You know, it was raining last year on Memorial Day and a lot worse than it was last year. It was totally pouring last year. So I guess its not so bad. Been doing nothing spectacular all day, which is the perfect way to spend a three-day weekend. Never got around to Lord of the Rings, but there's always the week. There's nothing on TV anymore now that its practically summer. All the TV thats on is shit.

So I think I have my travel plans all set for Ireland and Scotland, I just need to book them. It sounds a little odd, but I think I have the easiest way to do it, not necessarily the cheapest, but I'll pay the little extra for the convenience. I arrive in London on Saturday, July 3, early in the morning. We'll spend the day in London and leave for Galway, Ireland on Sunday, July 4, like bright and early. Spend Sunday, Monday, Tuesday in Ireland and then fly back to London on Wednesday July 7. We arrive in London at 8:25 in the AM, then we fly to Edinburgh, Scotland three hours later. Spend the rest of Wednesday, Thursday and Friday there, most of Saturday and then fly back to London on Saturday, around 7 PM. Then I leave at 6:30 PM on Sunday. Should be a fun filled week.

Been talking to Elena a lot lately and she really truly misses me and I think she's ready to come home once school is over. She did say she was going to try to work on our relationship, to keep it the same over there as it is when she's home and so far so good. She says its not easy though. Before she used to just try to not think about missing me and all that, but now that she does she realizes just how much she does miss me and how hard it is. She was asking me how I did it since I never really tried to shut it out like that, I just said I'm used to it. My last girlfriend and I were long distance for awhile, so I know the drill. I think its going to help in the long run. Only time will tell, but I have a great feeling.

She just got a part time job waiting tables at a cafe by the London Eye, this cool, huge carousel type thing that gives you a great view of the city. So she's happy that she finally has a better job. I should talk to her again later tonight. She's working on a paper at the moment and is going to e-mail it to me to check over for her.

And thats it for me. Trying to figure out how to copy a DVD movie on my Mac. My brothers friend just got his so he's all into trying it out and I'm curious if it works and how you do it. I know its illegal. But technically I'm allowed to backup things I already have, just not distribute them, I think. Don't know, don't care, just want to see if it works. I can always trash the disc if it does or doesn't. Have a good Memorial Day everyone!

So I just upgraded to the newest version of Movable Type, Version 3.0. At first I wasn't going to as I had read on their site that it was a paid upgrade, whereas it was free before with a contribution gladly accepted, but not required. I did donate 20 bucks, but that was about it. I wasn't willing to spend 60 or so though, so I passed it over, but earlier I was reading on their site and the part about the free version was kind of off to the side where its harder to find of course.

So I download and install and at first hate it. The backend looked all weird. I tried it on a PC in my house and it was fine. After clearing my browser's cache it all looked fine. Need to a dig a little deeper to find out all the bells and whistles that I'll never use, but I always feel the need to have the latest and greatest, the most recent version of software I have, even if I never use it. Call it the geek within me needing to be fed, what can I say?

Having a pretty boring Saturday, which is just fine by me. I need the nice, long, three day weekend to unwind and chill after working my ass off for what seems like way to long, like at least a month. The highlight of my day so far has been the free oil change and Elena's dad's garage and going to Circuit City for my mom.

Weighed myself today and I dropped two pounds since the last time I checked, which was two weeks ago. I was a little ticked that it was all I lost, but in retrospect, I did go totally and completely nuts with the junk food and cookies and stuff for two days before getting back on the diet and did snack here and there throughout the week. I know I need to take a little control of my eating habits and I'll lose faster. But I'll take two, or more like give two.

In travel news, I got a phone call from Elena at like 7 this morning, woke me up after falling back asleep since feeding and walking Keyser at 5:00 in the morning. So it looks like we're definitely going to go to Ireland for a few days to see my mom's cousin and after that we're going to finish out the week in Edinburgh, Scotland visiting Elena's friend that she went to London with in the first place and her boyfriend, who lives there, even though he's Irish. Should be fun. I just need to figure out the logistics of it. There are no direct flights from where my mom's cousin in Galway is to Scotland, so we'd either have to fly back to London or take a train from Galway to Dublin and fly from Dublin to Edinburgh and then back to London once we're done there and then I leave after the week is up.

We'll see. I'm waiting on an e-mail from my mom's cousin about the best course of action and an e-mail from Elena, her friend or her boyfriend with some links and whatnot. I think I'll just sit down tomorrow and price out all the options and various travel dates and go with the cheapest/easiest. I'm so glad I just paid off two of my three credit cards so I can pay for all this!

Nothing else going on. Trying to finish the sixth season of Buffy on DVD so I can get to my Lord of the Rings marathon now that Return of the King was released last week. I'm going to be a nerd and watch all three in a row, if possible. What fun! I need a life, I need my girlfriend back here permanantly, everything gets boring without her.

Have a great weekend everyone! Enjoy, get drunk, eat some good BBQ and all the rest!

You wake up early in the morning, say just for argument's sake on a Friday, and you're completely, totally, 100% convinced that its Saturday. So you get all happy and whatnot because now you don't have to wake up and go to work, you can sleep in, or whatever your dogs version of sleeping in is. Then, the sad realization hits you, its not Saturday, its Friday, and then you get all pissed. Well, that was me this morning. Thankfully Monday is Memorial Day and its a three day weekend, otherwise I may have had to hurt someone.

