OK, so its Wednesday, hump day. After today its all downhill to Friday, which still can't get here soon enough. Today going by in a timely manner probably won't happen, most likely due to the fact that I am exhausted. I did the geek thing again last night and my little brother and I caught a midnight showing of Spider-man 2. Let me tell you, awesome movie. Better than the first in every way, and by far the greatest comic book / superhero movie ever. Go see it now, you won't regret it. If you even moderately liked the first one, you'll love this one. The action / fight scenes were great, it was very funny in places and also very emotional. I think thats the draw of Spider-man, he's someone that a lot of people can relate to, because his real life sucks so much. So go see it, now!

In other news, picked up all the stuff I'm bringing for Elena yesterday and I have a packing dilemma. I got a very large and a medium sized duffell bag from her mom and I was just going to take everything in those two bags, but I'm not going to have enough stuff to fill them both. The point of bringing two is to have empty space so I can take her stuff back with me, but the problem lies in that I think with all the stuff I'm bringing for her and my stuff I may be over the weight limit and there is no way I'm paying $270 again for an overweight bag. I think I'm just going to have to pack the empty duffel bag in my suitcase along with all her stuff and my stuff, drag it to my mom's office and weigh it. Only way I'll know for sure. I'm not comfortable taking two half empty duffel bags, because whatever is in them will get crushed or thrown around, and thats not good. Hopefully I'll be under. I definitely think I'm taking less of her stuff than I did in February when I got nailed with the overweight charge. I'll have to pack tonight and weigh tomorrow to see.

Other than that nothing to report. The battery on my watch died last night in the movie so now I have no idea what time it is. Not a good thing to have a broken watch before you travel. It kind of helps to know what time it is while you're waiting around an airport or on a plane trying to figure out how much longer its going to take to land. I'm going to head out at lunch to see if I can get it fixed. If it takes awhile, I can borrow one of my dad's watches, I'll just have to have some links put back in, but that take 20 minutes, tops. I've had this watch since before I was 18, so I kind of want to hold onto it for as long as I can. Its got sentimental value. Before I headed off to college I had a geeky digital calculator watch, the kind that held phone numbers. I know, pathetic. So I wanted a real grown man's watch. So I asked my dad if I could go get one, he said yeah and gave me his credit card. Big mistake. So I went out and got the watch I wanted and it only cost $300. By today's standards of fancy watches, thats cheap (my mom paid well over a grand for a watch she gave my dad for the holidays). When I told my dad how much the thing cost he got a little pissed and insisted I pay him back for the full cost of the watch since I went a little nuts. I did, and so I'm kind of attached to it. Its a nice Swiss-Army Stainless Steel Officers watch. I must've gone through 4 batteries, one band, two crystals and a set of hands on this thing, but its still ticking. And I'd like to keep it that way. One day I'll get a new one, but not any time soon.

So thats about it. Trying to stay awake and kill the day. I can't get to London, Ireland or Scotland soon enough!

So yesterday went by OK. It was probably helped by the fact that I took a full hour for lunch, something I rarely do, and then went home because I suddenly felt like absolute crap. I went to the mall for lunch to get a few things, ate some lunch at the food court and when I got in my car to head back to my office I suddenly felt really dizzy and slightly naseous. I got back to the office, spoke with an idiot tech support guy for a half hour, which definitely didn't make me feel any better, and then went home.

Speaking of the mall, I think there is some kind of global conspiracy aimed against me getting something for Elena at Victoria's Secret. The one in the mall by my office was closed for renovation and won't reopen until the end of July. That ticked me off. What does a guy have to do to buy some lingerie? So I decided to give the one in the mall by me another chance. I wasn't going to go bin digging, but I gave the racks (no pun intended) on the walls a good look through and finally found something nice, so now I'm all set! Woo hoo!

So its Tuesday and hopefully today won't drag either. Keeping busy is key and I know I have to head to Elena's house to pick up some stuff for her. The deal is this, I'm probably heading over there with two duffel bags half full. One with my clothes and stuff and the second with stuff from her house that she needs. On my way back from London I'll transport whatever she doesn't need back home for her so when she's ready to come home in September she won't have as much to bring back. Plus, I offered to fly over there in September again with empty suitcases to help her move more stuff back for good. I'm too nice sometimes.

Well, thats about it, back to work for me. Hope everyone has a good day and that this day, and the whole rest of the week flies by. I have a vacation to go on and it can't get here soon enough!!!

Here we go, its that time again! Time to countdown to my trip to London to see Elena, although this time, just like the last time when we went to Paris, we won't be in London for all that long. Two days, tops. The itenerary is as follows: I leave Friday night out of JFK and arrive in London Saturday morning. Spend the day in London on Saturday and then leave bright and early Sunday morning for Galway, Ireland where we'll spend three days with my mom's cousin and her husband. Then, even brighter and earlier Wednesday morning we go back to the airport and fly from Ireland back to London, wait three hours in the London airport and then fly to Edinburgh, Scotland for a few days. We leave Edinburgh Saturday evening and I leave London for NY on Sunday night. So it should be a damn fun trip and I'm highly looking forward to it and I know Elena is too, which is a really great feeling.

