to be tight enough. As long as we get the money back soon, and we don't get dinged by the bank for being overdrawn, it'll be ok.

Money worries suck. I'm moving to a commune.

I was a mad cleaning fool today. I did a massive clean up of our room, the kitchen, and the living room, and even made it out to mow the yard before I really started feeling pooped. I still had energy enough to do the grocery shopping while Bethany and the kids were out partying.

Watched Sin City last night. Extremely gruesome and violent, and fuckin' great! The flick was so dark and noirish, the action so over-the-top, it was fantastic to watch. I never actually read Frank Miller's graphic novels but being a comic geek I've certainly seen the artwork enough times. It was like they spashed the comic right up onto the big screen (or ya know, my little 19-inch screen). Big props to Robert Rodriguez. I should have paid more attention tho, I couldn't figure out which was Quentin' s guest directing spot. In case you're wondering, having a few stiff drinks before and/or during the movie does nothing to diminish its artistic impact.

We set our old computer back up for the kids this weekend. Now I need to figure out how to network the two together in the simplest and most cost-effective manner possible. Mainly 'cause there's a bunch of MP3s on there I had nearly forgotten about that I'd like to have on our main, CD-burner-having, computer. No, really, it's Mp3s I want on there, not porn or anything...

I took off Monday for a family day (Happy Birthday Jules!) so I'm even MORE swamped at work. Barely time to check a little email and scarf down some rehydrated chili-type vegetarian stuff before getting back to moving the piles of shit off my desk and to someone else's. So let this suffice as my blog for the day.

But let me just say that although I've drastically cut down on my tobacco intake the past few days, I consumed a lot of illicit stuff this past weekend that both enhanced and wrecked my time away from work. Including, but not limited to, about 6 shots of tequilla. :)

Ehp!rrriba!!!!

I'm really, truly being productive at work today. So no big blog-o-rama today...I just have one point of interest. There's one thing that's kept me from getting to bed early the last two nights. Sudoku! Ok, I'm a little late on this, but DAMN is that game addictive. Ok, that's it.

Oh, and also I haven't had a beer or cig all week. I did two shots of tequila (Cabo Wabo!) on Sunday to support my wife's new craving, but other than that no alcohol for me since my drinkfest on Saturday.

Cabo Wabo!

Ok, so the weekend went pretty well. We had the big company picnic on Saturday and although the food was still pretty lame, the kids had fun and we stayed for a good two hours without being too bored. Plus, we got the $100 gift cheque. Yeah, baby!

Saturday afternoon we BBQ'd at Steve and Cathy's, and did a little swimming in the pool. S&C had bought us a grill at a garage sale earlier in the day. It's a bit newer than the one we had before, and it has a light for night grilling. Sweet! It was really nice of them to think of us.

Saturday night I went out to the neighborhood bar. Steve had been bartending there Saturday nights but gave the shift to his nephew Doug, and Saturday was Doug's first night tending solo. The bar was pretty quiet but we got into playing some pool and I ended up staying a little later (and drinking a little more) than I should have. As a result I missed out on getting booty AND I was feeling pretty miserable Sunday morning. You'd think I'd learn my lesson with age, but I still have to have the occasional night out where I kick my ass to remind myself I can't drink like I did back when I was 22.

Sunday the family went to Adventureland. Due to the previous night's activities, I was a little slow at the start of the day but after a nice greasy lunch and some high fructose corn syrup I was back in the game. Julian went off with his Oma for some bigger rides while the girls did some smaller stuff together. The girls are sooo cute together sometimes. I love watching them explore stuff together. They get so proud, and Emma especially gets this look on her face like "check ME out!". Bethany didn't go on any rides but she said she had fun watching. All in all it was a nice day.

The work week has started off slow but I have a goal to get all caught up by midweek. Yesterday wasn't very productive for me but it was due to more little things that kept popping up than me slacking. I should do better today (I hope).

