Ahhh yes...it's 1:15 and I'm just getting up. Lovely. Me, Donna, Luis and Monica went to Cafe Iberico last night, drank sangria and had some tapas and had a generally good time. I got home around 3 a.m. and slept in on top of that.

Because of that, I decided not to go to St. Louis, because I would have had to get up at 5:30. There's a parade at 11am, so I'd have had to get there by then to meet my brother and friends at their hotel. Otherwise, it would become a huge pain in the ass to find them. So I passed...I figure there's always next year. I can get a full report from Tim and others and then plan to go next year if it was a good time.

Instead, me and Luis are pseudo-roadtripping to Wisconsin again. I have two Powerball tickets that will earn me all of $5. Donna says it's not worth the gas money to go and redeem them, and she's right. But, it does give me an excuse to do what I like to do, which is roadtrip. So me and Luis are heading up toward Milwaukee this evening sometime. It should be a fine time, as usual.

thanks for the input on the St. Louis thing, guys...it'll probably still be unsettled until tomorrow morning even, but your thoughts are appreciated, blah, blah blah... :)

Donna and I went to see "Old School" last night. It was good, but I've seen funnier movies in that genre (read, "American Pie 1 and 2," and even "Road Trip" may have been funnier). Will Farrell definitely has a future as a movie comedian...he's just funny as hell and it doesn't seem force-fed. Vince Vaughn was disappointing, because he basically acted in the same fashion as he did in "Swingers"--it was like a 30-something version of the Trent character from Swingers. But, what made the movie was the fact that Elisha Cuthbert (the blonde chick from "24") was in it. It's nice to see her getting roles outside of "24," even though this one wasn't such a major one.

All in all, a movie I'd see if it came on TV or maybe I'd rent, but nothing spectacular.

All right, I'll spark some debate now that Haloscan is cooperating...I hope it continues to do so.

This weekend, my brother and friends from the neighborhood are heading down to St. Louis from Friday to Sunday, to celebrate Mardi Gras. Apparently, St. Louis is the second-biggest Mardi Gras celebration after New Orleans. There was confusion in January when they were planning this, and I thought it was last week, so I told them I couldn't go since I was working Sunday. This Sunday, there's no work...so I realistically have the opportunity to meet them down there on Saturday. Now, it's about a five-hour drive from Chicago (a little less from Bolingbrook). Or, I could stay here and not do anything too extravagant except maybe go out with my buddy Luis...which isn't BAD, it's just not a big party. And, yes, it's not New Orleans, so will it be as rockin' a good time? I'm sure that it will just because of my friends...but who knows? I've never been to a Mardi Gras-type celebration, so...I don't know.

So, what do you all think? Drive down to St. Louis? Stay here?

Haloscan sucks. I have no way to get around it, like Troy does, so if the madness continues, I'll sadly have to take the comments off...but I'll try to figure out some way to get it going again...maybe I'll take Anthony's approach and do emails, posting the comments myself when I get them...if that's possible or easy. We'll see...but keep reading if you can.

I'm making decent progress on the table I'm building...prepared the wood yesterday for the legs and tabletop to be stained. Hopefully it looks nice when I'm done. I still need to figure out how I'm going to rig up the top to hang the shop light. There are two options I'm thinking about right now, so we'll see. Overall, the table should do the trick, and it'll be a nice little piece of furniture I can use for building models and other artsy fartsy type stuff when I'm not growing plants there.

So we'll see how that goes...right now I'm not too happy with the folks here at work, because they had a potluck lunch today, where everyone made something and brought, and they didn't invite me. I heard them talking about it, but as many of you know, I do not invite myself into things...but hey...I guess they don't know me too well after all. Screw 'em...I didn't have an oven to cook with anyway.

I got a lot done today, and I'm proud of it, dammit. :) Most of you could care less and will find this boring though... :)

I got my vacation time figured out, now I just have to get the days off I need. And I still will have five days to use...I love it. :)

I "balanced" my checkbook, meaning that I restarted my finances file in Excel after losing the one I had dating back to 2000 when my computer crashed. I quote "balanced" because I don't know where the balance is right now...I balanced it through Jan. 21, and when I get my statement through February, I'll start working with receipts and check copies again. It took awhile to set this file up, because I have everything broken down monthly, so I know how much (roughly, it's not an EXACT science) I spent on gas, bills, etc. That requires pasting and linking and setting up summations in excel. I had to remember how I did it the first time.

Then, this evening I started building a table/desk so I can start seeds in my basement. I need a table with a top attachment to hang my flourescent shop light on so the seeds can grow in the basement while it's still cold out. I'm planning on delving into broccoli. Gerard loves the stuff and it seems to be the easiest to tell when it's ready to pick. But we'll see. Plus, if Gerard doesn't pick it, it produces pretty yellow flowers (I've heard), so at least it won't look crappy in the garden. Once spring rolls around, that will be a chore--figuring out where to put it and how to prevent the rabbits and/or skunks around here from getting into it (and, for that matter, getting into the yard and causing problems with the dogs--maybe I'll unconventionally plant it out front to avoid that...). We'll see.

So that's about it...I'm going to shower now to get the sawdust off me and go to bed--it's already far too late for me to be up.

My bad...the link below actually works now...

Well, I got home around 11:30pm last night, and I sat around at work for a long time before they finally let all of us leave. That's the one thing that drives me nuts...I could work on future stuff to make this week easier, which I kind of did, but I just got done blitzing through the paper and am burned out on working, you know?

I did find this Web site, which was pretty cool. I looked at Rock Island, Wisconsin, where we're going on our camping trip this summer, and it helped me confirm which campsites I want to reserve, more or less. I also looked at my parents' house, which was neat. Whatever, I was wasting time.

Today, I feel like I have a bunch of things I could do, but I don't seem to have the get-up-and-go to get them done. I'm sure I'll get something done though...we'll see. I probably will figure out my vacation schedule for the summer months and go from there.

So here it is, Sunday, and we're not too far from being done working at 6 p.m. What sucks is a coworker has brought up the possibility of ordering dinner, a usual event on Sundays. Personally, I can wait and would rather not order dinner and get out of here sooner. But I think I'm going to be overruled...that will suck, because I've really run out of things to do for the paper tonight. I don't want to work on future stuff and I want to leave. Bunch of jerks...free meal or not, I want out of here tonight.

Had a bit of a scare today when Gerard, in a fit of rushing around, forgot to close the gate to the backyard after letting the dogs out. Of course, I didn't notice this until 20 minutes later. They were long gone...I wasn't too pleased...we set out in our vehicles to find them, and I thought maybe they'd follow the path we take when we do take them for a walk...they did. I found them sniffing around a front yard about three blocks away. So, luckily, problems were avoided.

Gerard had a "party" tonight...he's got some friends in town (and I'm typing as quietly as possible, because Gerard's sleeping on the guest bed down here as I type), and he invited some other friends over for an evening of dominos and whatever other fun they had.

Meanwhile, I headed to Dave and Busters downtown for Kim's birthday bash...it was plenty of fun, even though I'm sure some of the participants would think I had an awful time because I was dancing around like a clown and talking my head off. I always worry about going to D&B because I could spend a bundle there, given the food, drinks and games...but I'm proud of myself. I spent $10 on video games and bought NOTHING else...how's that for setting a limit and sticking to it? :) But it was a good time, no doubt...didn't get to talk to too many of my friends though, because I was busy playing games and watching Donna play the equivalent of fantasy horse racing...the game was interesting, to say the least.

So now I'm off to bed so I can get up and write my butt off before heading to work tomorrow...maybe I'll post while I'm there, but who knows for sure...