Someone who’s a med student or something needs to explain to me the whole internal alarm clock thingy. Cause mine is seriously wacked out. After sleeping in until at least 10 for three days in a row (sat, sun, mon - aren't long weekends the best!) i awoke peacefully this morning to sunshine and birds chirping, yawned and stretched, and glanced over to read '5:45′ on the clock. Augh! I felt completely rested, even though i'd gone to bed less than six hours earlier, and my alarm wasn't set for another 15 minutes! Maybe it’s the cruelty of daylight savings time, i dunno. But it was creepy.

Stayed out later than i should have last nite, enjoying Dave’s perpetual hospitality and grilled cuisine. A few times around the ballroom floor with Christy, Tamara and Amy (i always hoped that hobby would pay off!) and a vigorous ping-pong match in the basement that lasted until all the balls disappeared into the cobwebbed corners kept me pretty busy all evening. Somewhere in there i also hit up a ride in Ian’s freshly-broken-in five speed and pigged out on memorial-day-appropriate red, white and blue circus animal cookies. Not a bad evening, considering i left to run errands at 2 in the afternoon, called Ian on a fluke from the freeway, and just stayed out the rest of the night. Wireless phones are great! Of course, i've always thought that… but whatever. Be back up there saturday to work on the car a bit in Dave’s garage (seriously, this guy is a majorly generous sort) and enjoy even more sunshine and bbq. Summer has arrived! Sehr aufgeregt!

Danielle popped into town thursday nite, which is my excuse for neglecting you this weekend. She’s on the job hunt this week, but the weekend was designated free time. We spent saturday and sunday being ultra-lazy, playing video games, surfing the internet and raiding the cupboards for junk food. It was great to relax and hang out with her… and i found a bunch of cool stuff in GTA Vice City! ;) Like a helicopter! Sweet!

Friday i had the nwnismo gang up for italian (except for Travis, who’s a big slacker! and Jason, who was fishing… big surprise there… apparently he has two addictions…). Jason (Thane) and Julia showed up in time to bring much-needed dessert, and Danielle and i made waaay too much food, so we've been eating meatballs at least once a day ever since. Guess what’s for dinner tonite? It was great having everyone up, hope they can all come back more often! Clint even returned the sunglasses he stole from me, so now i don't have to buy a new pair! He’s such a klepto… ;)

Now that it’s been a week and it’s old news… i have the photos from the cabin posted. Sorry, no pics from memorial day weekend, as i took a photographer’s holiday. ;)

I'm almost finished with my lunch, it’s time to get back to work. I typed the bulk of this entry with only my left hand, as my right hand was busy weilding an apple in a mouthward direction… i'm surprised there aren't more typo-s… oh, right… i'm obsessive-compulsive and i fixed them all…

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Alright, feelin good tonite! Exercised, got some stuff done, making plans for more…

Danielle’s going to come visit for the weekend, so i'm arranging a few fun things for her visit. It’s a long weekend coming up, no workie on monday, yeeees! Had a great weekend last, as well, great time at the cabin with the Travis, Jamie, Sam, Christy, Clint, Christie, Jason, and Nick. Thanx a ton to Travis’s grama for letting us stay there! The lake was beautiful, altho a bit cold, but the fire was warm… and the fish plentiful, right Jason? ;) Slept very little, laughed a lot - so a great weekend. Yes, i have pics… no, they're not up yet. I'm sorry, alright, it’s been busy coming back to work! I promise i'll sit in front of the tv this week and get that done… ;)

Now everybody take a moment to think about the upcoming long weekend… and pray for sunshine!

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Congratulations Erika and Michael! My friend - and college lab partner - Erika Abrahamsen is getting married in july, i wish them all the best! You can check out their wedding info here. Erika’s always been a great girl, and i wish the two of them all the best!