So my little brother ticked me off to no end last night. I passed out super early. I'm pathetic lately, the second I get into bed to watch TV or a DVD or something and I'm done for, out like a light. So I passed out and my little brother comes, throws the dog in my room and says to keep him in there because he has friends coming over and he doesn't want the dog annoying them. Keyser hears all these people coming over and goes nuts because he wants to see who is there and what's going on. After about ten minutes of the dog whining and barking and scratching at the door I say F-it, open the door and let him run downstairs.

Two minutes later my little brother comes back upstairs with the dog and drops him in my room and tries to close my door. I wouldn't let him and nearly threw him down the stairs to get him to let go. He said he didn't want Keyser bothering him and his friends and that one of his friends was allergic to dogs. My reasoning was, the dog shouldn't be locked up because my little brother's friends want peace, they can always go somewhere else. And if you have a friend who knows they're allergic, why would they even go to a house that has a dog? Makes no sense to me. I won out in the end, I think, can't remember because I just passed out. I know my dad chimed in on my side by simply yelling my little brother's name and he backed off.

Other than that its business as usual. Just spoke to Elena and she's trying to remain positive. She doesn't like to talk about all the job stuff and roles and all that other stuff because it just depresses her. I told her to watch out other wise I may have to dole out some tough love. You know, the typical speech of how she can either remain depressed about everything or get off her ass and make the best of the time she's got left there, however long it is. In the meantime we really miss each other, I think we had a really great time together when she was home two weeks ago and it really solidified and reinforced how we feel about each other.

Back in February I bought her and myself webcams since she was getting DSL at her flat and they released video chat capabilities into AIM and iChat, the AIM client I use on my mac. Since then we've used them once, so I think we're going to try to use them again this weekend. At least we'll be able to see each other, in slow, jerky motions, but its better than nothing. I'm such a geek, I know.

In other news, score one for turning someone from the darkside. After a year and a half of debating it, my brother's friend Jason bought himself a Mac, a 12 inch PowerBook. He's going to bring it over this weekend and I'm going to help him out with some stuff, give him some pointers and programs, that sort of thing. I love it when people forego Windows for the Mac, since it is superior. Why? Because I said so!

Anyway, back to work. Have a great three day weekend everyone! Peace out!

Usually when someone says to you I have good news and I have bad news, they both affect you, unfortunately this one doesn't. I spoke to Elena today and it turns out she most likely will not be able to stay in London much longer after she graduates. Her student visa expires at the end of October and in order for her to stay in the country she'd have to get a job and have her eventual employer file for a work permit for her. Sounds simple, right? Nope. Turns out the job she gets has to be doing something that no UK citizen can do, which rules out everything. So, bad news for Elena. Good news is she'll be coming home for good sooner. Good news for me.

I'm happy about that, but at the same time I feel really guilty about feeling happy about it. I know that Elena is not the type of person to give up easily, and even though she won't be able to stick around London, I don't think that she's going to give up on her career either. I'm sure once she's back home she's going to give NYC all she has and try to get something started there. She told me that she's been feeling like London isn't the place for her anymore and that this new development kind of seals the deal. We'll see what happens. Anything can change in the blink of an eye. I just feel bad because I know she's so depressed about it.

I finally booked my flight to go see her for a week in July though, and hopefully that will give her something to look forward to. I'm a little pissed because the seats they had available on the flights sucked big time. Hopefully I can get to the airport early each time and try to do something about that. I'm not holding my breath though. Elena also said her cousin and her cousins husband would most likely visit her in August, so thats something else to look forward to.

In the meantime, today I'm just trying to keep my sanity at work. We're in the process of opening up a small NYC office so my boss and two of my coworkers are in the city today setting up phones and data lines. That leaves me and the girl that works the help desk as the only two IT people here today. To top it off the help desk girl is pregnant and just recently cut back on her hours, she comes in an hour late and leaves and hour early, so that leaves me as the only one here for two hours. The morning wasn't too bad, hopefully the afternoon won't be either. Here's to hoping.

Other than that, nothing new to report. Been trying to stick to the diet, although yesterday I snacked on way too much bread. I figure one bad day isn't so bad as long as I get back on track today, which I'm trying to do. So far so good. I'm really anxious to step on the scale Saturday and see what's doing.

That's about it, back to work, or more like out to grab some lunch. Not sure if I want real food or a shake I brought with me. I'm leaning towards the food at the moment though.

Had myself a quiet weekend, which was nice for a change. No work or work related things to take care of. Just sitting around the house, doing nothing in particular and loving every second of it. I got my haircut on Saturday which was good because I desperately needed it, then proceeded to spend the rest of the day and much of Sunday watching the second season of Smallville on DVD, since I just picked it up the previous Tuesday. I'm a huge fan of Superman, so I love the show, even though it can get a little cheesy, a la Dawson's Creek teen romance sometimes.

Other than that, nothing new going on. Hung out with Seth for a little while on Saturday night as he swung by my house to borrow some DVD's for some Youth Group thing he was doing. Grabbed some quick dinner and then tossed a football around for awhile.

Spoke to Elena briefly over the weekend and she's doing OK, still trying to stay as positive as possible. I asked her about agents on Saturday and she didn't really want to talk about it, so I didn't push the issue. I plan on booking my flight to go see her in July by the end of the week, so thats something to look forward too. I want to try to go to Ireland as my mom has a crazy cousin that lives over there and its a free place to stay, so we'll see. If we don't, its not big deal.

And thats about all thats going on over here. Kind of boring, I must admit, although I'm proud to report that I stuck to my diet quite well over the weekend and hopefully this week will be smooth sailing as well. I'm curious to see what the scale is going to say on Saturday when I head over to my mom's office to weigh myself. I better have lost some weight otherwise I've been busting my ass for nothing, but I'm sure I did. This program works as long as you stick to it, and I have.