Had a pretty decent weekend too, which is good because it helps to kill the days. I saw Fahrenheit 9/11 on Saturday with my dad, a big Bush supporter. He said he found the movie enjoyable, entertaining and funyn at times, but definitely found that it was just one point of view put forward and that anyone could put together a film contrary to everything Moore said. One of my lilttle brother's friends who was staying the weekend also saw the film and said that the exact opposite to what Moore showed us is the news on any cable channel, Fox News especially. The movie was great, I won't go into any detail here because I don't want to spoil it for anyone, but I didn't like Bush before and now I like him even less. I can't wait for him to be voted out of office. And her better. Another 4 years of him and the country will really be in the crapper. I may be tempted to move to Canada or something.

My other big event of the weekend was seeing Incubus in concert. They were damn good. They didn't play some of their biggest hits, like Pardon Me, or Stellar, or some of my favorites, like Redefine, Privelege and Favorite Things, but it was a kick ass show, and I'm glad I went. My older brother went the night before at Madison Square Garden (we swapped tickets) and it seems like they may have played a better set list, but what you going to do? It was good, I enjoyed it. Not the best concert I've ever seen, but not the worst. A good rock show.

I also headed to the mall to check out the lingerie situation at Victoria's Secret and was highly disappointed. It's their semi-annual sale so nothing was on display like it normally is. Everything that was front and center were pajamas, and that just won't do. Everything else was off to the side in no discernable pattern or in bins and I'm sorry, I'm a guy, I'm not digging through the bins. I may have to check out the one in the mall by my office during my lunch break one day this week. Need to get something new for Elena. =)~

And that's about it for now. Go see Fahrenheit 9/11 as soon as you can, you won't regret it!!!

Should be a simple weekend, relaxing and entertaining would be two good words to describe it. This is all I have on my plate:

Saturday: Go see Fahrenheit 9/11 with my dad and at least try to convince him what a total tool our president is. Rock out to Incubus at Nassau Coliseum tonight with my little brother and two of his friends I actually like.

Sunday: Get supplies for my trip. I leave this coming Friday and I can't wait. Need to hit Target for things like deodorant and need to hit Victoria's Secret for some nice unmentionables for Elena.

That's about it. Short and sweet, just the way I like it. Should kill the weekend in a decent manner and all thats left standing between me and a jaunt around the UK, Ireland and Scotland is a week of work. Hope everyone has a good weekend. I'm out!

I have completely lost track of time here, and I'm not sure if thats a good thing or a bad thing. I guess its a good thing that it is Thursday, because at least I'm close to the end of the week and the weekend. Time going by fast in the next week is very important. I need next Friday night to get here already so I can hop on that plane to the UK and see Elena already, because I miss her and can't wait to see her. I'm so looking forward to this trip and I know she is too, and that makes me happy.

Thankfully I should have enough this weekend to keep myself busy. I am going to see Incubus on Saturday night. Unfortunately they're playing at Nassau Coliseum, which is directly across the street from my office and work is the last thing I want to be reminded of while at a concert. The show should be awesome and I'm really looking forward to it. I also want to go see Fahrenheit 9/11 this weekend. Its playing at the huge multiplex by my house and the only problem is I have no one to go with. My brothers, the morons that they are don't care to go see a documentary, and the only person I could think of that would want to see it, my Dad, probably won't, because he's so pro-Bush its sickening. I think he just doesn't want to give Michael Moors whatever he makes from one ticket sale. Maybe if I offer to pay. Who knows.

Other than that nothing going on for the weekend. Need to do some shopping for my trip. Need to pick up the neccessary odds and ends that I need, like bathroom stuff and whatnot. I'm debating a trip to Victoria's Secret as well. I'm pretty proud of myself, usually I don't have a problem going in there, browsing and picking something out for Elena. The only problem I have in that store is that they make it so damn hot that after five minutes you're sweating and then it looks like you're uncomfortable being amongst all the underwear and lingerie, but I'm not, really. And I must say, I think I have pretty good taste in the unmentionables department, or so Elena says. We'll see.

That's about it. Wishing for this day to end, thats for sure. Its been one long ass week. I guess working on a Sunday has a way of making the week too long. Thankfully no work for me on Sunday. Woo hoo! Hope everyone is well out there. Adios for now!

Thank whatever deity you pray to that I'll be getting one soon enough. This time, two weeks from now I'll be in the lovely town of Galway, Ireland with my beautiful and loving girlfriend. The problem is can't get here soon enough! I'm exhausted and need a break, desperately! Work is starting to get to me and thats never a good thing.

I must've spoken to tech support people at at least three different companies today. Not that they weren't helpful, they were, its just a lot of different problems I'm working at the same time and none of them are making much headway and that frustrates me to no end. I don't like it when things don't work. I get even more pissed out when they work, but work like crap and you have to fight the computer to do anything. It should never be like that. Hopefully I'll be able to sort all this stuff out before I go away, because the last thing I want is all this stuff hanging over my head while I'm away and have it all waiting for me when I get back, jet lagged like a mofo.

In happier news, I was chatting with Elena last night and it looks like she'll be home for good by the end of September. Her roommate doesn't want to stick around into October and their rent is due on the 23rd of September, so they'll probably vacate by then, which is fantastic news for me. I still feel a little guilty about being happy about it all since Elena still on some level thinks the whole London thing was a failure. I keep reassuring her that it wasn't a waste of time and hope that good things start happening for her when she gets home. Only time will tell.

All I have to say is the next week and five days or so better not drag on. I want to get the hell out of this country in the worst way!