Ok, so work still pretty much sucks. I can't do anything around here anymore without answering a bunch of questions or comments, "Why is _____ allowed to expense their phone bill?", "This invoice should really have ______'s approval", "Why are we paying for this?". Apparantly everything I have been doing for the past three years for this company has been wrong, and no one bothered to tell me until now. Ok, maybe I'm supposed to know some of these things, but c'mon, I can't know every little in and out of the company. Some of this stuff I have to trust the people who make out the purchase orders, right? I have no idea whether a reduction-bearing reverse flappomiter is supposed to be $12 or $120. I figure the guy who's ordering it should be trusted to know. It's just really frustrating to me lately, and I'm getting farther behind than usual because there is so much stuff landing back on my desk.

Ehp!!!!

So, I'll probably do a little drinking this weekend...

We have the annual company picnic going on tomorrow. I don't really want to go, the food kinda sucks (but there won't be much I can eat anyway now that I've gone veg), and it's always uncomfortable hanging out with the fam and all my coworkers. But there's usually some fun stuff for the kids, and the past three years we've gotten a $100 gift cheque for showing up. So, there's that. Assuming we get another $100 tomorrow, I'm planning to kick it to a new Sirius radio.

Or I'll just spend it all on booze...

I just had Burger King for lunch. The past few years have had me really trying to avoid fast food joints in general (I think maybe once you have kids you begin to see how truly evil and conniving these burger joints are), but when I have to eat fast food, I distinctly prefer Burger King over McDonald's these days. For one thing, they actually have a vegetarian burger on the menu. Woo-hoo! I may be the only person in America who actually orders it off the menu, but it's on there. AND their breakfast items are way better than McD's. Give me those little potato nuggets over the McDonald's potato slab any day. I think those BK commercials with the psychotic-looking King are genius.

And best thing about getting lunch at Burger King is when you get the stowaway onion ring mixed in with your fries. I don't like onion rings enough to order a whole bag of 'em, but when I run across one when I'm munching on my fries, it's like I won the lottery. Say $10 on a scratch-off of course, not the $36-million jackpot, but fuck, it's a free onion ring. Bonus!

Back to work....things are calmed down a little this week, but I'm already behind for the month. Work soooo sucks lately.

I watched "Ghost World" last night (thanks Netflix!). I know it was supposed to be some kind of coming-of-age movie about a unique young woman growing up and facing pressure to conform and also re-examining her relationships, as well as exploring her artistic voice...or something...anyway, all I could really concentrate on the entire movie was the fact that Thora Birch is stacked. I mean, anyone who's seen "American Beauty" already knows that. But she was wearing all these funky outfits, there was one that had kind of a french maid thing going on...plus at one point she dyed her hair green...anyway, through most of the talking I was just trying to keep an eye on her cleavage. Also I noticed Scarlet Johansson kinda resembles a chick I dated in college...maybe it was the way she wore her hair in this flick or something. Anyway, I was finding Thora Birch so much more attractive so I guess we know why the college romance didn't work out. Also the movie was reminding me a lot of girls I've known or was just strongly attracted to in my life. How a lot of them are so beguiling and interesting because they're unique and anti-establishment and non-cookie cutter, but they fuck up your life because they really don't know what they're doing or what they really want. Still, at least they're interesting...

Oh also I really liked Steve Buscemi's character, but I was a little depressed thinking I'm probably closer to his character's age (40s) than the two female leads (18).

The kids were driving me nuts yesterday. Ya know, one day they're all getting along so well, the next it's freakin' Mortal Kombat...or worse they're all involved with some kind of cloak & dagger thing where this one is mad at the other two and trying to punk them both, or Kid A is trying to enlist Kid C on his side against Kid B. It's nutso. Some days they're demons I tell ya!

So I stayed at work real late Friday night, and learned that the network shuts down at midnight. D'oh!!! So the only thing I had left to do was meet a co-worker at Applebee's for a beer (well, two beers since it was two-fers all night) and then go home and sleep.

The weekend was relaxing, I did a very little bit of housework/shopping and otherwise just hung out with Bethany and the kids. We went out to the Holtsville Ecology Center on Saturday which is a nice little zoo. They have a good selection of animals and you can meander through the whole place in about an hour. And I learned there really is such thing as a bearcat.

Also logged some more time playing Tales of Symphonia with the kids.

I finished up my month-end stuff yesterday, now I have to do a bunch of cleanup of crap that's been sitting on my desk for far too long. This week should be a lot easier than last week tho. I can dream at least!

I also have to finish watching my Netflix stuff so's I can get more movies. I need some good flick suggestions...