Must get back to work, although its kind of dead here today. Thankfully. Have a good Monday, or at least try to, I know, they suck!

This work day is almost over and that is a good thing. Its not that today has been boring, I've had enough to do to keep me mostly busy, but the day has just dragged on in the worst way. I'm so looking forward to the weekend. Not that I have anything huge planned, just need a haircut, I just want a weekend with nothing to do and most importantly, not going into work, hopefully.

Not that it would be a bad thing. I amassed something like 23 hours of OT in the past two weeks and thats almost a week's paycheck in OT. Payday next Thursday is going to be a very nice thing. I'm also happy to report that I think I've made a very wise choice financially. I can only hope I stick to it and it pans out in the end.

The story goes like this. A few weeks ago my dad was looking at a catalog to a very nice department store in the area that had an ugly necklace on the cover. I made a comment that I almost had enough in my savings account to pay for it and my dad, being the uber-accountant that he is made a comment that I should use that money to pay off my credit cards. He said it made more sense to kill the debt and not pay interest than to leave that money sitting in the account earning very little interest.

That kind of stuck with me for the past few weeks and I've decided to move on it. I kept telling myself that the money in my savings account was my ring fund, so that I'd have money if and when I was ready to get engaged, but I'm beginning to see my dad's point of view. I have three credit cards and I'm embarrassed to admit they mostly hover towards being maxed out, despite the fact that I try to pay them down. I have enough saved up to totally kill off two of the three and then I can use all the money I was using to pay all three at once to kill the third in hopefully record time. And then use the money I was using to pay the bills to throw the money back in my savings in equally record time.

This plan all hinges on my own self control, which I must admit, sucks. I have to stop using my credit cards. I pay for my gas, Netflix and cell phone on one, and that one I will just pay off every month as its not that much money. The key is to not use them too much or at all if I can help it. Pay cash, that should be my motto. I'd hate to use my savings to pay off my debt only to run the balances up again. That would stink, because it would mean I've wasted my savings for nothing.

I think I can do it. Hell, I've stuck to my diet pretty well this week, aside from the Vienna Finger cookies I inhaled Monday night I've stuck to it. The program is simple and it should work. Herbalife shake for breakfast that is so loaded with protein powder that its almost like drinking pudding (I honestly felt like I was chewing it Monday, the shakes I've made since then have been better), an omelette for a snack provided courtesy of the cafeteria in my office building, shake for lunch, protein bar for an afternoon snack (note to self, need to buy more as I'm out), and then whatever I want for dinner as long as I don't go too crazy. Need to make sure that dinner has protein as well because for some reason thats important. And according to Elena's mom, as long as I keep my caloric intake around 2000 a day, which should be easy and eat 200 grams of protein, which is impossible but I try, the weight should come off and I'll reach my goal. At the moment I'm about 12-13 pounds over my all time low, and the all time low was still about 20 or so pounds away from my goal of 100 pounds total loss.

I think if I associate the willpower of the diet with the willpower of my credit card habits all will be good. Here's to hoping.

In other news Elena is doing better, somewhat. She's trying to stay positive and is making calls to agents and stuff, trying to land one. Other classmates of her are in the same boat and that at least makes her feel better. In the meantime she's trying to get a job waitressing at the Hard Rock Cafe in London, which is the original! I just got my vacation in July approved and I'll be spending July 3rd to the 11th in London. I get off for July 5th and I'll use 4 of my 7 vacation days to spend the whole week there. Thinking about going to Ireland for a bit while we're there too, but we'll see how her schedule works out.

Thats about it from me and its almost time to go home. Hope everyone has a good weekend. I'm out!!!

So it's Wednesday, the middle of the week and its not going by fast enough, probably because I keep coming into work at crazy early hours. The OT is nice though, thats for sure.

So I spoke to Elena last night and she's really, really depressed about her whole situation in London and I feel horrible for her. She's really upset that her showcase was crap and that she doesn't have an agent yet. Its not helped by the fact that her best friend who moved to London with her to attend a different music school, The Royal Academy of Music, already has an agent and got a part in a tour of Jeckyll & Hyde. She's really thinking she made the wrong choice going there in the first place and the wrong choice in a career in general. I told her if she's that miserable she should just come home first chance she gets. But then she said the whole reason she went to London was because its easier to break into the business there than in NYC, and if she can't do it in England there's no shot to do it in NYC. Didn't quite know what to say to that. There's always a chance, and I didn't quite have the heart to tell her that there are other things she could do with her life, like be a music or drama teacher at a high school, I think she'd kick ass at that, but I don't want to tell her to give up her dream.

I told her that her telling me all this is tough on me too. I really want her to succeed at whatever she does, but at the same time I'm selfish and want her back home. I don't know what she's going to do, but she was really upset when I took her to the airport last week and I don't think she's doing any better now. I'm trying to be the best boyfriend I can be, so we'll see how it works out. I don't even know what the best resolution would be, because if she sticks it out and London and gets an agent or a role, she's there longer, if she comes home, she thinks she's coming home a failure, and she's not, but its hard to convince her of that. I told her I'm proud of her for going to London with no place to live, not knowing anyone and pursuing her dream, no one can take that away from her. Its just a messed up situation and I don't know what to do about it. I don't want her to come home and resent me in anyway, I'm just doing my best here. I think its just hard to hear the people you love and care about depressed like that.