This is how every day of a long distance relationship should be, its a simple equation:

Web cams + uninhibited girlfriend = you do the math.

So I came across this very interesting article today in my web surfing. Talks about the new CD by Velvet Revolver, the band made up basically of Guns N' Roses, but with Scott Weiland of Stone Temple Pilots as the front man. Turns out that the CD, unbeknownst to a lot of people came with some copy protection that prohibits you from ripping the songs into mp3 form. I thought it was odd because I bought the CD, being a fan of Scott Weiland and STP and digging the two songs I'd heard off the CD so far, and popped it into my PowerBook and had no problem ripping them into iTunes. I transferred the songs just fine onto my iPod mini and played them just fine from both.

After a little digging and hearing a lot of people complain about not being able to play the CD on their PC it turns out Macs don't seem to be affected by the CD's copy protection. It works like this. You pop the CD into your Windows PC and it installs some kind of hidden file that causes your computer to rip the CD incorrectly. I think I read somewhere that there are Windows Media Files on the CD somewhere, but the iPod doesn't support WMA, so you're SOL there. As a side note, you can just hold down the shift key when you pop the CD in to disable Auto-Play in Windows, but its just so much fun hearing Windows users on Amazon.com complain that the CD is defective because it won't play on their computer.

Again, Mac's rule, Windows sucks. End of story. I'm going to go rock out to some Velvet Revolver via iTunes or my iPod. Why? Because they rock and because I can.

All I can say is thankfully its Friday and I have tomorrow off. Not Sunday, because I have to come into work, again, to try and fix some things. But I guess thats OK. No one's here on a Sunday, the OT is nice and its not like my family was doing anything special for Father's Day. Hell, my dad sits on the couch watching TV all weekend anyway. Every weekend is Father's Day in that respect.

So why the week from hell? I don't even know where to begin. I'll just try to sum it up as wuickly as possible. There was the horror of giving blood and it going terribly wrong. Came home that night to no power. Our e-mail filter at work was on the fritz Wednesday afternoon and was the biggest pain the ass to fix. It runs like crap as it is, something I'm trying to fix this weekend, so having to fight it to get to work again is not fun. We've also been getting errors on our main mail server and when I call Microsoft about it to get some ideas on how to fix it I get idiots who can't speak English and who just throw articles at me that they don't even understand and the guys are named Ankash and Sameer (no, not the guy from Office Space).

Now, I'm not racist or prejudiced or anything like that. I don't have anything against foreigners. Its just a pain in the ass that every time I call for tech support with a major company like Dell, Microsoft of HP I get some idiot in India reading a script that knows less than I do. It got to the point where this guy yesterday wanted to remote connect to our server to take a peak for himself. At that point I asked Sameer to connect me with someone else because I wasn't comfortable dealing with him at that point. Luckily I got a guy named Joe on the line that spoke perfect English. Just what someone working tech support at a company like Microsoft should do. I mean, they can afford to hire people that are competant and speak perfect English, they only have $56 billion in cash on hand.

So thats just a short snippet of my week from hell. Big plans for tomorrow include a hair cut and hopefully sleep. Keyser will be sleeping in his cage in my dad's office, which is as far away from my bedroom as possible for the foreseeable future because I'm sick of waking up at 4 AM every morning and catering to his wishes. He's going to have to learn that I'm in charge. After a week or so I'll let him back in my bed and see how he behaves. His waking up so damn early and basically demanding to be fed is defintely a behavioral problem. He's gotten away with it for so long that he's just used to it. He'll learn, the hard way if possible. Don't get me wrong, I love my dog, I just love sleep more. And more sleep definitely outweighs having him sleep in my bed. Hopefully my family will go along with it and not let him out of his cage until the appropriate time. When it comes to the dog I don't think anyone in my family quite understands how you're supposed to set rules and follow them, or how to keep him from bolting out the door every time you go into the garage.

Alright, I'm starting to rant so that means its time to sign off. Hope everyone had a better week than me and hopefully the weekend will be decent, aside from working (which is really OK because the OT is nice as I get ready to go on vacation in two weeks).

And in case you're wondering, that is sarcasm right there. Thank you. As if after the whole donation fiasco things couldn't get any worse, I come home, and we have selective power in the house. For some reason, only some of the lights and what seemed like no power outlets were working. I yell at my little brother Mark who tells me this while he's laying on his ass on the couch. I said check the breakers in the garage, he said he did and they were all on. He said our mom had called the power company and something about a transformer blowing up somewhere that was causing the problem. Now what does one do without power?

I was a little ticked because I was supposed to call Elena when I got home and couldn't because in this day and age when every phone in your house is a portable one, how can you make a call with no electricity? You can't, but I could use my cell phone at the wonderful international rate of $0.15 a minute. So I finally try to relax for the day out on the deck, since I get a crap cell signal in the house, and I'm talking to Elena and she's exhausted from taking three dance classes in a row, and she hasn't taken a dance class since before Christmas, so needless to say she'll be sore in the morning. She said she was tired of moping around being fat and lazy (two things she isn't, but try to convince her of that, she can be stubborn sometimes, but can't we all) so she said she was going to make the most of the time she had left there, which is definitely the spirit to have.

