Posts from — January 2006

The weather for January has been outstanding. With very little snow and higher than average temperatures, it’s been a great winter so far. It doesn’t bother me that its gloomy and rainy, as long as there’s no snow on the roads. I know a lot of people are missing out on their snow sports but it sure has been nice not having to shovel the driveway, scrape the ice off my windshield and getting stuck in traffic backups.

Last weekend it was so nice I decided to do some Geocaching. I checked for a nearby cache and set out to enjoy hiking in the woods on a beautiful day. I got to the park early, switched on my handheld GPS unit and found the battery was almost drained. Crap. Then I realized my car has a built-in NAV unit, maybe I could use it to find the hidden geocache in the woods.

At first the trail was easy to follow in the car but farther into the woods, it got narrower and muddy. But I trudged on. I was finally within a few yards of my goal and the car got stuck. Fortunately I had my cell phone and was able to call a tow truck. You should have heard the guy when I explained my Chrysler 300c was stuck in the mud in the middle of the woods. He thought I was an idiot. I couldn’t understand why but I remained calm and polite with him despite his joking about my lack of judgement.

Eventually he got the car out and I washed it up good as new. The scratches from the trees along the trail will hopefully rub out. I guess I’ll just stick to the handheld unit from now on.

I’ve always been a fan of British television. Monty Python, Mr. Bean and Dr. Who were among my favorites growing up. Now with BBC America, I have some new favorites like Mile High (a stupid, but funny soap), Cash in the Attic and Kumars at No. 42. I particularly enjoy the British slang and colloquialisms used in these programs. It’s fun to hear a character tell someone to “chivvy along” and wonder what the heck they are talking about.

I think I’ll try to adopt some British slang into my vocabulary. With it I can insult someone without them realizing it.

There are also Klingon swear words and Latin phrases for everyday occasions that I may use once in a while.

One of my New Year’s resolutions was to be more sociable. I often talk about not having too many friends and interacting with people is the way to make friends. I get invited to events every now and then but I usually make some excuse for not going. This year its going to be different. I’ll make a better effort to take people up on their offers to get together and socialize.

The problem I have with this is the actual interacting with people, making small talk and trying to be friendly. That doesn’t sound like much fun to me. I’m joking of course. It’s the general pubic, The Great Unwashed who I hold in contempt. Years of working with the public in the retail industry scarred me for life.

Every so often I’ll get a call from someone I haven’t heard from in a very long time. Each time the conversation usually goes something like this:

Caller: “Hi Mike, how are you doing?”
Me: “Fine, how are you?
(note: we both know we could care less how the other is doing but go through the ritual anyway)
Caller: “I haven’t talked to you in a long time and thought I would say ‘Hello.’”
Me: “Great, nice to hear from you. How’s your family?”
Caller: “They’re fine. Say, do you have any autoshow tickets/a car for the weekend/time to fix my home computer?”
Me: “Um..I thought you were calling to say “Hello.”
Caller: “Yes but while I have you on the phone..”
Me: CLICK.

Now I don’t mind helping out people that are nice to me. I’ll go out of my way to take care of them any way I can. I don’t expect anything in return. It’s the people who are only around when THEY need something that I reject. Snubbing their requests for favors doesn’t bother me since not having them around wouldn’t be a problem.

These are things my therapist and I will be discussing this week.

Here are my top movies of 2005, in no particular order:

King Kong - a wonderful remake of the classic story, with great special effects that was lots of fun to watch - for over 3 hours.

Crash - a divergent group of people in L.A. collide one night. You’ll rethink your prejudices after watching this film.

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire - the second highest grossing film of the year. Not as good as Azkaban but still good. And we finally got to see you know who.

Batman Begins - the best of the series. Dark and edgier than the others.

Star Wars Revenge of the Sith - not the best acting, not the best of the series but I still enjoyed it.

Sin City - my favorite movie of 2005. The Pulp Fiction-like narrative, music and comic book quality of the film was outstanding.

My worst movie was Bewitched.

The holiday week is passing quickly. We coasted around the house for a few days before Christmas then headed off to Chicago for a while. While there, the weather was perfect so we walked around everywhere and had a great time. Between the eating, movie watching, shopping and eating, we were ready to come home after four days. I posted some pictures of our trip on my Flickr page.

When we returned, Pam became ill so we’ve stationed ourselves around the house for the past couple of days. It’s fine with me because now I’m getting a chance to catch up on old movies, some computer projects and other around-the-house activities. If she’s feeling better later, maybe we’ll go out and watch ANOTHER MOVIE. Let’s see, that will make about fifteen I’ve watched over the past 10 days.

The Christmas Gift from the people at work continues to astound me. It is a great feeling to know my co-workers care enough to show their appreciation. And man did they show it - a Best Buy gift card, loaded up so I could get a video iPod. Initially I wanted a Creative Zen Vision unit but they weren’t available there. After fidgeting with Michael C’s Zen and doing some online research I thought it was a good choice. But Best Buy doesn’t carry them yet even though I saw a demo a few weeks ago. Actually they were showing several Creative products and the Vision was on the guys belt. It must have been his personal unit. So I opted for the iPod video instead and I’m very happy with my choice. The Zen has a bigger screen and great features but it only has 30 GB of storage. My new iPod has 60 GB and some cool features of its own, especially the smaller size.

My time off has been consumed with loading it up with music, podcasts and yes, videos. I ‘ve found several nifty programs that convert any type of video into an iPod-ready format. My new friend has been keeping me busy for hours during our travels for the holidays.

There were others who gave me gifts for the computer assistance I’ve rendered. It’s a nice show of their gratitude and I respectfully appreciate their gifts as well. I help out because I enjoy sharing and collaborating with my friends and never expect anything in return. But thank you all for the unexpected surpises and I promise not to do any re-gifting.