On that same topic, as I was driving home from the airport on Friday night my iPod randomly played a song whose lyrics I think fit Elena's situation quite well. I threw the mp3 on her laptop for her so she can listen whenever she wants. Hopefully it'll help brighten her mood. Jimmy Eat World "The Middle"

Hey, don't write yourself off yet,
It's only in your head you feel left out,
And looked down on.
Just try your best,
Try everything you can.
And don't you worry what they tell themselves
When you're away.

It just takes some time
Little girl, you're in the middle of the ride.
Everything, everything will be just fine,
Everything, everything will be alright, alright.

Hey, you know they're all the same.
You know you're doing better on your own,
So don't buy in.
Live right now,
And just be yourself.
It doesn't matter if it's good enough
For someone else.

It just takes some time
Little girl, you're in the middle of the ride.
Everything, everything will be just fine,
Everything, everything will be alright, alright.

Hey, don't write yourself off yet,
It's only in your head you feel left out
And looked down on.
Just do your best,
Do everything you can.
And don't you worry what their bitter hearts
Are gonna say.

It just takes some time,
Little girl, you're in the middle of the ride.
Everything, everything will be just fine,
Everything, everything will be alright, alright.

The rest of the weekend went by OK. I basically spent all day Sunday being lazy. I got through watching most of the American Pie Trilogy which I know sounds really pathetic, but I was in the mood to laugh at something stupid, you know? I got through most of American Wedding before The Sopranos came on and tried to finish it once it was over, but I fell asleep, so that plan was shot to hell. I'll kill it off tonight though for sure.

Also went to see "Troy" with Randy yesterday and it was OK. Nothing spectacular, although it was definitely epic in scope and in length. Damn movie was two hours and forty minutes long, although I guess its a credit to the filmmakers that it didn't feel that long. It was entertaining, predictable and all that other stuff. A good movie, yes, but nowhere's near the greatest film of all time, and definitely not of the summer. I have a feeling Spiderman 2 will have that distinction.

So now I'm back at work on a Monday morning. Back to the grind and its oh so much fun. I'm trying to price out flights to go to London for a week around July 4th, since I have a office holiday I can use to my advantage and use a little vacation time, but not too much. Since its the summer the ticket is pretty pricey and I need to move on it before it sky rockets. Right now its $633, hopefully it won't go up too much, but we'll see.

That's about it on my end. Want to go home, as always, because I'm tired, even though Keyser let me sleep until 6 AM, which was a shocker. Probably because I had him running around the deck yesterday until he collapsed, panting. But hey, he needs the exercise, the vet said he could stand to lose a few pounds. Can't we all? I'm trying to hit the diet hard again as well. We'll see how long it lasts, but so far so good for halfway through Monday.

Had an interesting night last night. Brett gave me a call around 5 PM and asked if I wanted to hang out, get a bite to eat or something. His fiance was out of town at her parents house in Maryland, which would explain why Brett called me. In typical Brett fashion he showed up way late and once he got here it took forever to decide where to go eat. I was in the mood for Mexican, he was afraid his stomach wouldn't stand it. So we decided on Fridays, and we pile into Brett's borrowed Fire Department Chief Durango and set off. We don't get two seconds away from my house when his fire pager went off and we sped away, lights and sirens going off.

There was a reported brush fire near the beach in his town and once we got there it was pretty much out. Basically it looked like someone was grilling and a spark must've set a little tree ablaze. When we showed up the tree was smoldering, ash flying all over the place, but no longer on fire. Since Brett was the acting Chief of the department he was directing everyone else, telling them what fire trucks to bring and what to do. Very impressive I must say. So once we were done there and Brett had written the whole thing up at the Fire House we went to Friday's for some dinner. Got a little buzzed and just as we finished paying the check his pager went off again.

This time driving to the scene was much more fun as we were basically at the mall and ten minutes from where the house was. So Brett drove like a maniac with everyone getting out of his way. Turns out it was a house alarm that went off falsely reporting that the house was on fire, but Brett had to go and check it out anyway. Once that was all done we headed to Friendly's for some milkshakes for desserts, then home.

As we pulled up to my house my dad was outside walking the pooch. He had this horrified look on his face as we pulled up in Brett's Fire Chief's truck. He said he thought something horrible had happened to us, but then he realized who was driving and it was all good. He asked me where we went, and with my buzz fading simply replied, "Firecall, Friday's, Firecall, Friendly's."

So I took Elena to the airport last night and it wasn't pretty. She was taking leaving a lot worse than she did on previous occasions. Well, there were only two previous occasions, the first time she left in August, when she had no place to live on arrival aside form a hotel for the first few days and no idea what it was all going to be like, and last December when the worst thing she had to look forward to was a crazy 40 year old punk German woman to live with, which she quickly rectified by moving in with a classmate. But anyway, she was really upset last night, really depressed too, and she still is today.

She said she was really discouraged because she thought her agent showcase back in April was going to be this magical thing that opened every door she needed opened for her and it didn't. I told her she's just got to keep at it, keep working for it and if its meant to be, it'll happen, but then she said she doesn't think it'll ever happen. I just tried to be as supportive as I could be and told her to look on the bright said. Worst case scenario if she doesn't make it over there, at least she got her Master's degree and all that extra schooling and training for her voice and her craft. I said no one is going to think that she's a failure if she comes home without landing a role first, if anything all of her friends, family and loved ones will be so happy to have her home. I know I would be. I told her we'd throw a huge party and my mom would cater it, that made her smile, for a little while.