For all you cultured types out there, the nation’s largest independent film festival starts the 22nd, right here in Seattle. Check out seattlefilm.org for the viewing schedules. Personally, i'm trying to catch the south korean entry Bad Guy and the dutch musical Yes Nurse, No Nurse. See you at the movies… ;)

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Oh, the humanity! It’s so freakin hot in our office today, a combination of the recently warm weather and the building’s refusal to acknowledge the hvac system’s inadequacies. Also, things aren't working correctly, nothing big, just little, tweaky things that we can't track down. And it really hot and stuffy, so it’s sort of hard to care…

Ian’s transmission is finally in, and working great. Amidst cheering, laughing and likely some tears of joy he drove it out of the garage last night, powered by the newly-installed 5-speed. We drove around the block a few times, tweaking and tuning, and giving Ian a really hard time about his rough starts and our resulting whiplash. Overall, though, pretty freakin' cool that it works well, even down to the little stuff (reverse lights work, and that safety switch that disables the starter without the clutch in). We were pretty proud of ourselves, and i think Dave’s pretty happy to see us vacate his garage, although he was a great sport about it all. He even kept us around for a bbq afterward. I ate two huge hamburgers and had a great talk with Christy over dessert - going to attend a gallery opening with her on thursday. Oh, and the weather was incredible and perfect, totally postcard.

In case you haven't tried it yet, i totally overhauled the photo gallery while i was formatting hard drives and re-re-re-copying files on saturday. It doesn't look particularly different, but trust me that i totally rebuilt it - all the photo details are now stored in the database, which means the photos are … yes, that’s right… searchable. So go search for something, it’s neato. I'm still working on keywords and subject qualifiers, so you may not get full results, but it’s still pretty cool. And - original goal - it should be easier for me to get new galleries up in a timely manner. ;)

A long monday at work, intermixed with a funny email, a few random phone calls, and lox on a bagel… and now i'm really ready to go home! I need more than a one-day weekend. Only 4 more work days then it’s down to the cabin for the weekend, which i'm greatly looking forward to - i really need a vacation!

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It’s 8 pm and i'm still at work… been here since 7:45 am… with a 10 minute break for lunch. Stupid computers don't work, stupid network is slow… and it doesn't help that people keep interrupting me. Not interrupting me like walking in with a question… no. Like i'll be halfway through a 3-hour network file copy and my boss will decide to straighten up the wiring closet and - oops! - unplug me from the network. Or i'll be copying a large file onto a network drive (with plenty of space at the start of the job) and halfway through the drive will - suddenly - be full, because someone else is filling it up elsewhere. Now it’s a saturday, folks, there aren't that many people in the building, it shouldn't be too difficult. But of course, it is always difficult, here at John L. Chaos. Argh. Wonder if it was a nice day out…

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Augh, friday’s suck when they're not a friday… lemme explain. Remember in the movie Office Space, “um, yeah, i'm gonna need you to go ahead and come in on saturday…" - well apparently life imitates art. If it was for something important, i wouldn't mind as much, but it’s pretty stupid. The accounting department’s computers need to be replaced. A little history: we've spent the last two months replacing computers all over the state, and there doesn't seem to be any problem with taking down one of my field offices for half a day or sometimes a whole day to update their equipment. No one sees a problem with that. These are the offices that support the agents, who sell the homes and make the money for the company. And no one sees a problem with interrupting their workflow to change out computer hardware… because they're reasonable people who understand that’s necessary. On the other hand, the corporate office can't possibly be bothered during the work week to accomodate their upgrades, because perish the thought the corporate offices loses an afternoon of time. Nevermind the silly company “team builder" activities that suck up an entire thursday afternoon, or the corporate barbeques, those they can stop working for. But my free time on weekends, that’s not nearly as important as the corporate office’s workflow. (If you're not reading sarcasm into this, you should be). What really annoys me is that i only found out about it last monday, so they're so disorganized they can't even manage to schedule our mandatory weekend overtime two weeks ahead. That frustrates me, too, cause i plan my life (especially the weekends) further ahead than that. There’s an import car show in Van City this saturday that i've been hoping to hit since i found out about it in january… so much for that. I do get overtime pay for working six days this week, but it still really isn't very much, and frankly my free time is worth more than that. Stupid. I'm going to be bitter about that for awhile… and i think that’s within my rights as an employee.