Of course I have to have my conversation interrupted by my dad as he's yelling at me that the dog got out of the house, again. What he's really saying is I can't seem to get it into my head to not open the door to garage while the dog is at my heels. So I chase Keyser down to the next door neighbors back porch, scoop him up in my arms and carry him home. And then I called Elena back, told her the horror story of the blood donation and had a really good little talk. She's been dropping all these little lines and thoughts here and there. A few weeks ago it was, "When we move in we're going to have a huge DVD collection." (my family has about 400+ between all of my brothers and whatever we've bought my dad, and she's got at least 100, we're movie people, so we have that in common) to a couple of weeks ago when we were talking about picky eating, "When we're married you're going to eat everything that I cook for you." Fair enough. Today we were talking about travel and I said I know where we should travel to next, and she said Italy, and those were my thoughts exactly. Randy's friend Andrea, the Grace to his Will, except he's not gay, (actually he's on a date at the moment with a girl named Beth and it must be going well because he's still not home and its past 10, wow I'm babbling) she just got back from Italy and said it was amazing. So I say to Elena that we should definitely go there when she comes back, maybe we can go next year when I have more vacation time and my wallet recovers and she says that her and her roommate where thinking that Italy would be the perfect place to go on a honeymoon. I called her on all three of those statements and asked what was up? Not that they scare me or anything, I actually like hearing her say those things. She just said thats what she was feeling and that she felt like she wanted to express it. Cool with me.

So I hung up with Elena because she was about to pass out and my parents joined me on the deck with Keyser, who had tons of fun running around the pool and eating leaves. I think he really enjoys the deck and pool because he gets to run free within the fenced in area and pretend like he's an outside dog when he's obviously not. My dad was sitting on the deck by the steps with his feet in the water and Keyser walked along next to him and started walking down the stairs and into the pool. My dad had to grab him by the collar and explain to him that he can't go in the pool alone, like you would to a little kid, except that just like a little kid he's not going to understand. Strangely enough though, he didn't try to go in again, he did jump up on the diving board a few times and walk out to the edge. I'm going to die laughing the day he actually does jump in, and I know that day is soon. He already jumps in from the side sometimes, when he's not falling in.

While all this is going on I have an ice pack on my arm to stop it from bruising, or at least control it so its not as bad. I must say, paper towels have come a long way in this day and age. I was able to use the same paper towel, as it got wet from the condensation from the ice, throughout the whole night. I good two hours or so. Honestly, the ziplock bag gave out and spring a leek before the paper towels tore. I spent the rest of the night praying that my laptop battery would hold out so I could watch all of 50 First Dates on DVD. Never saw it before and it was cute. Made a copy for Elena, since she's the biggest Adam Sandler fan. Thankfully the power came back on two hours ago so we have AC as its going to be a hot and humid night.

And with that I'm going to put this perfect day to rest and go to sleep. Here's to hoping tomorrow goes slightly better. It honestly can't be much worse than today.

But somehow it didn't work out and now my poor arm has to suffer. My building had a blood drive today, and like the good person I am I signed up to donate. I head down at my scheduled time and the woman takes one look at me and asks if I'd like to do a double red donation. I didn't really have anything pressing at work and I figured it would be a good thing to do so I said what the hell, why not? I fill out the paperwork, go through the standard tests and eventually sit down in the faux-lounge chair to start. It looked like it would be kind of cool. They hooked me up to this funky machine that was basically going to suck the blood out of me, separate it in a centrifuge to take just the red blood cells out, and put back in me whatever it doesn't need. Pretty cool, huh?

So they finally stick me with the needle and for some reason even though it was a smaller needle it hurt a whole lot more. Then the tech was having problems collecting enough blood to take sample vials with. So they took the needle out slightly and that was kind of my arms undoing. So they start the process and the blood is flowing out of me nicely. I notice the machine spinning away, separating it out into three bags, one for the blood from my arm, one with the red blood cells and one with the plasma and everything else.

When it came time to put everything that the machine didn't need back in is when the trouble started. They said I should be able to feel it going back in and I sure felt something, a whole lot of stinging and pain. Turns out the needle wasn't in correctly or enough so instead of pumping the plasma and stuff back into my vein, it was putting some into my vein and some into the tissue surrounding it, making my arm puff up like crazy from all the fluid. So they had to stop before they ever got a chance to take another batch of red blood cells, and the techs apologized profusely to me and said I'd probably have a nice bruise on my arm to show for it. I can't wait.

And I should also have my head examined while I'm at it. While I was enjoying the complementary apple juice and Oreo's as my treat they coerced me into signing up for a platelet donation in September. That works kind of similar to what I just did except they spin the blood to take just the platelets and put everything else back in with some saline, which I'm told makes you really, really cold. I'm doing it in the beginning of September, so hopefully the air will warm me right up. Apparently I have a blood type that makes them want my platelets because they keep hounding me to donate them. I must've gotten two letters in the mail promising a $25 gift card to Best Buy just for donating. Something tells me I'm not going to get one this time, but we'll see. Hopefully this time when I try to do a good deed it won't end up biting me in the ass, or severely bruising my arm.

Yeah, I watched Office Space over the weekend, so I'm definitely not in the mood for a Monday morning. But of course I won't say anything like that, you can get your ass kicked for saying something like that. I'm just tired. I haven't been getting a good nights sleep in a long while and I think its all Keyser's fault. The bastard keeps waking up at 5 AM, insisting on going to the bathroom, being fed, bathroom again and then we go back to sleep, by which time, if I'm lucky I get an extra 45 minutes of sleep. I think thats killing me. And I thought he was going to be exhausted big time last night and actually let me sleep. Wrong.