Its just tough for her, and I can't imagine doing that myself. It takes guts to move to another country to pursue your higher education and possible career and I'm really proud of her. Hopefully she'll come home soon, but if it takes time, I told her I'm not going anywhere. We got a good thing going, and I'm not going to mess it up by making ultimatums or anything like that. Unfortunately I heard her wrong the other night when she said she'd come home in September. She graduates in September, and if she doesn't make it, she'll come him December, right before Christmas because thats when her return ticket is for. Even though it only costs $50 to change it. I think she just wants to give herself the rest of the year to give it a go, can't blame her.

So now I'm back to having no girlfriend in close vicinity mode and it sucks, but I'm used to it, as horrible as that sounds. I'll be so happy when all this long distance stuff is done with and we can move on with our lives and start building our future together. Not sure what I'm doing with the rest of my day. Probably going to see "Troy" with Randy. The highlight of my day so far? Counting spare change I throw everyday into an empty pretzel keg bucket. Total rolled and deposited in my bank account = $86.50, which needs to last me the next week and a half until payday when I get some much deserved OT. The real world sucks. I just got paid, paid some of my bills for the month and now I have no money. Sucks sucks sucks. That seems to be the prevailing theme here.

Where were you and what were you doing?

I'm not usually one to post links to interesting websites or articles on here, but this one was funny, and has an interesting personal story to go along with it. Basically this article is saying that the theory behind a blackout baby boom is bull. (say that three times fast, I dare you!)

Now I don't know about anybody else, but I had a good time during the blackout last year. I was driving home from work when I noticed the traffic lights were out. Got home, no lights. No cell service either. Finally it dawned on me that this could be bigger than just my immediate area. Once I finally turned on my car radio later that night I learned how widespread the blackout was. Thankfully we have a gas stove top at home, so I was able to at least feed myself.

Elena was supposed to be working that night, but without power, there was no sense in keeping a restaurant open. Plus, I think she said that there was a gas leak that night, so they sent her home. She had a generator at her house and told me to come on over, which I did. At about 10 at night the lights came back on by her and like the geniuses we were, we figured that power had been restored to all of Long Island. My parents were in Hawaii at the time for two weeks, so it was cool for Elena to stay at my house, (which it still is, even when my parents are home, but at that point we weren't that comfortable doing that). I wanted to go back to my house, so we flipped a coin for it. Heads, her head was hitting her own pillow that night, tails and her ass was in my bed, (just what I like to hear). Naturally it was tails, so I won.

We got in my car and started driving the 20 or so minutes to my house and we begin to notice that not all the houses have lights. Sure enough, they don't and when we got to my house there still was no power. No sweat. We just opened up the windows to get a breeze and got ready to go to bed. I went into the bathroom and took my contacts out via flashlight. When I got back to my room Elena was in there, dressed in something very nice with candles lit. A good time was had, I must say, and the kicker to the story is this, just as everything was "completed", like that exact second, the lights came back on in my house! That's a moment I don't think I'll ever forget. We just busted out laughing at how odd a coincidence that was!

So I don't know about that article, but I definitely took advantage of the blackout to get intimate.

Went to Elena's house for awhile last night as it was her sister's birthday and they were having cake, and I'm not one to turn down free cake. After we were done there we headed back to my house for the night where we proceeded to watch American Idol and go to sleep. On the car ride from her house to my house we had a great little chat.

We were just sitting there, driving, holding hands and she said to me that she was going to try really hard to keep the way our relationship works when she's home going in the same manner while she's in London. I'm no idiot, I know distance makes it hard and that she was busy with school and whatnot, and yes, I may have felt slighted and ignored and not like a priorty at sometimes. I also understand that she was over there doing what she needed to do, so I took it all in stride. She said she felt really bad about it and that she knew we had a really good thing going and that she didn't want to mess it up, so she's going to try really hard to do so, which makes me happy.

I can tell even when I go to visit that things aren't the same as they are when she's home. Maybe its because she's home and in her element that she can be herself. I'm not saying I don't have a good time or enjoy seeing her when I go to visit, because I do, I just know that its a little different than when she's home. So she's going to try to make it better, and I like that.

Even better sounding was her plan for when she gets back to London. She said that come graduation in September that if she doesn't have an agent or a part in some kind of show or something that she's going to come home. She said whats the point of struggling over there to make it, burning through all the money she's saved and being apart from her friends and family when she can come home, live with her parents, work part-time making money and be with me and struggle to make it in NYC. Sounded like a perfect plan to me.

I told her she would make me insanely happy if she came home, but at the same time I understand she's got to do whatever she has to do to make it. If she does get an agent and does find work, I'm still going to support her in whatever she does. I told her I'm behind her 110%, have been from the beginning and that I'm not going anywhere.

So all in all, we had a good talk. If only we could have capped it off with some great sex. She was even looking through my most recent issue of Playboy with Charisma Carpenter on the cover, but that didn't seem to do the trick. That was a pleasant surprise though, getting that issue of Playboy in the mail. I'm a huge fan of Buffy and Angel and always thought she was hotter than hell and I had no idea she was going to be in Playboy whatsoever. I love the little things in life that make it enjoyable! Damn good pics too. Maybe tonight it'll be yes on the sex, since it will probably be the last night we spend together before she goes. She leaves Friday and is working tomorrow night. Here's to hoping!

Alright, I'm out. Have a fun-filled meeting to go to. Have a great day everyone and I'll try to do the same.

Even though I had to go into work for about 4 hours yesterday. I know, it was Mother's Day and I'm a horrible son for going into work on Mother's Day, but in the end, I think I probably helped my mom by getting out of the house for awhile yesterday. See, even on Mother's Day, my mom cooks, for everyone. But, she treats herself by making her favorite thing in the world, lobster. So when my mom gets into "People Are Coming Over" mode, I've found its best to get the hell out of her way. The more she yells at me to do every little thing five thousand times makes me mad, and I don't want to be mad at my mom on Mother's Day.