Been a busy week otherwise… Steph and i had fun watching baseball, even though the stupid yankees won. Patrick and i drove all the way up to everett to shop for tools at harbor freight, only to find they close at 6 on weekdays… stupid. He’s thinking about living in Cali for the summer, so if he does we really need to get our business rolling before he leaves, at least establish some good communication lines and an organizational plan.

Ian’s tranny is getting closer to testable and ready, but isn't quite there. I'm really surprised it’s stretched on this long, and Dave’s been a real sport about the mess in his garage. Things are coming together, though - tranny’s finally in for good, all gears shifting smoothly. Even managed to get the shift knob to point the right direction. We decided tuesday that the clutch lines are leaking, so he ordered new ones that we'll install sunday. Then bleed the clutch and put the supercharger piping back in. That just leaves a small wiring labyrinth to untangle and Ian spending some time learning to drive stick again with a lightened flywheel, a racing clutch, and over 300 hp… ;) Let’s just say the break-in period is going to be a challenge…

So usually on friday i'd lay down some plans for the weekend, but you just heard 'em - work saturday, work on a car sunday. Then it’s back to work. So i expect i'll be pretty burned out by about the middle of next week (i am already, actually). Thankfully next weekend looks to be a relaxing good time, at a cabin on the lake down Olympia-way with the nwnismo gang. Oh, sorry, explanation there: they're a local Nissan team, they travel together to car shows and/or the track. I've been considering joining, but didn't want it to interfere with anything Patrick and i are doing. After talking last night, though, i think we're both on the same page about it, and as long as i don't feel i'm overextending myself i think i might join the team. I don't really have to decide right away, they'll give me until the end of the summer before they ask me to make a decision either way… but i can certainly decide early. It involves paying small dues into the team fund, but that pays for things like team gear, show entry fees, etc., so it’s not like it’s money i wouldn't spend anyways, and it’s not very much. And they're pretty cool, i like hanging out and being part of something official and organized. At least some part of my life should be organized, right? ;) Anyway… so even if the next week of work royally sucks, at least i have that to look forward to!

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Spent all evening watching Futurama - man that show is funny! - and posting new pics for ya. So check out my family visiting for my birthday, Steph and i snooping around the Montlake neighborhood, and a lake cruise that Kim arranged for us. On the maxima site, there’s some pics from Ian’s tranny swap and my nifty BitCharg 1/64 scale RC Fairlady in various stages of modding. A lot of new stuff to look at… so go nuts!

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A big phatty happy birthday to Gretchen Larson… you rock! I hope dakota is treating you well!

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Happy birthday to my favorite little sister! Have a great day, Danielle!

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Home alone! [Clap hands to face] Josh and Kim are outtie this weekend, so i celebrated by sleeping until noon today. Met Steph and Libby for a matinee of X2, very enjoyable flick. Fast, fun, cool… man, i wanna be a mutant! Am i alone in this? Everytime i watch these movies i come away thinking i could be somebody important and cool if i could just mutate already… there should be a pill or something. Anyway, ending was cool and very comic book, might as well have said 'tune in next week, same bat-time, same bat-channel'. You totally know there’s gonna be another one, only thing that sucks is you know it’s gonna be awhile before it comes out and you really wanna know what’s gonna happen! Cruel world.

IM'ing with Christie, at least when her cat’s not sitting on her keyboard, about roommates and annoying jobs and what sorts of careers i would suck at because seeing blood makes me dizzy. Watching Travis and Jason play halo just wasn't keeping her entertained, so she turned to shopping for die-cast Nissans on ebay and listening to (er, reading) me vent about my wasted college education. Glad i could keep you awake, Christie! ;)

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