We had him out on the deck and by the pool, fenced in of course, all afternoon. He was running all over the place. Mark was in the pool and splashing around, taunting him. Keyser would run to the edge of the pool and bark in Mark's face. Sometime he'd jump in after him, a couple of times he slipped and fell in and he would just swim out by the stairs, get out of the pool, shake off and then jump on either myself or Randy, while we were trying to relax and get some sun. I thought for sure he'd be wiped, and he was, he passed out and slept, until about 4 AM when he had to go outside. Then 5 AM it was time for food. Then 6 AM my alarm clock went off.

Add into account that I went out with my friends Saturday night, didn't get to bed until well past midnight and had to wake up at 6 to go into work for five boring hours of testing things. It sucks, but the only other alternative is making Keyser sleep in his cage on the other side of the house, and I would just feel too bad doing something like that. We'll see though, I'll have to think of something because this is getting out of control. Hell, I am so looking forward to going away, just so I can get a decent nights sleep without the pooch waking me up.

I need to book my hotel for Scotland soon. I'm waiting on a response from Elena's friend and that may mean I'm waiting forever. If I don't hear anything by the end of today or tomorrow at the earliest, I'm just going to book it because it looks like a decent hotel right in the middle of the action in Edinburgh. I really can't wait to get away. Only two and a half weeks away. I miss Elena and especially more now that things are much better between us. She sent me a sweet e-card the other day and that made me feel good. I don't know, I just miss her and feel like if she'd be here we could take our relationship to the next level, whatever that is, but instead we're both just idling until she gets back. I hope that she really does come home in September or October. I don't think I could handle it if she didn't. We've been doing this long distance thing for almost a year and its really starting to wear on me. But deep down inside I know I'll be able to stick it out, because I know she's worth it.

Something weird happened to her the other day though. She was at her new job, working as a waitress in a cafe on the south bank of the Thames, close to Big Ben and Parliament and the London Eye and she had fish for lunch. There must've been something wrong with it because she said she had a horrible allergic reaction, to the point where they brought her to the hospital and had to give her antihistamines and other drugs through an IV. Scary stuff. But she says she's better and even went back to work yesterday and worked for 12 hours. Crazy.

Alright, back to work and back to the Mondays. Hope everyone else has a better day. I'm just hoping I make it through this one.

I must say it, the concert last night was amazing! One of the best shows I've been to recently. I can't say best show ever because that was, without a doubt, going to see Pearl Jam with Elena last year, especially since they played my favorite Pearl jam song of all time, the song whose lyrics gave this blog its name, "Rearviewmirror." But Blink and No Doubt put on one hell of a show put together. It seems like an odd pairing of groups, but it was definitely cool

First off, Blink-182. I must admit, I have their latest CD, but I haven't really listened to it, so of course when they played new songs, I didn't really know them that well. Honestly, I probably knew every other song that they played, and thats really how it went down. Song I knew, song I didn't know, song I knew, song I didn't know, etc, etc, and they tell two friends and they tell two friends... you get the point. But they played the good stuff. They opened with "Feeling This", the first single off their new CD, and played all the hits, "Dammit", "What's My Age Again?", "Rock Show", "Adam's Song", "Stay Together For The Kids", "All The Small Things" and so on. They played a pretty cool medley in the beginning of a couple older songs from their first two albums. And of course, their stage banter was juvenile, but hilarious. They must've played Boston previously and not really liked the crowds energy because they were bashing Boston big time, which is always going to go over well in NY, especially with the Yankees fans, because they hate the Red Sox. One funny thing was the lead singer/guitarist said that everyone in Boston could suck on his f-ing penis, and then paused and took a moment to say hi to all the mom's in the crowd. Funny stuff.

No Doubt were amazing! I saw them years ago opening for Bush and the Goo Goo Dolls and didn't really know them, but last night they kicked ass, and Gwen Stefani is so goddamn gorgeous. She was basically down to just some funky pants and a bikini top/bra type thing by the third song. Plus she's running around stage, dancing, shaking her ass. All good stuff. They basically played through all their hits and only their hits. There was maybe one song I wasn't familiar with, but thats it. Everything else was a single or a popular song. If you've heard a song on the radio, they played it, but they kicked ass doing it!

All in all a good night, but now I'm exhausted because I didn't get home until like 12:30 and of course didn't go to bed until 1 and the doggy woke me up at 5. So I'm shot, but it was worth it. Jones Beach is just such a cool place to see a show. Its honestly right on the beach, so it gets nice and cool at night, but not freezing. There's the smell of the sea air and there's boats out on the water trying to get as close to the theater as they can. Good stuff. I'll be heading back at the end of July to see 311. That should be fun.

In other news there really isn't much. I will probably be booking my hotel for Scotland in the next day or so once I get the definitive word that the one I've narrowed it down to is in a good location. I'm really looking forward to going and I know Elena is too, which is good to hear. She said she was going to try to change the way our relationship works while she's over there and she has. Everything feels so much better now, because I feel more appreciated and missed in everything I do. I know it sounds weird and it is hard to explain, but I'll just leave it at this, things are good, which make me happy.