So, to avoid that, I got the hell out of dodge and racked up some OT at work, trying to fix our problems with a guy at HP. Thankfully we finally have a tech who knows his shit, so much so that he talked about all this stuff for about two hours on the phone Sunday. I can't remember the last time I had a two hour phone conversation with Elena, but me and this guy did. It was interesting though, I must admit, and I think we're headed in the right direction as to fixing our issues.

Other than work, I had a great weekend. Let's recap: Went out to dinner with Brett on Friday and got pretty buzzed on some good honey beer. Came home, showed Brett the wonders of burning a mix CD, and waited around for Elena to show up. She spent the night, which was really, really nice by the way. I'm not one to kiss and tell, not even with my closest friends, we just don't talk about our sexual conquests, because we're gentlemen. Plus I don't need those images in my mind of my friends. But suffice to say, it was good. Enough said.

Saturday we went to see Kill Bill Vol. 2. Yes, I saw it again. So that makes three times I've seen it in the theatres, well, two and half if you count actually being conscious enough to follow and remember the story. Elena really liked it, and then we went to Target for Mother's Day and birthday and graduation cards. After shopping Elena said she just can't shop with me anymore, and I agreed with her. I'm not a good shopping companion, at least not for her, because even though she knows what she needs, she looks at EVERYTHING. Not my thing, sorry. I like spending money as much as the next guy, but I can't walk around a store for hours, I'd go nuts. Oddly enough, the girl hates huge malls, because there's just too much to look at. I love the huge malls, especially ones with more than one floor, don't ask me why, I just do, because there's more to look at. I just don't spend time looking.

Saturday night Elena had dinner with her cousins, and when her cousins's husband came home, I was permitted to join them. So kind of them, right? We watched Big Fish, because her cousin really wanted to see it and heard it was really good. I don't think she fully knew what it was about, because once it was over, she ran out of the room bawling like crazy, which made me feel bad, since it was my DVD we were watching. Turns out her father had passed away a few years ago, so watching a movie about your father dying, isn't at the top of your list, usually. And her husbands father just got over a bout with cancer, which the main character is sying of in the film. So put those two together and you have a bad movie choice. Once the movie was over we headed back to my house and passed out. Just exhausted, and I don't know why.

Sunday she headed home to go to brunch with her family for Mother's Day and I headed into work. Once I was done I went home and relaxed for awhile because I was still exhausted. My grandma, aunt and uncle and friends of my parents came over for dinner. Its kind of cool talking to one of my parent's friends, he's a professor of philosphy at a college in New Jersey, so he's always full of interesting conversations. Elena came over after dinner, we had some dessert and before the Sopranos came on, we went and did the most romantic thing in the world, we returned bottles and cans to get the 5 cents back! I had bags in my trunk that my dad wanted me to return, they'd been sitting in the garage. So I'd been carrying them around for weeks, too lazy to cash them in. It took Elena to get my ass in gear to go do it quickly. As we were cashing them in one of said oh how much fun it was, so I mentioned something about it being a dream date. And then, with a pocketful of quarters I said I could use the change to buy her something nice, at which point she said I already buy her too much. It was a sweet moment.

So was the Target parking lot. Some woman was screaming at her kid trying to help her out of the shopping cart, and was just way too loud. I said after we passed by, remind me never to have kids. At which point Elena said she thinks I'd make a good dad, which was a really nice thing to say. Scary because I can't even imagine having kids, but really nice. She asked if I thought she's make a good mom and of course I said yes, because she would, and that was it.

The Sopranos were quite good last night, and then we channel surfed until we found The Hot Chick, which was kind of funny, although I fell asleep at the end. Once it was over we surfed some more until we found some trashy softcore porn on Skinemax, which just always seems to put us in the mood. Don't ask me why. So after some more great intamacy, I passed out, woke up this morning and went to work. Fun fun fun.

Don't know what the plan is for tonight. I think we're hanging out with one of her friends who goes to grad school in Connecticut, and probably going to see Van Helsing. Randy and his friend Jason saw it the other night and said it was good, so I'll check it out. Its probably dumb fun, but thats OK too.

Must get back to work. Adios people!

Elena's on her way over since she just got out of work and I need to be awake to let her in, since she's got no cell phone to call to tell me she's here. I must stay vigilant in my watch by the window for her car to pull up. I figure, what better way to keep myself awake than to type and continue to bitch about the week of work that I've had?

Thankfully Brett gave me a call tonight and asked if I wanted to get a bite to eat. His fiance was working so he was all by his lonesome as well, so we headed to John Harvard's for some good food and of course, the good beer, although I was the only one partaking in it (He slipped a disc in his back and is on some type of medication that he shouldn't mix with alcohol. Poor bastard, plus he can be a little bit of a hypochondriac, so everything thats wrong with him is life ending). So I'm feeling good after the beer intake.

I'm hoping I don't have to go into work tomorrow. We've been hacing some serious issues with our SAN at work. In geek-speak a SAN is a Storage Area Network, which is basically this box full of high speed hard drives that 5 servers connect to for data and application storage. A lot of stuff has been put on that SAN since we've brought it online, which was during my tenure, including 75% of the companies e-mail, a good chunk of all the various SQL databases we use, probably another 75% of the companies 500,000+ documents (we're a law firm, so lots of letters and briefs and wills and real estate agreements and who knows what else). Plus some other stuff is up there.

