Today is my birthday, and I feel like crap.

I don’t know if this is the yang to my normal yin, the depressive to my normal mania, but I’m pissed off.

Thoughts/Rant:

* Money does actually suck. After trying to convince Whitney for 3 years that it’s neat, fun, green stuff that you convert into food, hobbies, etc., I’ve given up. It’s the stuff you pay other people to leave you alone. It’s the stuff you hemorrhage because cars break, people get sick, and houses leak…um…everything. Eighty percent of personal finance is behavior, and the remaining 20 is accounting. Unfortunately, the ‘behavior’ part of me is really reaching for that ‘blow’ part of the budget that just isn’t there. Don’t get me wrong–my family and I are fine, but we’re not going to get to have any fun for the next decade or so. How the hell do people maintain the lifestyles they do these days?

After dropping-off Whitney’s Intrigue at the Don Jacobs body shop at 6:30, I didn’t have a ride. I could have waited until 7:45 for the Don Jacobs shuttle van, but why do that, when I have Lexington’s fabulous Lextran

After hoofing it about 1 mile towards downtown, I boarded the bus for the transfer station and met a nice lady who worked at the UK College of Pharmacy. At the transfer station, waiting 1/2 hour for my next bus, I met Serge Steshenko, my co-worker on my team who rides the bus everyday. He made sure I got on the right bus (#2 North) and we kept one another company until we go to the Northside Walmart, right beside Lexmark.

link

I love buying tires. I imagine I feel the same way about buying tires that women feel about buying shoes. Each tire has its own engineering qualities, balancing wear, noise, cornering, bad weather, and price.

After consulting ConsumerReports, I chose the Yokohama AVID TRZ, 225/60R16, with an 80,000 mile warranty and good ride, noise, and bad weather characteristics. Not a performance tire, but why do you want one on a regular sedan?

Before being emasculated by Miss Jolene, Dr. Bud had a firecracker named Nadine whose Dad was a Texas oil tycoon.

Read here for a little escapism, and plain fun about about Gulfstream IV’s, UT Longhorns fans, and the redhead’s new Mustang Cobra.

Images

Trying out a new Image hosting site…

Album

Random thought I had in church yesterday: Lawyers and their derivatives (Judges, etc.) are the apex people of our society. There is no one more powerful, ultimately, than a lawyer in American society, because these are the people who mediate disputes between two or more equal parties. Without lawyers and a judiciary, democracy couldn’t exist with our current code of laws–people would get frustrated and start killing one another, and society would break down.

There’s something unamerican about being at work at 6am. Whitney and I heard a great sermon yesterday about how to balance work, God, and home, and one suggestion from a guy who worked 45-50 hours/week (like me…) was to go in to work early, so that he could come home at a decent hour. Mondays are traditionally my longest days, so we set our alarm for 5 am and I was in to work by 6:08.

Bill Randall has a Website. Not a blog, for he disdains these unstructured musings, a WEBSITE.

:-) good stuff, especially the lists of films he o’ersaw at GSP for the past 4 summers.

Setting the stage, I write this blog as my darling Bella exclaims, “And by the way, it’s NOTHING like ‘Garden State’”.

Yes, this Cameron Crowe written/directed opus is long, unconventional, and dialog heavy, but Whitney and I both loved it, and any Kentuckian is sure to love it as well.

Nominally, “Elizabethtown” is the story of a wayward shoe designer (Orlando Bloom) who lost his benefactor corporation “roughly one billion dollars”. At the very moment he’s going to ginsu himself, he learns his father, favorite son of Elizabethtown, Kentucky, has died. His mom’s thrown into overdrive, his sister is a mess, and he–as oldest–must fly from Oregon to Kentucky to bring his corpse home. What follows is a non-conventional fish-out-of-water tale, shot in and around Central Kentucky, as our wayward designer finds life and love.

Left: Patrick & MarkG

…and joey got to drive it

My sweetie and Joey gave me a new Fuji FinePix S3100, 4 Megapixel digital camera!!

this is what I looked like when they gave it to me:

Sordid details here

Lesson? Some business models don’t work…a free, muckraking newspaper in an apathetic town without identity, for example.

Tim Woodburn is a hockey hooligan who blew into town in 1995 along with the Kentucky Thoroughblades, insinuating himself into our sports-radio scene when the team left. From there he started “Snitch,” and apparently couldn’t keep his mouth shut to investors, etc.

A paper that I won’t miss.

There’s little in life that compares to coming out of the shower to find you wife, clippers in hand, having utterly destroyed one side of her son’s head, and realizing that she must ’even it up'.

It’s a simple story really: Best of intentions (“Just a trim around his ears”), worst of possible outcomes (at this she says, “well, at least he’s not bald”…never blog aloud…:-) ). Kid’s a little short to starboard now. Port is well tapered, but that’s because I seized the WWMD (Wahl weapon of mass destruction) before she could attack.

2. Harold needs a picture on his wall

3. Harold needs a Christmas tree

4. Harold needs to explore in order to learn and grow

5. Harold needs a Chrismas tree, damnit

6. Harold needs to come out of his shell and enjoy life

7. Harold needs to know his true feelings

8. Harold needs a frickin’ CHRISTMAS TREE

9. Harold needs a Christmas tree

10. Harold needs a career

11. Harold needs no one

Courtesy Josh

Unlike This guy, I think my home has a new Mac convert. Whitney really likes my powerbook, especially its ease-of-use and its ability to ‘instant on’ from closed to open in 1 second.

That’s very interesting, because her machine is a top-notch Thinkpad R40, a total tank workhorse that I bought for her Christmas of 03.

Last night she asked me to show her how to hook-up our digital camera and import + edit pictures…muhaha.