You know, sometimes it just seems ridiculous to try and concoct something eloquent and grand to say about an occasion. NaBloPoMo is over after today. I did it. I posted every single day since I began - granted, I started a couple days late, but I also posted multiple times on numerous days and sometimes in two places at once. I think that more than qualifies and that’s really all that matters.

I mentioned a couple weeks into October that how I’d wanted to write more often and this just happened to serve as a great primer for that. I don’t know that I can keep up this kind of pace forever, but I certainly aim to write much more often than I had been. Now what I have to figure out how to do is how to balance writing between the two sites - Lookout For Hope has gone a little ignored this month, unfortunately. I tried, but it just wasn’t possible to meet the daily requirement and do something at that site every day, too. Maybe every other day, I don’t know. I’ll figure something out.

So, in other words, while it’s “the last day” of NaBloPoMo, and while many see it as a relief, it’s just the beginning for me. I’ll be back as often as humanly possible. I love writing, this really is no chore if you haven’t noticed. It’s just some sick affliction I have.

I’m a little weirded out by the fact that Megadeth main-man Dave Mustaine now sells his own line of coffee. I am, however, amused just the same that you can buy, for a premium, of course, an autographed bag of said coffee. Something about this reminds me a little of “Stevie Nicks’ Fajita Roundup” . . .

“Like my house specialty, Burrito Dreams. Now there you go again/You say you want burritos . . .”

This clip was not easy to find. As you may know, NBC has forced YouTube to remove all SNL clips because it wants control over everything. Sure, they show up from time to time, but NBC combs through and forces them to remove them - I know because I had found this clip previously (it’s a favorite) and now it was gone.

NBC should be ashamed of this childishly backwards thinking. Until and unless you’re going to allow fans some way of picking each and every segment they themselves want to show people, don’t take this away from people. I know what they think - that by keeping this capability away from people they’ll encourage people to buy DVDs, watch the show (yeah, right) and go to their own website to watch clips. The problem is that they only put a very small number of clips up there and, of course, they are only the very, very most popular ones. Sure, we want to see those, but if it weren’t for YouTube, things like this little two and a half minute piece of an October 1998 episode would disappear all together. Is that fair? No, of course not. I understand that NBC wants to make money off of these videos, but they have to understand that making it impossible to view them at all doesn’t help anyone. If they want to encourage people to use NBC resources, then they need to make an NBCTube or something where they can plaster ads for crappy shows and GE products all over it while you wait for your video to load. Did they do this? Of course not. These, of course, are the same selfish, stupid bastards that don’t want to pay their writers for this content, by the way, so I guess we can’t expect very much.

Some people like to think everything happens for a reason, and applying that logic, I’ll say that getting this awful, awful stomach flu is responsible for me finally taking the time to finally sit down and watch my Battlestar Galactica DVDs. No, not the show from the late 70s (which I loved as a kid - come on, who didn’t?) I’m talking about the recent series developed by the Sci Fi channel that significantly “re-imagined” the show but kept the basic premise. Dark, serious, and intense, it’s almost nothing like the original - thankfully. The result is some of the best TV I’ve seen in ages. It’s as engaging, inventive, challenging, and fun as the first season of Lost was, without the mysteries that kept some perpetually frustrated. What I am frustrated about is the fact that season 3 finished as of last season but has no release date on DVD - and yet the follow-up movie, Battlestar Galactica: Razor, which recently aired, will be out on DVD next week. What kind of freaking sense does that make? Miss the holiday season, when TV-on-DVD boxes like this are HUGE gift ideas? Really stupid. I fear they’re going to do something awful like package all three seasons together and make you buy the previous two to get that third one rather than sell it by itself. Don’t act like it doesn’t happen - Cartoon Network just did that with Dr. Katz (seasons 1 and 2 have been out for ages, but no others came out, and now suddenly a box of the entire series has been released.) What sucks is I know if they do that I’ll buy it - I’m hooked. This is incredible TV.

The good news is I’m feeling better. Not great, but better. I’ve found that, for whatever weird reason, keeping food in me has the reverse effect one might expect, so I’m trying to eat a little bit of something every now and then. It’s kind of hard to convince myself to eat when I really don’t have much of an appetite, but once I eat, I feel better, which is a strange kind of magic. I sure would like to get to the point where bread products were not the only choice I have, but, really, eating anything else invokes fear in me gut. Besides, eating that blandly just makes all the orange Propel I’ve been drinking taste that much more like nectar from the gods.

