hushed gray: the Kevin chronicles

Thursday, November 29, 2007

I want a do-over
It's a good thing this week is almost done because I've grown rather weary of it. It's not that any great calamity has befallen me; I simply feel beaten up.

First of all, I seem to have caught...something. I had a scratchy throat Tuesday and Wednesday, and woke up this morning with my throat somewhat sore and my voice all but gone. My back aches like crazy and for the last couple of days I haven't felt like doing much other than going to bed though I have because that's all part of the game--and because I'm not sure I've accumulated any sick days yet. And although I've felt "out of it," I can't say I've felt sick enough not to go to work. I'm not sneezing any more than I would any other day, and my nose isn't running--it's just my throat and a general tired feeling, so it's a very strange sort of unwellness.

Despite feeling like crud, I stopped to pick up my suits from the dry cleaner's on the way in from work this evening. I then stopped at the gas station and tried to use my debit card to pre-pay at the pump. It told me to see the cashier inside, something it did to me once before when I accidentally entered the wrong number. I thought I'd entered it correctly, but...oh well. Not knowing exactly how much fuel I needed, I decided trying to pre-pay inside was just asking for trouble, so I opted to put off buying gas and instead go buy groceries.

I spent probably 40 minutes in the grocery store, ended up with around $80 worth of stuff. Got in a checkout line, it took several minutes for the woman in front of me to get checked out. Once that was done, the cashier scanned all my stuff and told me the total.

Now, the last time I was in this grocery store, a cashier gave me a coupon for $1.00 off three packs of cheese--and this particular brand of cheese happened to be on sale, so I thought hey, I'll do this. Well, the cashier tonight couldn't figure out how to process the coupon because it had no bar code (it had no bar code when the first cashier gave it to me). There was a long line behind me, so I finally told her to just forget about that coupon, I didn't want to hold people up. So then I swiped my debit card.

And the machine said, "Processing...please wait." So I waited. And waited. And waited.

The cashier had me try swiping again. So I did. And the machine said, "Processing...please wait." So I waited. And waited.

We repeated this process several times, the management types at the front of the store not seeming too concerned about it. Granted, it was busy.

I generally consider myself a patient person--I have my moments, but generally--and I think I was very patient tonight. I was willing to wait for the machine longer than the cashier was interested in waiting for the machine. But after probably five or six minutes, my patience wore thin. I was still very, very polite--subdued, even, because as I mentioned earlier all I feel like doing is curling up in bed. But I finally told them they'd have to keep their groceries because I didn't have that much cash on me. And I left. There's a reason certain grocery store chains have gone bankrupt.

At this point I was wondering if the bank had for some reason canceled my debit card. It worked on Sunday, and as of yesterday my account had plenty of money to cover the amount of groceries I was trying to buy. And the machine never actually told me the card was not accepted--it just said, "Processing...please wait." But after the earlier trouble at the gas station, I wondered....

So I drove to my bank's nearest ATM, popped my debit card in there, and withdrew cash without a problem. Okay, so my card still works. So I decided to go back to the gas station. Swiped the card through the gas pump, entered the requested number, and filled up the car, no problem. I did not make a return trip to the grocery store since I really don't feel well and have a lot I need to do to get the apartment into somewhat liveable condition before the Sabbath.

And I really don't know what the problem was with my card at the grocery store. I rather doubt it was actually the grocery store's fault--my guess is the credit card processing was bogged down for some reason. But the machine could have at least indicated it was "unable to connect" or something. But no, no. We never got as far as me entering my pin number, so I shouldn't get charged for the groceries I wasn't able to take with me.

On a positive note, work has gone fairly well this week despite my unwellness. My boss has been out of the office the last two days and will be so again tomorrow, so there have been some slow periods, but I've kept myself as busy as possible. Even had a deadline to meet this morning when Events at 10:30 a.m. decided to throw a stack of updates my way--and tell me they needed them done by a meeting scheduled for 11. I enjoyed the little adrenaline rush of racing the clock--and I got it done, too. Booyah.

Alright, that's enough for tonight. I'm going to wait for my french fries to finish baking, then eat them, then iron the shirts I washed while at home last weekend. Happy Sabbath, and goodnight.

posted at 7:14 pm | permalink | 1 comment

Friday, November 16, 2007

And when the floodwaters had receded, then came a great drought...
But perhaps I should begin with yesterday, for yesterday it was that the water woes began. Yea, there was no warning of what was to come, no hint of what was about to befall my studio apartment.

When I got in from work yesterday, my focus was on having some dinner, and after depositing my belongings on a chair and the desk I headed into the kitchen where I stepped into a large puddle of water. Now, besides the fact that your parents tell you not to jump in the puddles, there generally shouldn't be puddles in the kitchen floor anyway. I immediately became curious about from whence the puddle originated, and thus began my quest for answers.

I traced the puddle of water into the bathroom and around the end of the counter, at which point I wondered if my commode was leaking. But then I noticed a sheet of water completely covering the counter, which is obviously above toilet level...and if the toilet did that then it had worse problems than a little leak. Then I spotted the two rivulets of water emitting from the base of the light switch plate, and I decided I was fortunate I hadn't fried myself by switching on the bathroom light.

These two rivulets of water led me to conclude fairly rapidly that the flood had in all likelihood issued forth from the water heater, which is located in the attic crawl space. I therefore sallied forth (not to be confused with Sally Forth--and it's not nearly so feminine as it sounds, look it up) to rouse the apartment complex manager who came to have a look-see. As the water heater was not visibly leaking he said he'd have someone come look at it this morning, at which time I was of course gone to work.

