hello, sorry about the (sometimes unattended) mess

So I saw this whilst shopping at Publix with Jon last night...

It can also be found online here. So there.

That I am, and have been told I am, I have begun an illicit relationship with Moutain Dew Game Fuel (which is, and I quote, "Dew with an invigorating blast of citrus cherry flavor").

Before tasting it, I imagined an odd combination of LimeWire and Code Red. Something about it has me addicted.

An empty bottle of it sits alluringly on my desk.

None of my entries are sponsored. Honest!

I was patiently waiting in line to pay too much for the convenience of a Mountain Dew Code Red and a Nutty Buddy when the cashier rung up the customer in front of me. He had his fotie and a package of peanut butter cheese crackers.

"That'll be $2.40."
.: in a deep southern drawl :. "$2.40??!! Well ain't that s'posed ta be a dollar ninety-nine?" was the reply--accompanied with a look at the poor cashier like she had sprouted an invading army of soldier bugs from Klendathu.

She patiently pointed out to him that he also had the crackers and his items were taxable.

He paid and left, and I thought aloud, "He REALLY needed that drink."

I silently thought about how much I DID NOT miss working with the public.

Oh yeah, so, the Facebook marketplace and Twitter additions are pretty nifty. Nifty to me, anyway.

Before heading back to work, I had to stop off at Polka Dots, a local store that sells a bunch of cutesy stuff as well as performing monogramming on said cutesy items. On a previous stop there, I noticed three monogrammed keychains sitting in a group together. They, unfortunately, were arranged to read S T D. Today, only the T D ones were left.

While it wasn't a Patrick Swayze Christmas at the Road House, we did have TONS of food and plenty left over as well.

Our Printing Services and ITS divisions were just about all in attendance for our annual Christmas potluck. We set my iPod to play holiday songs (oddly enough, a lot of Gloria Estefan versions of songs were played) and sat down to enjoy our meal. I found it interesting that I only had 71 songs tagged as Holiday.

Now experiencing mid-afternoon lull in activity. Must stay awake.

After a few days of trying different flavors of Linux, and other OS types thrown in for grins and giggles--Ubuntu, Freespire, MEPIS, DSL, SLAX (Kill Bill edition), E/OS, and ReactOS to name a few--I've FINALLY got Freespire 1.0.13 running at home AND gotten wireless to run as well. Ubuntu was nice and easy to install, but I couldn't get the wireless going for anything. So, on my bosses suggestion, I tried out Freespire. I had actually been running it, but was never able to get my wireless to run correctly, despite setting ESSID and key information properly. The info would never stick even though it could detect my network as well as my neighbor's open network. So I started trying other OS flavors out and ended up hosing Freespire on my box. I blame ReactOS--as it failed when trying to install itself.

So, I thought a bit and went with Freespire again. The main thing I did differently was having the OS detect before its first boot and then it eventually set everything, save for video, up. After about two hours of tinkering, I was online and looking at my screen set at 1024 x 768 resolution--it was only displaying 640 x 350 previously, which cut off a lot of Control Center windows and was not at all easy on the eyes.

Because I mentioned to Adam that I was in the middle of working on two towers, I ended up deciding on Isengard as the PC name. Can't wait to get another box to name it Barad-Dûr. Yup. Hey, no making fun of the Linux n00b, alright? You're glad to have this kind of exciting posting again, aren't you?

Abby and Jon got me some Hallmark cards that I've taken to my office.

For lunch, Rachel, her parents and I went to Chalet Suzanne for lunch. We all got to have some Moon Soup. Moon Soup is, if you don't know like I didn't know (and taken from the Chalet site), Chalet Suzanne's "famous Soup Romaine, this label, requested by Museum Shops, is now available to you. The outstanding Signature Soup created by Carl Hinshaw was taken to the Moon aboard the Apollo 15 and Apollo 16 flights. It was carried also by the Russian Cosmonauts for the Link-up in space of Apollo - Soyuz." It was REALLY, REALLY good, to put it mildly.

Also, thanks Terra for watching Abby and Jon!

After this morning's party, and lunch meeting, hunger wasn't something familiar to me.

Until about twenty minutes ago.

It's MUCH too late to really get something to eat now.

Guess it'll just wait 'til tomorrow. Not like true starvation is going to set in or anything, you know?

Adam brought me a bottle of Reed's Extra Ginger Brew All Natural Jamaican Style Ginger Beer--according to the label, it has 26 grams of fresh ginger per bottle. It definitely tastes like it.

Excellent! Thanks, man!

Forgot to mention the Strawberry Sky episode of Good Eats that was on recently.

His description of free radicals and what antioxidants can do for you (and me, as well) was great. Basically, he had his crew (an atom) sitting around with strawberry desserts (in place of electrons), and took one of the desserts away from one unfortunate crew member. This, in turn, caused that person to seek out a new dessert which caused each person that was missing a dessert to seek out someone else's dessert (and also turned he/she into a free radical). Alton then played the antioxidant role and provided the missing dessert (or electron) back to the person that needed it, without asking for anything in return, even. Neat. Well, seemed neat enough to me anyway. It was more entertaining to watch than read my poor description of it.

That's right, I was completely unsure of what each meant beforehand and had not looked it up before.

Also did NOT know that one of Alton's first jobs was as Director of Photography for R.E.M.'s The One I Love video. As if I couldn't like the man enough already.

Got a chance to satiate my sushi jones with Rachel, Terra, Deanna and Michelle earlier tonight.

Stopped by Tsunami Sushi in Winter Haven, and boy, do I wish I'd stopped by there sooner. Their website is pretty straight-forward, so I take it that it's a work in progress.

We all ordered a bunch of different things. I order the Rainbow--SO good!

Now, if only it were closer to home...

And no, I am not referring to David Twohy's Pitch Black, or The Chronicles of Riddick--blech!

My joy at finding Mountain Dew Pitch Black II was cut short upon tasting it. While some people I know seemed to think that the original Pitch Black was much too sweet, Pitch Black II is much too sour in my opinion.

Yet another instance in which the follow-up isn't better than the original. Not quite Wild Things 2 bad, but not great.