So back to work. Only have an hour and a half to kill before I can go home and get some sleep, although I'm sure I'll stay up watching the MTV Movie Awards, because those are always fun. Adios everyone!

So my huge slate of summer concerts, 4 so far, which is a lot for me, starts tonight. I'm heading after work down to the Jones Beach Ampitheatre to catch Blink-182 and No Doubt and I'm highly looking forward to it. I've never seen Blink live before, but heard their live CD which is good and they're stupid funny on stage. Very juvenile humor, but thats OK with me sometimes. I've seen No Doubt before, but this was back in 1997 when they opened for the Goo Goo Dolls and Bush. This was before "Don't Speak" was a huge hit, I think. It was a good show then, and I think thats the tour where Gwen Stefani and Gavin Rossdale first hooked up. That's an odd coupling. I sometimes forget they're married.

Anyway, also there is a major change of plans for Incubus, which is at the end of the month, a week before I head over to the UK to see Elena. Seth basically backed out of going with me to the show at Madison Square Garden as he has a makeup summer class that night. He said try to find someone else and if I couldn't he'd still go, just show up late, but he said really try to find someone else. Mark and Randy are both going the next night when they play at the Nassau Coliseum, so they were out. Mark is taking one of his friends, who also came with us the last time we saw them, back in 2002 at MSG. The kid has a twin brother and they're actually one of the few friends of my little brother I can stand. So I asked Mark to ask him if he wanted to see them at MSG. The kid said yes, so Seth is off the hook. Crisis averted. Turns out, Randy got invited to Fire Island that weekend and really wants to go and since I'm going one night with one brother and Mark's going the other night with the other brother and Randy wants to be elsewhere that night, we're swapping tickets. Randy will go to the show at the Garden with whoever he wants to, and Mark and I and his twin brother friends will go the next night at Nassau Colisuem (which I work directly across the street from!) Sounds confusing and it is, but problem solved. I did kind of want to see them at MSG since my seats were awesome, but Randy's tickets aren't that bad and I guess I can help out my brother once in awhile. It hurts to, but it won't kill me.

In Elena news it sounds like she's pretty set on coming home once her dissertation is done, and its due September 17 or something. Her and her roommate talked about it and they both want to head home when school is done, so I'm sure they can get out of their lease and it'll be all good. She and her roommate want to head to Prague after school is over, which is cool, but I would so love to go with them, but doubt I'll be able to. Like the good, but crazy boyfriend I am I offered to fly over to London with mostly empty suitcases and help her move back, and that involves taking time off, something I don't have too much of. We'll see what happens. In other news I have to find us a hotel to stay in while we're in Edinburgh, because Elena's friends boyfriend lives with two other guys, who all smoke and all they'd have to offer us is a floor and a small couch. Can you say no thank you? So now I'm just waiting on some hotel location info on them and I'll book the cheapest, but nicest one I can find. At least I have a free place to stay in Ireland, and 100 to 150 a night for a hotel for three nights won't kill me, yet.

So thats all thats new here. Exciting stuff, I know. Looking forward to the show tonight, should be fun. I'll provide a full report tomorrow. Adios!

This day has definitely dragged to no end and its not helped by the fact that I feel exhausted. For what reason I have no idea. I did absolutely nothing yesterday. I didn't even leave my house or change out of my sleepware. Pathetic, I know, but I was recovering from the overabundance of beer and tequila the night before, so everyone is entitled.

I have like 7 minutes of work remaining and thats basically the only reason why I'm typing this at the moment. Hopefully I'll be able to effectively kill the next 7 minutes so I can go home. Traffic better not be horrible or I'm going to get upset.

6 minutes. This is getting better. My older brother gets home from Wisconsin today. I found out how he ruined his cell phone and his camera. They were canoing down a river and his friend dropped her oar in the water. They tried to get it but ended up flipping the canoe over while my brother had said gadgets on him. He thinks the phone just needs a new battery and hopes that the memory card in the camera is OK since he never had a chance to transfer the pics to his laptop.

5 minutes, nice. This is working. Hopefully the rest of the week won't drag on like this day has. We were short staffed at work and it wasn't made any better by the fact that one of my coworkers had to leave in the afternoon to fix a laptop a partner was using for a presentation at some hotel nearby and that the help desk girl was training a new employee. So that left me to hold down the fort and check the help desk voice mail. I hate doing that.

Woo hoo! 3 minutes, thats just enough time to finish this post and logoff my PC. Nice, very nice. Hope everyone had a better day than me! Adios for now!

I'm currently recovering from a party at Seth's girlfriend's place last night. Let's just say I haven't drank that much in awhile, so I'm definitely not used to the after affects. I woke up feeling like total crap, but I'm slowly getting better. The headache is gone, but now I'm just tired and don't feel like doing a damn thing for the rest of the day. I should really just lounge around and watch my Netflix movies that have been sitting on my desk for weeks. Kind of defeats the purpose of the service if you never watch the movies you rent.

The party was fun though and I'm glad I went. I was debating not going because its just so damn far from my house. It was something like 45 miles to her place, and thats just crazy. But I had a fun time. Didn't really know that many people, but I'd like to think I mingled as well as a shy person like myself could. I'm sure the beer and the couple of shots of tequila helped as well. I must say though, tequila isn't half as bad as I used to think it was. I had a really bad experience with it once and it was all Seth's fault.

