Ok. Last night. I called my mom. She said she would wire me some money. I never heard back from her after that. Today, I woke up not knowing where to go to get said money. I spent an hour and a half trying to get into contact with her and failing. I must have called her 30 times. Because of this, I did not have time to take a shower before I left. I went to Wies where I picked up the money last time just to check., They said that I need a number of some kind to complete the transaction. I cannot get the money for this freaking appointment before I go there. Fine. Whatever. I will have to bank this all on a stretched too thin credit card we have.

So I get to the doctors office. They ask me about why I am there. I tell them that I have an appointment. They have me sit down. Eventually, they call me up to the check out window. I go up there and talk to the lady, who tells me that I do not have an MRI scheduled for today. WHAT?! I WAS PROMISED ONE LAST TIME. She says that the doctor is just going to look at my knee. Well, that's wonderful. My knee hurts, and I am still not going to get to know why. Thank you for practically rendering this a huge waste of my time. She sends me back to a waiting room.

I sit down in the waiting room and start to read my book. At this point, I have been walking around enough this morning that every movement of my left leg hurts my knee. I am glad for the chance to sit down, and I am irritated. After about 30 minutes (the doctor was behind), I get called back. The nurse asks me why I am not getting an MRI today because she remembers my first visit there. I tell her that I was going to ask the same thing. The doctor comes in and fidgets with my knee while watching me whence in pain while doing so. I want to punch the guy. Whatever. HE sends me along my way and decides to schedule...you guessed it...an MRI. He sends me to another place where I wait for another 30 to 45 minutes to schedule this thing. I schedule it for Thursday.

Ok. I am finally about to leave, right? Right? Wrong. I get up to the check out counter, where I am, basically, lectured about the fact that I did not have 25 dollars for my first visit. They say that I need to pay for the first and second visit. I ask if a credit card will be ok. They say that it will. I hand it over. It gets declined. Wonderful. I now have no way to pay for this stupid and entirely pointless doctors visit that just rescheduled what was supposed to have been scheduled in the first place. They ask me whose credit card it is. I am honest, and I say that it is my room mates. "Oh. You can't do that. He needs to be with you. He could report it stolen." HE IS MY FREAKING ROOM MATE! HE KNOWS I HAVE IT! HE AUTHORIZED ME TO USE IT! STOP CHEWING ME OUT AND LET ME LEAVE BECAUSE I AM PISSED OFF! No. We cannot do that. They do not give me a clear answer on whether they take my insurance or not. They say they have not heard of Medica and that they did some research and discovered that it is a branch of United Health Care. They say they will send in the bill and United Health Care may not take care of it because sometimes they don't from that particular location. This means I could get stuck with a bill upwards of $800.

Now I need to try to reschedule my MRI at a place that I am certain accepts my freaking health insurance. I have a paper for a return visit on a week from tomorrow, AND IT DOES NOT EVEN HAVE A DOCTORS NAME ON IT! As such, I have no way of looking it up to see if they actually do take United Health Care. I do not know and did not get a straight answer. She just danced around an answer. What the hell?!

*headdesk* I JUST WANT TO KNOW WHAT IS WRONG WITH MY KNEE! WHY IS THAT TOO MUCH TO ASK?!

and not a good one either.

If you know me or have ever talked to me for more than five minutes, then you are probably aware that I love music. I love music a lot. In particular, I love heavy metal and ****c rock. I steer off of these two genres with some other music as well. I like Johnny Cash and Skinny Puppy, for instance. Music is a huge part of who I am, and it is a pretty close race between that, baseball and video games for which one I love the most.

One thing that goes hand in hand with liking music, or should in my opinion, is love of good sound quality. I want my music, movies and video games to sound (and look in the case of movies and video games) as good as they possibly can. This is why I have pieced together a stereo over the years that sounds pretty damned amazing for how much I spent on it. I lucked into an outstanding head unit at a pawn shop, but I was still going for something that would sound good. I got something that sounds mind blowing, instead. I spent probably 500 bucks on my stereo alone. This does not include things such as my television or Playstation 3 (which doubles as an amazing CD, DVD and Blu Ray player). My set up cost me a lot of cash over the years.

One of the pieces of my home theater set up that gets quite a bit of use is my record player. I have a record player (Two actually, counting the stereo console that I found last week. That is a story for another time) specifically because I care about sound quality. CDs cannot produce the pure, beautiful sound that records can, which distresses me even further with the problem that I mentioned that I promise I am getting around to.

As I have said, I have noticed a trend in the music industry, and it is a negative one. The overall sound quality of music put on disc now days is dropping. I cannot be the only one that has noticed the decline in overall sound in more recent years. IF you listen to CDs from the early 2000's and CDs from now, chances are pretty good that the CDs from today are going to be lower quality than those made today.

Why is this? I think I have this answer. I think the rise of the MP3 is to blame. Completely digital music is on the rise, and has been ever since the rise of MP3 players. As a result of this, companies are making music to the standard of the MP3. They want to make it sound as good as it can be when in MP3 format. This is hurting the overall quality of sound. MP3s are not capable of playing the full range of sound that a CD is capable of, and record companies seem to be intentionally recording at a lower quality for digital distribution of music.