I can only presume that the water heater met an untimely end, for the following is excerpted from a note that I upon returning from work today found on my bed:

"Here is a key for apartment #[number and details redacted for security].... If you need to take a shower this weekend you can use this apartment. You have water, but not hot water. We will have a new water heater Monday...."

In summary, tomorrow morning I'll be taking the Scandinavian sauna approach: dashing through the chilly early-morning air--tonight's low is supposed to be in the 30's--taking advantage of a hot shower and shave, and then dashing back through the chilly early-morning air to finish getting ready for church. In short, it's going to be an adventure.

And with that, my friends, I'm off to cook some frozen chicken for dinner. Farewell and goodnight.

posted at 6:20 pm | permalink | 1 comment

Wednesday, November 14, 2007

Vindication
I really have more important things to do, but I feel compelled to link to an Australian news article headlined "Nightclub 'Chicken dance' led to violence." It's proof that nothing good can come of the Chicken Dance!

posted at 9:41 pm | permalink | 1 comment

Friday, November 02, 2007

Hold the Shift key and hit Refresh
It seems the masses demand an update, so here's an update. I'm worn out.

It's been a busy week at work, and for the second week in a row there's stuff left over for me to work on on Monday, but that's good. I'm going to be a little late getting to work on Monday--and hopefully only a little late. I have an appointment with the dentist at 7:30 in the morning--would love to be out of there by 8, but based on past experience at this place I won't be surprised if it's 8:30 before I'm able to head south. But it's got to be done--I'll just have to cut my lunch break short and if necessary stay late to make up for it.

On Wednesday night the laundromat was almost completely deserted--I presume a lot of folks must have been out doing their Halloween stuff. Their choice--meant I was pretty much able to make use of whichever machines I wanted. It would be nice to have in-home laundry facilities. From some casual scanning of the classifieds I don't know that I could even afford a place with washer/dryer hookups without sharing a house with someone, and although I had mostly decent roommates during college and immediately after it's not something I want to do again right now--there's just no stability whatsoever. One bedroom, one bath is all I need--but I don't want to spend on housing all of the additional money I'll be earning. If I find something significantly closer than what I've got now it would probably save me $50/mo. just on fuel, and sure, I can see paying a little more for an upgrade compared to what I'm in now, but...I don't know. We'll see what turns up in the next month or so.

I've fielded some interesting tech support questions at work. Many of them are beyond my level of knowledge, so I direct them on to my boss. There was one today, though, a question about whether or not it's possible to play a CD on a computer. That one I was able to address. There have been others...that's the one that comes to mind because it's still relatively fresh. The Web site update stuff is still going pretty well...sometimes it seems as though I'm doing the same chore twice or thrice, but when folks don't know exactly what they want the best I can do is create what I think they want and then adjust from there. That's customer service for you!

And on my lunch breaks I've been reading a PHP/MySQL book that Crystal (thanks, Crystal!) gave to me some time back. I'm really surprised at how many of the programming constructs (if-else statements, for loops, while loops, etc.) I remember from the couple of Java classes I took in college, but I'm only maybe 15 percent through the book, so I expect to run into some stuff that might be hard to wrap my mind around. If I can figure out how to work it, though, I'd like to eventually set up this journal so that folks have to register and login to comment, and perhaps even to read entries. I haven't decided on that yet--maybe I'd just have some entries behind a curtain, so to speak, with more generic comments about news items or comic strips or whatever viewable by the anonymous visitor. If there are specific features you do or don't want to see, now's the time to speak up. Any change is not imminent, but I'd at least like to have a pretty good idea of what I want to accomplish by the time I accumulate enough knowledge to make it happen.

And speaking of comic strips, today's (Friday's) Pearls Before Swine is kind of humorous. Not hilarious, but it did elicit a snort from me when I saw it this morning.

For those who haven't been keeping track, daylight saving time ends at 2 a.m. on Sunday. Don't forget to set your clock back one hour before you go to bed tomorrow night. That means you get to sleep an extra hour if that's how you choose to spend the time! It also means sunrise will now happen before I leave for work, and sunsets will soon take place before I get back to the apartment each evening. (Unless, of course, I can find something closer to work--see the earlier paragraph on this very topic.)

Upcoming events include my third sermonette (scheduled for next Sabbath), a holiday (apparently the ACF takes off for Veteran's Day--who knew?--and since Veteran's Day is on a Sunday, we'll be closed on Monday), and then two days off for Thanksgiving which will hopefully entail a trip up to Georgia if all goes as planned.

I'm still waiting for the release of the 2008 Scott Specialized Catalogue of U.S. Stamps and Covers. I'm thinking I ordered the 2007 edition right after the Feast last year, so this one must be going on sale later in the year for some reason. It's no biggie--I've done next to nothing with my stamp collection in the last couple of months. Finally got around to an album page update last weekend--that's something that quite frankly probably should have been done in September, but there were other things on my plate in the weeks leading up to the Feast. Have also fielded a couple of trading requests, the most recent one from Great Britain. Once that exchange is actually effected I will have traded stamps with collectors in seven different countries (Great Britain, Canada, Australia, Argentina, Chile, Norway, and of course the U.S.), all courtesy of Philosateleia. If only it were a fiscally rewarding venture...but oh well. It's kind of cool to be trading stamps with people in such far-flung places.

As long as we're on the subject of mail, I got a belated Feast gift from Rachel (thanks, Rachel!) today! It's a CD; haven't listened to it yet, but perhaps I'll post a review once I've had a chance to do so.

And on that note, I probably ought to see what I can rustle up in the way of some vegetables or a peanut butter and pineapple preserves (I'm serious--had no idea such a thing as pineapple preserves existed, but they're right tasty) sandwich before calling my folks. A pleasant Sabbath to all, and to all a good night.

posted at 7:37 pm | permalink | 1 comment