A couple of years ago at a party at my house Seth wanted to do a shot called a prairie fire, which is tequila with a drop of tabasco sauce. Gross, I know. But I was already wasted at the time and thought nothing of it. So we pour out the shots and like a moron I make the mistake of actually tasting it in my mouth for a good second or two instead of just gulping it down. Needless to say the very next thing I did was run out to my backyard to puke in some bushes. It got to the point where for years afterwards anything with tequila in it I would instantly taste or smell and have a very bad reaction to. Thankfully those days are passed, because tequila shots are just fun, especially when you do them right with the lemon and salt, however thats supposed to go. Elena and I got complimentary shots at her favorite Mexican place in the city once and we did it proper like that, this was after two pitchers of margaritas and before going to see The Producers on Broadway. Made the show and the trip uptown interesting, thats for sure!

On a side note, I get an e-mail from my brother this morning. He's still in Wisconsin and he e-mailed to tell me to tell my parents to not call his cell phone, as its dead, because it fell in a river along with his digital camera and they're both dead. Thats all I got out of him, no further details, but it should be an interesting story. This has to be the third cell phone he's gotten submerged in water. One he dropped in the toilet, not while there was anything in it, just a fresh flush of water. I think one was on him when someone threw him into the pool, and now this one in the river. He's a walking disaster. And along with the phone and camera the video card in his computer might be bad, since it doesn't boot or show anything on the monitor. Lucky kid.

Anyway, so I plan on trying to stay in bed for the rest of the day and just relax. Season finale of The Sopranos tonight, so I'm really psyched for that. Other than that, nothing new to report. Full week of work ahead, so I should rest. I have this horrible feeling that its going to drag on, big time. Lets hope not. Hope everyone is having a good weekend. Adios!

I'm so beyond shot its not even funny. Why? Because I'm a nerd and felt the need to go see Harry Potter last night at the midnight showing with the rest of the nerds. Why? I don't know. I've never done the whole going to see the movie at midnight the day before it opened and I wanted to die knowing that I've at least done that geeky deed at least once. So I went with my little brother (who slept through the first half of it) and didn't get home and to bed until 3:00 AM. Of course Keyser woke me up at 5:00, and again at 5:30 and my alarm went off at 6:00 and I had to get up and go to work.

It was worth it though. The movie was really good. They cut a lot of the small stuff that was in the book completely out, but it was still a satisfying flick, and still very true to the book. (Yes, I've read them all, geek, I told you already). They actually could've added in some of that stuff and it still wouldn't have been that bad. The movie was two hours, fifteen minutes tops. two and a half wouldn't have been so bad. Thats what the first two were, and of course the Lord of the Rings were all pushing 3, except the last one that went way over that mark. So a little more would've been nice, but it was still a good flick. I'm highly satisfied and it was worth one night of sleep deprivation.

In other news I booked all my flights from London to Ireland and Scotland yesterday, and of course they were about 30 pounds cheaper over the weekend when I first priced them out, and factor in the exchange rate most likely increasing in the past 5 days and I spent $70 more than I would've if I'd bought them over the weekend. Oh well, you live, you learn, you deal. I'm really looking forward to it. I'm not going to be in each country for long, but hell, I was only in Paris for two full days and a couple hours each day surrounding those two, and I still had a blast there. Adding two more countries to my list of places visited is going to be cool too.

I like traveling with Elena, its fun. This time last year we went up to Lake George with my entire family and that was really cool. Had fun just driving up there with her and spending the whole weekend with her, especially the part about us having our own room and not having to share with my brothers or anything. We had been dating for about two months at that point and it was just something fun to do. I'm glad my dad told me I could invite her, it would've been a crappy weekend without her.

Although I doubt I'll be able to do this before Elena comes home for good, so we'll probably just have to do it another time, but there are a few more countries I'd really love to see. I know Elena would love to see Italy, being that she's Italian and all that. I really want to see Austria, Vienna specifically as I've heard its a beautiful country and city, and I know a lot of my relatives came to the US from Austria. And I want to see Prague, which I've heard is a great city too. So those are my plans. I'll get there someday. Hell, two years ago I never would have thought I'd go to London or Paris. My ex was terrified of flying, no way she'd get on a plane over an ocean. Pain in the ass.

Alright, back to work, or more like back to trying to stay awake. This day can't end soon enough. Party tomorrow night at Seth's girlfriends which should be fun, except for the fact that its like an hour away from my house, but what are you going to do? Nothing. I could really go for getting stupid drunk, thats for sure. I can't wait to hit the pubs in Ireland and Scotland. Seth was upset that I wasn't going to Dublin, he wanted to know what the Guiness Brewery was like. Maybe next time. Have a great day everyone!

So I had a weird problem with my blog last night, the first weird issue since I upgraded to Movable Type 3 over the weekend. I got a spam comment, about penis enlargement no less (no thanks, very happy over here, but thanks for the offer), and I went to delete it and couldn't. At first I thought, OK, maybe its a Mac thing, but when I hopped on a PC I had the same problems, but with a script error. I know nothing about programming code, web design or any of that fun stuff, so I figured I'd take a look in the morning while I was at work looking for something to do. I posted the errors on the Movable Type support forum and I had a quick reply from someone to make sure some file was uploaded to the right spot on my web server. The file was there, just in the wrong directory. Some quick FTPing and all was good in the world. So now I can delete those penis enlargement posts without any problem.

