Holiday Update

Well, Christmas is over. N.S. and H.M. stopped by, it was a great couple of hours of catching up and fun. I am highly impressed by N.S.'s choice of girlfriends.

In other news, I managed to contact D.F. on the West Coast -- all is well, he is recovering from his food coma and preparing to spend New Year's with M. (I forget her last initial, I'm horrible), who apparently owes him a good New Year's as she gave him a less-than-stellar one last year. Reports have also filtered in that A. (again, I forget) is now down to earth and dating a nerdy sort of guy with a good heart; S. (I forget her last name, okay, I'm really bad) has a great house that I should "peep" (you know you're dealing with people in SoCal when they tell you you have to "peep" something *grin*). So all seems well over there, and I'm glad about that, because I miss D.F.'s laid-back and mellow attitude about life a great deal. Ah well, comes with going to school out in California and then holing up in MA.

And, of course, the pickup truck with the relatives from Minnesota is only a few hours away now. My father is in hog heaven. My mother and I are...well...we're happy for my father. Somewhat. I'm just a little ticked I'm getting kicked out of my bed and made to sleep on the floor. Other than that, I'll do my best to be pleasant.

Hope everyone had a great Christmas and will be having a good New Year's! Ah, reminds me, last person to contact me, L.S., she is also doing well and bouncing from coast to coast in her pursuit of studying fish.

Everybody Wang-Chung tonight.

Merry Christmas!

Like the title says. Merry frickin' Christmas, everybody. In the morning I shall gather loot, make merry, be festive, all of that. Surprise cameo appearances by N.S. and H.M. are expected.

The DVR Has Landed

Indeed. So the DVR was installed. Not, of course, without much frigging bumbling by Comcast. First, I had to babysit the guy installing the box for like three hours, just sort of standing behind him and smoking cigarettes and looking carefully at what he was doing, which I didn't really understand anyway. And this annoys me, because I consider myself at least semi-good with electrical devices, after all, I did work with the damn things for a large portion of my life. Er. Anyway, after the DVR was installed, I made the guy check the signal strength, which he insisted he wasn't supposed to do, which I insisted he was, which necessitated a call to Comcast which forced him to actually physically LOOK at the work order and acknowledge that, yes, he was supposed to check the signal. So he wandered around the back of the house for a while, doing nothing, then came in, claimed we didn't need a signal amplifier, that it was all the result of bad and old wiring from other, evil Comcast contractors with goatees, from the alternate Comcast universe, and then he ran away from the house and left me with two remote controls.

Two minutes later the other TV upstairs went dead. Another twenty minute wait with the Comcast phone support, and we learn the tech had ordered the box sent dead, apparently because he was angry with it or something. We get it turned back on. Then I notice that he's got everything hooked up to the video jacks, and it can't be wired any other way (another call to Comcast), so I have to run to get a video selector switch, and run back, at which point I realize I need a damn cable to go with it, so I go run and pick up a cable and wire everything up and...okay, then it worked.

Although I really have no idea how to efficiently use it.

The two remote controls are programmed differently, and I keep picking up the wrong one. I have a general idea how to work the two tuners, but I keep hitting the wrong button, and freezing, oh, commercials I don't want to watch frame-by-frame. I'm supposed to know how to do this sort of shit! Damn.

Okay. So I can sort of work it. And they left an instruction booklet. And if I lose that, I'm like the Greatest American Hero. Except with a DVR.

But...dammit...it's cool.

A Wheeze of Relief

Ahhh. The cigarettes came today. Why did I start smoking menthols? Okay, actually, I know why, but it's a long story and I don't want to put it down here. Why do I ask rhetorical questions that aren't really rhetorical?

In better news, in appears my father does not have a cold, and is merely allergic to the Christmas trees that he has been feverishly decorating. My father loves him some Christmas.

Other news? L.M. came over this evening and brought me her annual check of Way Too Much Money, which will go into the Miserly Science Fiction and Video Game Fund. None of my presents have arrived through the mail yet. What, you think that I, the Howard Hughes of the semi-employed, would actually LEAVE THE HOUSE to shop? What are you, a barbarian? That's how people catch the black death and die of black cysts crawling up their inner thighs.

Less than 24 hours until I have that damned DVR hooked up. Life as I know it will change. I may actually be able to watch something not in the 10 PM to midnight timeframe.

Ahhh. Menthols.

DAMN! DAMN! Of a different variety.

Oh, bad news everywhere, dammit. My father has a cold. And the bastard sneezed into my coffee this morning. And I was dumb enough to then drink said coffee because I need said coffee because otherwise my mind works like sludge and said coffee was the only coffee left.

Now he's taken cold medicine and is knocked out, and I ask you this: Why does everyone assume I know everything about any sort of drug? So I used to smoke a lot of pot. This does not make me a frigging pharmacist. Anyway, I have been asked several times tonight how much sudafed is enough sudafed and is Benadryl the same thing and dammit I have my own problems.

I have had to cancel my doctor's appointment for tomorrow due to inclement weather which refuses to make up its mind. Will it rain? Will it snow? Will it crap turds from the sky? Anybody's bet.

Ah, well, sorry for the bitching. At least this is not one of those pretentious damn blogs that makes the writer (me, in this case) out to be some sort of dark hero of the blogworld. I mean, hell, leave that for the famous bloggers. I'm just writing for the hell of it. Oh. And to let people know I'm still alive. There is that. But enough with the dark Goth bloggers who write about being in tears all the time and...okay, look, you know who you are, some of you may be reading this.

And those of you who are -- if I catch this cold, I'm coming and sneezing in your damn coffee. Go have an emotional experience about that, ya wankers.

To summarize: Screw you guys, I'm getting a DVR on Saturday.