Long story short (and in as much non-geek speak as I can manage) we were having issues with a key part of our mail server, the thing that holds all the data, its called the Information Store, was locking up, which is bad, since people can't access e-mail when it locks up. So I call Microsoft about it and get a Chinese sounding guy on the phone who doesn't seem to be much help. I run diagnostics and whatnot and find that there is nothing wrong with the Information Store file, which is almost 10 GB in size. He suggests it may be an issue with whatever is actually writing data to the hard drive holding the 10 GB file, which is a hard drive on our SAN.

So I contact HP about Microsoft's concerns and they say it can be an issue that can be fixed by applying an upgraded firmware to the SAN. Firmware is basically machine code that tells hardware what to do, like the BIOS on your PC. Getting geeky, I know. So back in the beginning of March I upgrade the SAN firmware along with all the drivers in the servers that connect up to the SAN, and hey, it fixes our lockups on the Information Store. Everything should be great, but its not. HP neglected to tell me that the new version of the firmware can give you about a 30% reduction in SAN performance due to compliance with certain Microsoft standards (told you they'd blame Microsoft eventually, everyone does, since they're such an easy target).

At this point since I'm getting nowhere with the tech support at HP, my boss steps in and takes it upon himself to escalate the problem with HP until they fix it. He does this after heading out to a two hour lunch with the companies finance director (who is a good friend of his) during which he downed two 22 oz beers. So now my boss has a buzz and he's got to get pissed at tech support guys. He lies through his teeth at points about how bad the thing is performing to get them to get it fixed. So they escalate the problem to the proper people and now HP has given us almost a 10+ page e-mail full of tests and diagnostics and settings and such to implement to the SAN and the servers connecting to it. Fun stuff. Of course some of this could involve shutting things down, so he wants to do it tomorrow. I said I could come in tomorrow afternoon/early evening since I have plans, but we'll see what happens. I guess worst case is I could go in Sunday morning, even though it is Mother's Day, but we don't have company coming until much later in the day, but still, fun fun fun.

Don't even get me started at the morons at this other company I've been dealing with. They've been zero help getting their application to run back to acceptable speeds it was running in a previous version. I have a feeling once all this stuff with the SAN is squared away and the performance is back to where it should be my boss is going to set his sights on this other company and God help them if they don't get me a working solution to their performance problem before them. Its going to get messy, but if it fixes the issue, I'm all for it. I need to learn to be an asshole when dealing with tech support idiots sometimes. I'm just too damn nice on the phone.

So thats all the work stuff. Throw in some pain in the ass partners, a couple of pieces of failed hardware, having to come in super early Wednesday and having Keyser keep me up for hours early Thursday morning and you have the week from hell. Well, at least Elena will be here in a little while. I hope she's not super exhausted, although I have the feeling she will be, and I kinda am too, so I shouldn't complain too much.

Thats about it folks. Sorry for boring you with shop talk. I sometimes don't even understand it myself. I tried to read some of the stuff the tech from HP sent us and it sounded like a lot of gibberish, but I'm sure we'll figure it out. So take it easy, have a good weekend and all that fun stuff. And what timing, Elena just pulled up!

TGIF has never meant so much before. This has been, by far, without a doubt, one of the craziest weeks ever. It seems like nothing whatsoever has gone right work related. It seems there has been one major problem after another every day, and nothing seems to get better, only worse. Dealing with some of these companies is like pulling teeth or talking to morons. They have nothing of value to offer and keep trying to pass the buck to another company. Its not our software thats the problem, its your hardware, while the hardware people tell me its not their hardware, its the software. Somewhere in there everyone tries to blame it on Microsoft. Always happens.

Well, at least its Friday and I don't have to work Saturday or Sunday. I'd kill someone if I did. And thankfully Elena's been home, so I get to see her, which always brightens my day. We hung out Wednesday for Cinco de Mayo, got some good Mexican food, didn't get nearly drunk enough since she got plastered the night before with her friends (I didn't get nearly drunk enough to be able to handle to day at work that was Thursday, plus the fact that Keyser wouldn't stay asleep in his crate and kept me up between 3 and 5 AM didn't help). Watched Kill Bill Vol. 1 so now we have to go see Vol. 2 this weekend. That would make 3 trips to the local multiplex for that movie, tying my all time record. I've never seen a movie four times in the theatre, but a ton of them three times.

Last night of course we watched Friends together and although it'll be sad to see the show go, it ended nicely, predictably, but nicely, and it'll live on in reruns and in Joey's spinoff.

Tonight Elena is working, but she's coming straight to my house after her shift is over, then tomorrow its Kill Bill Vol. 2, she's going to hang out with her cousin alone for awhile, and then when her cousin's husband gets home, I can join them. Fun stuff. Just need to get through today, which so far, hasn't been easy. I don't think I've ever been looking forward to a weekend in a long time.

Hope everyone else's day is going better than mine. Peace.

Happy Cinco de Mayo and hump day to everyone. The plan is to head out to the local Mexican place with Elena tonight and have some margeritas. Don't know how well the plan is going to work out, since she went out last night with her co-workers and got sloppy drunk! She called me at 1 AM, didn't wake me up, that distinction went to Keyser as he had to pee. She called me and asked me if I would go and pick her up at her friends house. I was like, "No, its one in the morning and I have to get up early so I can be at work early to do stuff." She said OK and that was that. I wake up at 5 AM, to leave for work by 6 AM, so I can get here before 7 AM because I had some work I had to do on our e-mail system (just swapping out a bad tape drive, but I did do work on our e-mail filtering server, and that was down for awhile).

