Thursday, August 31, 2006

I've been under the weather this week-- bloated, nausia and tired. So, I haven't got as much done this week as I wanted. I hate that.

RO and I got XBox Live. So, most every night we've been playing Halo against people from around the world. We've learnt that we suck. I mentioned that to a co-worker who plays lots of Halo. He said that Halo 2 has been out for a year and a half, so most everyone on XBox live is very experienced.

Oh well. I should be doing something more productive anyways.

Saturday, August 26, 2006

August is a tight month for the store. Sales are way down-- about half of what they need to be. I'm not too woried yet. I know many people are away on vacation. On top of that, the Christmas season starts soon.

But, the store doesn't have a lot of cash at exactly the time when we need cash. Christmas Merchandise starts arriving in late september, and we wonn't get it unless we pay for it.

Wednesday, August 23, 2006

At work (my day job, not the store) we have free coffee, milk, chocolate milk, juice and pop. We also have access to a refrigerator and a microwave. This has prompted us to invent free, office-gourmet beverages.

First the basics...

Office-Gourmet Espresso: Brew one cup of triple strenght coffee.

Office-Gourmet Steamed Milk: Microwave a cup of milk for one or two minutes, depending on how crappy your office microwave is.

Now we can combine the basics to create a variety of wonderful free beverages...

Office-Gourmet Latte: Combine three quarters of a cup of steamed milk with one quarter cup of espresso.

Office-Gourmet Mocha: Same as a Latte, but substitute chocolate milk for regular milk.

Office-Gourmet Iced Latte: Make a cup of Office-Gourmet Espresso and put it in the freezer for an hour. Make sure you put lots of napikns under the cup because people tend to rummage around the freezer and knock things over. Pour over ice with regular milk.

Monday, August 21, 2006

Over the weekend, RO and I shopped for the store. I don't enjoy buying. RO is good at it.

Buying is a lot of work. We spent two days walking up and down the isles. We had sore feet and backs at the end of both days.

I'm a little worried-- several vendors mentioned that the show was much more quiet than usual. It's possible the economy is softening. It's also possible that the Seattle show is dieing and the vendors are putting more effort into the Las Vegas show.
We had a "Gays-of-Renton" progressive potluck. Drinks and appatizers at the guys next door, salad and main course at our place, desserts and liquors at the guys on the top of the hill.

It was very fun, though having to move from house to house made the evening a bit more structured that I'd like.

The other problem was that we had a drink or two at everyone's house. Normally I limit my self to one or two, total, a night. Everyone was tipsy by the end of the night. I had a hangover the next day.

Wednesday, August 16, 2006

So, Boone is moving out. There were some tensions between RO and he. Quite frankly they spend too much time together and the transition from RO as boss at the store to RO as friend at home didn't always work well.

My agreement with Boone was that he would pay rent, or do a lot of cleaning. Well, mostly he didn't pay rent and only did a half assed job at cleaning. Well, yesterday I came home and the house was clean! Very clean! Boone did a great job of cleaning!

I have mixed feelings about this. I am very happy that Boone cleaned the house. I am also annoyed at him for doing so many half assed cleaning jobs over the past year.

At lease my home is clean.

Eavan, an old friend of RO's is moving in. I'm looking forward to it. She will provide a nice balance to our house.

Friday, August 11, 2006

I've had an ear infection all week. I probably got it from swimming last weekend. It's getting better, but I'm tired of aching.

bleah.

Monday, August 07, 2006

For the first time in weeks, RO and I took Sunday off to just veg.

In the morning we had breakfast with Mac and Joe. It was good to see them.

Lincon Park was nearby, so RO and I went there after breakfast.

We layed in the grass and walked along the water front. Matt and Sandy joined us later on. It was just what the doctor ordered. We chatted, drank, ate and walked around the park.

Matt and Sandy have two very cute toy dogs. They attracted lots of attention.

Lincon Park has a heated salt water pool-- they take in salt water from the Sound, filter, clorinate and then heat it. Next time I go to Lincon park, I'm going to swim.

Friday, August 04, 2006

At work we are near the end of a 3 year project. Hopefully we will be done by November. I remember two and a half year ago when I was in one of the first planning meetings. A sister team to mine was in the same meeting. They had detailed plans with specific schedules, performances and tolerances. It went on for pages. The had put a lot of thought into their plans and had very lofty goals and a very concrete schedule.

My goals and schedule were fluffy and filled about half a page. When I compared the two plans I felt ill. If the sister team could fufill half of of their goals, then they would be way ahead. I thought I'd have to work my ass off just to not fail by comparison.

Of course, three years later my project is almost done. Their project has serious problems and I'm helping out.
Mailing money to Iraq.

Every now and then C2 will mail me a check for a couple thousand dollars along with instructions-- cash the check into $100.00 bills. Not $20.00's. They have to be $100.00 bills. Then I'm to take the money, place it in the pages of a magazine and mail the magazine to him via regular mail.

I'm not sure of the legality of this. I don't think anything is wrong, but at the same time it feels weird. He uses the cash to buy things in Iraq saying that Iraqis don't take cheque or credit card and that the dinar is so untrusted that you can get much better deals using $100.00 bills.

Usually it only takes a week for my magazine to get to Iraq.

This last time, I mailed the magazine at the end of June. By mid July the magainze still hadn't arrived. We were both feeling nervous. Did someone steal it? Was C2 out two thousand dollars? Did I write the wrong address on the envelope? It makes you feel ill. Our emails began with "Did you get it yet?" or "It's not here yet. Are you sure it was mailed correctly?" Unintentionally we emailing each other less often.

Today, thankfully, more than a month later, the magazine arrived. I'm not sure I'll do this for him again.

C2 is fond of discussing hypothetical how-much-of-a-friend-are-you questions. Things like "Would you give me a kidney if I needed it?" or "If my car broke down 100 miles away, would you pick me up? How about 500 or 1000 miles?" I think he has a new question... "What would you do if you mailed me some cash and the envelope never arrived?" What if it was $20.00? Or $100.00? Or $1000.00?
RO and I bought some board games so that we have something to do in the evening other than watching TV.

The Chinese Checkers board is terrible. The colours are wrong. The pieces are two shades of red, two shades of green and two shades of blue. Under medium light it's hard to tell which house a piece belongs to. Was that a dark red piece? Or a light red piece with some shadow on it?

On top of that, the house colours, yellow, purple, red, green, blue and white, don't match the colours of the pieces.

RO and I were frustrated before the game even started. So we put the game away and watched TV.

Analytics