Also neato is that the official website of one of my favorite jazz dudes, Dave Douglas, has picked up on my little piece that I wrote about his new album. I like exposing people to new music and it really feels good that the artists themselves appreciate getting the exposure - they sure don’t get it from mainstream avenues anymore. There’s a reason this guy wins all these “Trumpet Player of the Year” and “Best Album” awards. Find out why.

. . . when I mentioned the other day that I thought it was a bad power supply that was clogging up my computer’s speed. Given that I had a little free time on my hands the past couple of days, I did a little more research before pulling the trigger on a new power supply and it’s a good thing I did. With some creative Googlin’ I found suggestions pointing more toward a bad hard drive - a much more nightmarish scenario - rather than a bad power supply. I also found suggestions to check out programs that examine your hard drive’s S.M.A.R.T. information, got one, and indeed it told me that I had a very bad drive - and the one I was most worried about, my Itunes drive, which is packed with 200gb of music. Let me restate that for emphasis: 200gb of music - that’s 689 artists, over 3000 albums, nearly 37,000 songs. Do I want to re-rip all of those again? NO. Would I rather spend $100 on a new drive and transfer all of that to a new, safer haven? You bet. And that’s just what I did: one 500gb Western Digital hard drive is on its way right now. Now this old drive just has to last through Friday when it’s delivered.

Ratio of things eaten to weight lost in the past 32 hours:

Eaten: one cup of rice Chex, 10 saltines, and a couple handfuls of pretzels.

Lost: 9 lbs.

Now that’s a diet.

. . . by Amanda, age 2:

The Grinch?

He . . . is a turtle.

It’s here - the all new and improved stomach flu. If you had last year’s version you’ll want to upgrade. I got my copy sometime this weekend, a sneaky little gift from - I assume - Amanda, who had it last week. What was most fun was that I woke up this morning feeling extra tired and groggy, laid there in bed an extra long time, but otherwise just thought it was a normal Monday. In other words, I didn’t want to go to work.

I dragged my ass out of bed and grudgingly got ready for work. It was when I was putting my lunch together that something seemed wrong. For starters, everything I looked at just looked gross. Apple, granola bar, leftover pizza . . . bleh. And then there was the fact that I wasn’t even remotely hungry. This should have been very strange, seeing as I didn’t even eat dinner last night.

See, I was feeling strange yesterday too, but I attributed it to simply overstressing myself, as I tend to do - the holidays and such often bear heavily on me for no legitimate reason, and I just figured it was happening early. The fact that my entire day’s eating consisted solely of a bagel and some crap from McDonald’s and yet I was never very hungry in the past 24 hours should really have set off an alarm bell. But I ignored it and set off for work.

Once I got there, it was obvious within 45 minutes that something was amiss. And then it was obvious again about a half hour later. And then I got the message. I wrote my manager, who wasn’t in yet, an email, packed up my stuff, and fled for home. Since then it’s been exactly the kind of fun you can imagine comes with stomach flu. I think I may have a slight upper hand in that I didn’t eat much of anything yesterday, but, even with the pain of this awful little bug comes a little gnawing hunger. That doesn’t even make any sense. Body, don’t you know that it’s not going to be in there long?

I can understand the existence of just about every creature on earth . . . except diseases. It’s one thing if bacteria help in the decay process of dead plants and animals, but it’s another for disease to get into a body, wreak havoc for a few days, and then it dies. It serves absolutely no purpose in the big scheme of things. Therefore, I declare that it should just go away altogether.

Gastroenteritis? More like gastroEXITitis.

Think about it - 30 days from now, many of us will already be in recovery mode from Christmas, suffering the post-traumatic disorder that comes with so much shredded gift wrap where we’re in a kind of daze, not believing it’s already over. All that stress and frustration, all over in just a few short hours, or even minutes. It’s kind of like overeating. While you’re there, at the table, it’s hard to imagine you don’t want more - it’s there, it’s good, it’s fun - but given an hour or so, you start thinking about it and realize that you really over did it.

