I have been busy at work and at home as well as planning for the MnGCA’s Spring Event so the website hasn’t been getting a lot of love from me. Oh well. You’ll all live.

Friday’s are now half days for me until July 25th. I have to work 9 hour days which kinda sucks but I certainly enjoyed the 8-12pm on Friday! I finally got an e-mail back from the coach of the Macalester Masters swim team out of Macalester College in St. Paul. She said that they have room for me and we decided that I will try it out for a week starting the 12th of June. My prepayment with the District 196 Community Education swimming runs out on the 9th and even with the USMS registration and $40/monthly fee, we save a few bucks for the year (I think $7). I’m looking forward to swimming under a coach and with some other people! After work I drove over to hang out w/Chris and drink beer all afternoon. Definitly a nice way to spend a sunny Friday afternoon ;)

At about 3:50 I decided to beat out any rush hour traffic and drive home to be there before Kim. On my way I purchased three more .50 cal ammo boxes for the Spring Event. I already had a single .50 cal and a single .20mm (huge) ammo box painted and then sanded and painted the other three on Friday night. The sun was out and shining away and the paint dried fast. Good deal.

On Saturday morning I went to swim (did 3500 yards, not bad) and had a scratchy throat. Kim had been sick earlier in the week and I knew it was only a matter of time before I would get it too. Well, it had started. I felt better after the swim and spent the rest of the day lounging around the house waiting for the St. Paul Saints game that night.

Last week we planned to meet up with Chris and Laura at the game and Kim did all the leg work to pick us up tickets. There had been intermittent rain all day Saturday but right before game time the skies cleared and it ended up being very beautiful, although a bit too cold. I think that this cold had quite a bit to do w/my resulting condition today :( We left after the 6th inning just as the Saints were turning it around. A funny side note, a year to the day ago Kim and I had attended the St. Paul Saints Game and won free Buca di Beppo!

I had planned to spend the day hiking around w/Chris and hiding the freshly painted ammo boxes for the Spring Event. This morning I woke up at 3:30am just absolutely miserable and sick. I was uncomfortable as hell and did some cleaning before finally waking Kim up to keep me company around 4:30am. I continued to clean and watched some TV with Kim and then we went on a walk just after sunrise around 6am. We were surprised at the number of people who were out and about at that time walking! We saw a young family w/a young kid as well as several out walking their dogs — much to Buddy’s excitement.

We went to the store and got me OJ, tissues, DayQuil, and a Vicks inhaler. I looked like a walking sick person. If the store had been more crowded, I wouldn’t have been surprised to see people diving out of my way and reaching for the nearest Lysol spray or face masks… I spent the rest of the day on the couch, in bed, or watching TV half-dazed from the DayQuil buzz.

Kim and I headed over to the Dakota County Galaxie Library to nab some books. I’ve been doing a lot more w/Access at work (bleh) and picked up some book on VBA that doesn’t tell me much more than I already know but I hope that it adds at least a little to my knowledgebase. I also picked up Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader : North Korea and the Kim Dynasty. It’s interesting so far but I, admittedly, haven’t gotten out of the first chapter. There’s only so long I can read before my head feels like it’s going to blow up all over the pages.

I don’t know yet how I am going to feel tomorrow. Hopefully I won’t spend most of the evening wandering around the house wondering if my eyeballs are going to fall out of their sockets from the sinus pressure. I would like to make it to the pool and then on to work w/o any issues but I really don’t see that happening :(

Kim and I stopped at the Dakota County Galaxie Library to pick up some books and noticed that they were having the Apple Valley Home and Garden Expo put on by the Apple Valley Chamber of Commerce next door.

Outside one of the local Boy Scout Troops were selling food next to a parked firetruck. Kim wondered why a firetruck was part of the Home and Garden Expo but it was apparent, once we walked inside, that this Home and Garden Expo was very similar to the Twin Cities Home Building and Remodeling Expo that we had free tickets to last year. A lot of unreleated booths to take up empty space.

Only two things really interested me enough to take a second look… 1. Screen printed t-shirts and a coupon for “no setup fee” and 2. free candy! mmmm.

At least this particular expo was free and gave us something to kill a couple minutes on an overcast Saturday morning.

See all the pictures from today here (mobile).

I had ordered some items from Amazon.com for Christmas gifts earlier this week, and in order to take advantage of free shipping (a $6 savings), I needed to spend money. Well, you have to spend money to make money, right? Whatever. I figured if they were paying for $6 I might as well get another $15 book and only have to pay $9! Yeah, apparently I didn’t sleep well that night or something but it made sense at the time.

So, today, the package of one of many Amazon.com shipments arrived including this extra book that I had been enticed by numerous anonymous “best-of” list creators, crazy people, and well written idiots to buy.

I think that the package arrived around 1:30 or so. I had the book finished (after a half-hour unrealized nap around 4:00) by 6:15. Now, obviously this isn’t Kim’s speed reading territory (a 350 page novel is nothing for her to finish in a couple hours before bed) but for me it was something special.

I spent the afternoon listening to Alice in Chains Unplugged, Billy Joel, County Crows, and the Flaming Lips – quite a combination of musical weirdness, I know – and reading this book that came with such high recommendations.

I have always been someone that doesn’t give much of a shit what other people say, think, or do so why I listen to fucking morons that write these reviews, I’ll never know, but I openly admit that I was suckered in again and had to finish the book to see what all their excitement was about.

For Fucks Sake by Robert Lasner is supposedly a rapidly adopted treasure of the “cult classics” that have included numerous other titles I have read over the years with many a yawns…

This particular book started out full-steam-ahead in a manner which I didn’t expect (what did I expect? Dunno) but ended up just pissing me off in the end. I assume that was the point as there are three blank pages after he “finishes” the story. My thoughts were, you lazy fucker you sold an unfinished book, paid off a bunch of retards to give it high praise, and thus trick poor bastards like myself into buying it for free shipping at Christmas gift time. Well, I suppose it works?

For Fucks Sake did bring up a lot of memories of my life in recent years that Lasner explains are works of fiction but shows all the “fucked-up people” he used to know. It’s crazy that everyone lives in their own drama infested little realities. I wonder what I look like to people out there. I think everyone out there lives their miserable existences out trying to reenact sitcom characters or are just so messed up that they are nothing more than fictional representations of themselves. Yeah, you sort that one out.

Anyway, I know you are all wondering, with bated breath, if I am going to join the ranks of those well-written anonymous assholes that silently coerced me into purchasing this book and offer my suggestions to you. To that I can only respond, “I’ll let you know, maybe in the winter.”

Only way you’ll know what I mean is if you read the book. I’ll leave that decision up to you.