I've been running on Movable Type for almost a year now, ever since I bought a year of web hosting when I finally decided to do something, anything, with the domain name I'd registered a few years ago. I paid for the hosting mostly with $40 I found in an ATM in Penn Station the night before. I paid for it with my debit/check card and here's the thing, the web host never took the money out of my account. So basically I've gotten a year of free web hosting. I'm really curious what is going to happen when that year is up.

Should be sometime around Father's Day because I remember trying to figure out how the hell to install Movable Type on my web server all day that day. I eventually figured it out, imported all my old entries from my Blogger blog, and was good to go. Then I deleted my user account and had to so it all over again, but at least I knew what I was doing at the time. So at the moment I'm banking on the free web hosting to continue. If for some reason the site disappears, there's your reason. So far no e-mail saying, hey, your year is up. Only time will tell. In the meantime, I'm exploiting free for as long as I can!

No, not me, thankfully. File this under weird and unexplainable, but my brother is going to Wisconsin to see this girl that he used to work with. And the kicker is, she's married and recently moved there because of her husbands job. Now, I get that she's a friend and an ex-coworker, but isn't Wisconsin just a little far to go to see someone you used to work with? My brother can't seem to explain it, which leads me to believe he's hiding something. His response to my every question is that I go to visit Elena all the time, and my ex-girlfriend before that. But thats different I say, thats to see my girlfriend, not some girl I used to work with, who is married and is my friend. I can't explain it. And why Wisonsin? No offense meant to anyone from Wisconsin, but I can think of a lot more states that I'd rather spend my vacation time in. Mainly someplace warm, sunny and nice, with a lot less dairy cows.

But thats just me. I guess I shouldn't talk. I'm about to head into who knows where in Ireland and Scotland. I'm hoping major cities, because if it turns out to be sheep country, I'm going to get really scared really fast. I've heard things about Scottish people and sheep, scary things. I'm sure Edinburgh is a normal city, its the unknown of Ireland that I'm heading too. I've heard that where my mom's cousin lives is nice and beautiful from Elena's roommate, who is from Ireland, but for all I know its the hills and the country. I'm looking to throw back some pints at a local Irish pub dammit! I'm sure I will, and I can't wait to. Too bad Elena doesn't like beer. Can't win them all I guess.

I'm still waiting on a response from my mom's cousin before I book my tickets and I want to do it soon before the prices, and the exchange rate, goes up any more. I have to pay for them in British Pounds, and the exchange rate is horrible. It costs something like $1.83 to get one pound, thats almost a 2:1 ratio. Expensive to go visit. Thankfully I don't live there. Last I figured it would cost approximately $600 for these two cross UK jaunts. Should be worth it, hell the train tickets to Paris came to about $400 once you factor in the exchange rate. And, to top it off, Ireland uses the Euro, whereas Scotland and England use the pound, so I have to split my money into two different currencies, again.

Can't England adopt the Euro? Why do they have to be so different from the rest of Europe? Are they too special? Thats what you get when your country is an island I guess, an isolated attitude. I only complain because the exchange rate on the Euro is so much better, something like $1.22 to buy one Euro.

Alright, I'm going to shut up now. Babbling has definitely helped kill the last 15 minutes. Only 20 to go before I head home. Peace!

Just got back from meeting my little brother at the mall by our respective office. Just got him an iBook to replace his IBM Thinkpad that is so virused that the CDC would probably want to study it. He doesn't know a damn thing about Macs, yet, but he figured that if they were resistant to viruses it would probably suit him better, since he's so prone to messing up his computers, he should do nicely with a Mac. Of course now I have to show him how to do everything in it, and that should be tons of fun. Just what I love to do, spend time with my little brother, especially time when I have to explain things to him, technical things. I can't wait. But patience, its only a matter of time before he joins the Mac faithful, or he'll just not give a crap still. Most likely choice number 2.

In other news, there really isn't any other news. I'm waiting for a response from my mom's cousin in Ireland about taking Elena and I to the airport at the ass crack of dawn the morning we leave, once I get a response, which I'm hoping will be yes, I'll book all our plane tickets for Ireland and Scotland. I'm really looking forward to going and I know Elena is too. She's also really looking forward to seeing me, which is really good to hear for a change. Usually I get the, "I have too much going on to get excited" line, but not now. She's definitely different, like she said she'd try to be, and thats a good thing.

Thankfully this is a shortened work week too. I know it feels like Monday, but I get a little happy when I realize that its really Tuesday. Next Monday is going to stink when I actually have to go back to a five day work week. I'd be more than willing to work like 4 really long days a week and have three day weekends all the time. That'd be nice, never happen, but its nice to dream, isn't it?

Thats about it out of me, exciting stuff, I know. I have a feeling its going to be a very boring summer, aside from my trip to England/Ireland/Scotland. I'm going to see a bunch of concerts and theres the annual shindig at my house that my older brother throws when my parents go away, but thats about it. Last summer was much better, since Elena and I had just started dating, everything was new and fun. I meant what I said to her the other day, life is boring without her. I know that sounds really dependent and pathetic, but I keep myself entertained and its not all drab, but everything is so much more exciting when she's involved. I guess thats a true sign that I really love her and of how much she means to me.

Alright, I'm signing off before I get really sappy and sad and pathetic. Adios.