So I'm in work at a crazy early hour, everything is done by 8:30 I'd say, so I can relax knowing I did a job well done, and be able to leave early instead of taking the OT because I want to go hang out with Elena and drink for Cinco de Mayo. She calls me at about 9 AM and says, "Did I call last night?" I was like, "Yeah, you did." And proceeded to explain what happened last night. Funny stuff. Bad news is she's really tired and may not want to do the heavy drinking I had so looked forward to for tonight. We'll see. I just got off the phone with her and she's going to take a nap. So hopefully she'll wake up all refreshed and ready to have some fun.

After dinner and hopefully enough drinks to at least generate a decent buzz its back to my house to enjoy the best that American TV has to offer, what fun, huh? Then she did say the other day that she'd spend the night, so thats always fun. And thats about it. I'm rambling, because I'm tired from getting woken up by the dog and having to come into work at that ungodly hour. Thankfully I'm blowing out of here in about 45 minutes or so.

Adios muchachos and have fun!

Can you guess the flick? The ever classic Office Space. Damn I love that movie. I even watched it for a class once, and it wasn't even a film class. One summer I was take a semester's worth of credits, mostly upper level stuff so I could graduate already (the five year plan), and I was taking two sociology courses at the same time. It was kind of funny, because one was the about the sociology of the family and the other was about technology, so that day, in the morning class on family we watched American Beauty and in the afternoon it was Office Space. Good day of class, I must admit.

If you liked Office Space, I highly recommend this series from the BBC called The Office. It's hilarious. Its a mockumentary of everyday office life of a paper company in Britain somewhere and the main character is hilarious, for all the wrong reasons. He's such an egomaniac that his only goal at work is to be well liked. He forego's doing any actual work in the name of being popular with his employees. If anything breaks his fragile little ego he goes so far out of his way to correct it and massage his ego, that the things he does are just hilarious. Its painful to watch and you're thanking your lucky stars that you don't have to work for someone like that. Check it out. I highly recommend it, along with Coupling, another BBC series that NBC tried to Americanize this year and failed miserably with. But the UK version is hilarious. Sadly, I think they're trying to Americanize The Office as well, and I just don't think it will work.

So anyway, its Monday and I wish it wasn't. I'm tired from the weekend, really tired, but it was all worth it, since I had a blast with Elena being home. Dinner was really fun on Saturday and Sunday morning we just hung out at my house, being lazy and catching up on all the TV I've been taping for her. I took her home around 1 PM since she had to work, then went back to her house after The Sopranos were over so we could watch last nights episode together. Really good episode by the way. I'm really interested in where everything is going this season and how they're going to end it up, since there's only 4 weeks left.

Back to work and back to the real world, which is never fun sometimes. Did have a good weekend so I can't complain. Besides, even if I didn't work today, Elena is, so its not like we could've hung out anyway. Won't see her until Wednesday night, which is OK. Like I said, I'm thankful for whatever time I get to spend with her, especially when it doesn't involve me having to fly across the ocean.

And thats about it. Been playing around at work with this new wireless keyboard and mouse combo we got free for ordering a few new machines from Dell. No way we, as the all powerful and mighty IT department would ever let our end users have something as geeky cool as this. It would just be a nightmare to support and then they'd all want them. I'm digging it so far, a new keyboard takes a little getting used to, but its all good.

So, to sum up. Its Monday, which sucks. Had a good weekend, which is always good. Hoping to have a good week, which would be nice since I want the hours at work to fly by. And with that, I'm out!

So Elena's been home for a few days now and I must say its really good to have her home. Its going to suck having to take her to the airport in two weeks, but I'm trying not to think about that and to just enjoy the time we have together. Hopefully she'll be back for good soon, and if not, that's OK too.

I saw her Friday and she was exhausted. Jet lag hit her hard. I know the feeling, all too well. Unfortunately for me, usually the day after I fly into NY from London I have to work the next day. She was just sitting around the house, so my level of sympathy wasn't too great. We just hung around her house, ran some errands, went to dinner with her parents and watched some TV I had taped for her on my laptop. And then she passed out a little after 9 PM on Friday.

Last night her and her parents along with a bunch of other people came over to my house for dinner. Although it wasn't so much as dinner as it was a feast with the way my mom cooks when she entertains people. Tons of food, all of it good. Everyone was stuffed to the gills, and the most important part, was the homemade cheesecake for dessert. That stuff is worth killing for, trust me. It has its own reputation that proceeds it. Good stuff.

So it was a really good time had by all, considering everyone left well after midnight. Lets see, it was my parents, Elena and I, her parents, my parents friends, my friend Seth and his girlfriend, my friend Brett and his fiance and Elena's cousin and her husband came by for dessert (no one would pass of cheesecake!) I'm really glad that everything went so well and it was definitely nice to get together with all my friends and all our significant others, since we all haven't been together for awhile.

The plan for today is pretty nonexistent. Elena picked up a few wait shifts at the restaurant she works at, and she's working this afternoon/tonight. Thankfully, so far she's not working too much, although I did have to talk her out of working this Thursday night, since it is the last episode of Friends ever and I thought it would be nice to watch it with her for a change instead of having to tape it on a computer and mail it to her. So she gave me that. All told I think she's working tonight, Monday night, and Friday night. Everything else she's working so far is a lunch shift, which is fine with me, since I have to work too.

So thats about it. Good stuff going on and I couldn't be happier, for a change. Hope everyone else is having a good weekend or at least trying to. Adios for now!

Current music - Pink Floyd "Welcome to the Machine"