I’m an only child, so I know - my Christmases were all about excess. I got pretty much everything I wanted, and more things I didn’t even know I wanted. My parents showered me with gifts. And afterward I just sat there like, “Holy crap, that’s a lot of stuff.” It didn’t really hit me until much later that other kids I knew, kids who had siblings, were not having that kind of Christmas every year. They got a few very specific gifts each.

Hey, don’t look at me like I was so lucky. I missed out on some things, too, you know. All of you who had brothers and sisters, think about how many times you scapegoated one of them for something you did. Me? Nope - I was always responsible for whatever I did. Don’t think that kind of thing doesn’t take its toll on you after a while. I couldn’t get away with anything - I only had the dog to blame.

And, seriously, how many only children do you know that are normal? We’re all weirdos, off in our own strange little worlds. Oh, sure, we get along in the real world just fine, basically, but as only children, we’re pretty sure that the one we’ve created around ourselves is the one that everyone else knows. The above is a pretty good example of what I’m talking about - my Christmas surely must have been everyone else’s.

I do have one thing I can say that might be a plus to someone else. Since my own gift-getting experiences were so excessive, I have a tendency to not know a good, safe, comfortable boundary on giving. Whatever I’ve gotten for someone so far isn’t enough. I’m always doubting that I’ve done enough to make them feel loved and wanted. If you’re me, that’s stressful. If you’re on the receiving end - or a credit card company - it’s a very, very good thing.

Check it out, over there on the right –> . . . you can now listen to any of some 390 or so songs I’ve added to MediaMaster directly from this site. Just click and the link opens up Winamp or an equivalent player, and you get to hear my odd selection of music - jazz, metal, progressive, ambient, singer-songwriter/folkie, lo-fi, etc. It’s all in there, like a stew.

I’m honestly not sure how this works - I haven’t played with it yet - so reports would be helpful. What you like, what you don’t like - I mean about how it works, not the music itself, you know?

At the moment, I am procrastinating. It’s one of the things I’m pretty good at. I can sit things out until they just become meaningless, and I’m trying to do that again today, only it’s not going to work. See, I don’t want to move, but I need to. We’re running out of room in this house. It’s not a particularly small house, not really - I’ve seen more people in smaller houses. We just have too much stuff, and one very small person in particular has far too much stuff in specific, which winds up spread all over the place.

First we had Amanda’s toys out by the TV and couch and all that stuff in the living room because it made sense - it was the big room and we were almost always out there. Now the problem is that we are almost always out there and so are almost all of Amanda’s toys, of which, as I mentioned before, there are too many. And don’t even get me started on how many of them she actually still plays with.

We’ve cordoned off the front part of the house as a sort of danger zone. We put up a little gate and threw all the things out there that little hands should not play with. My computer, my CDs, boxes, equipment of various types, the garbage can, etc. A lot of stuff. Well, now this makes no sense. It’s a waste of space. Now that Amanda’s getting older (sniff - my baby’s growing up!) we know she’s good enough not to get into things she shouldn’t get into.

On a side note, it’s an interesting thing that there’s a time when kids feel this overwhelming need to tell you when something is not the way it should be, even if it might work to their advantage. For instance, Amanda sees one of the gates open that is always closed, the one that leads to mommy’s computer, the one on which she always goes to play on various Disney websites, and she, upset, tells us that the door needs to be closed. You know of she was a few years older, this would be an open invite for havoc to be wrought.

I digress - and for good reason. It’s because I procrastinate very well. See? I led you off down a whole new path and you didn’t even realize it until I pointed it out to you. Regardless of my procrastination skills, I do so now because I know that the task of moving this computer and all my CDs, all five 2′ x 4′ cases of them, the 20 feet to the front window of this room, is going to be annoying and more work than I am anticipating. That’s right - I am anticipating that it’s more work than I’m anticipating. But when I do . . . when I do, the whole rest of the room is Amanda’s to play in, and I can sit on my computer and keep an eye on her while she does her thing in this big room that will hold all her toys (and most of mine). Sounds nice, huh?

I would have thought with this four day weekend I would have done this by now, but I’m still here doing the same thing I did yesterday, which is sitting behind the computer, typing, reading, playing with Itunes . . . doing anything but what I should be doing. I am pretty sure I have surpassed the amateur leagues here - I’m a pro now. That’s right - a procrastinator.