If you think about it, at the root of all of this is the iPod from Apple. It is at the center of the MP3 world. It is, far and away, the most popular MP3 player on the market, despite the fact that it is not the most advanced MP3 player on the market, nor is it the cheapest. There are cheaper MP3 players with better interfaces that are easier to work with and have more features than the iPod does, but that, again, is a discussion for another time. With the rise of the iPod comes the drop in sound quality.

Do not hear me saying that MP3 players are bad. I loved mine prior to accidentally stepping on it. I loved having all of my music in one place, but there is a reason that I still buy the music on CDs and records. I like to have a physical copy of it, and I like the better sound quality. The better sound quality is going away. Is the music industry trying to push us away from buying CDs and into buying digital music? I do not want that to happen. Ever. Give me my higher quality CDs and let me transfer them to my MP3 player. Don't give me lower quality CDs that will sound the same when in MP3 format. That's ****

I flew home to Texas earlier this month to visit my family and to spend my birthday out there. I have been intending to write about my trip for some time, and have been lazy. I have not gotten around to it yet. Well, I will do so now. Here there shall be rambling. My flight home was the Friday before my birthday (My birthday was on the 9th). It was early in the morning. Someone stole my GPS a few months back, so I had to figure out the way there without the help of it. I found the airport with only a little trouble. I got to the airport a little late because of this. I did not get there until about 45 minutes before my flight. The e-mail I got said US Airways. I go to their baggage check and ticket claim place, and they look me up. They do not find me. It turns out that US Airways is the mother company of Continental, who I was supposed to visit. I waited in line 3 times before I checked my bags. By the time I got to the ticket counter, I found out that I got there too late to check my bag for the flight. This has already started out wonderful. Ultimately,they put me on a flight to Philly, and I fly from there to Texas. Despite the flight to Philly leaving an hour later, I wind up getting home an hour earlier. I just do not have much time to go from one terminal to another to catch my next flight. I had 35 minutes. The only reason I got to eat was because they said I could bring it on the plane. I just found the restraunt with the shortest line. IT turned out to be a pizza place. Yay airport food. Isn't it wonderful? When I finally get to Texas, my mom picks me up at the airport. We go to the Sprint store to get me a new phone since the speaker on my old phone busted. I need something where I can actually hear the person on the other end of the line. Well, Sprint was launching the HTC Evo that day. We have to sit and wait for an hour so that they can tell us that their system is down. They say they cannot activate phones because of this, so I cannot get a new phone. Wonderful. We give them our number and wait for a few hours before going to the Rangers game (They won that night by the way. They beat Tampa Bay, who had the best record in the majors at the time. Texas now has a better record than Tampa Bay. Take that Tampa!). They never called us. The next day, my mom takes me back to the store. They pull out what I assume will be my new phone. The thing will not activate. I am just sitting there in the store for hours while they try to activate this thing. I have a Rangers game that afternoon (They won again. It was an afternoon game in 99 degree heat. Tommy Hunter pitched a complete game). I cannot stay there all day. I eventually leave to go to the rangers game. They say they will have their tech guy look at it and fix it. I say ok. I go back after the Rangers game. They say the phone is working. I try to call someone. It does not work. Wonderful. They decide tell me to come back the next day and it will be working. They keep my phone to transfer the contacts after they get it working. I went home The next day I go back to the store. They say it is fixed. I think "Thank God." I was thinking Him a little too soon, though. Does that surprise you? No? I did not think it would. I try to make a call from it. IT does not work. This time, they decide to just pull out another phone of the same kind and try that one. It works on the first try. They forgot to transfer my contacts, but I am so sick of being there that I just decide to go home and see if I can use blue tooth to transfer it myself. I was unable to do so, and had to return to the store a fifth freaking time on Monday to transfer my contacts. I finally have a working phone though. This was my birthday present. By this point, you are, surely, asking yourself what kind of phone it was that I got. Well, I got a Samsung Moment. It is one of the earlier models of Sprint Android phones. It has a slide out full keyboard (I missed this so much) and the Android operating system that is the heart of the Droid phone. It is a very cool phone. I am more than satisfied with it. It was actually on sale....sort of. You got a 100 dollar rebate in the mail for it, which means it ultimately cost 100 dollars. Good deal if you can get it. I have a Chuck Norris fact application. You know that's awesome! Anyway, the rest of the vacation was spent visiting places that I know and love in Texas. I hung out with my friend Joe, my brother and my friend Pierce. I went swimming. I went to Half Price Books and looked through their vinyl collection. I purchased 5 albums with birthday money. I got Spreading the Disease by Anthrax, Women and Children First by Van Halen, Wase em All by Municipal Waste, Street Survivors by Lynyrd Skynyrd and British Steel by Judas Priest. My mom ordered me books from Amazon (Mass Effect Revelation by Drew Karpyshyn, Ringworld by Larry Niven, Dune by Frank Herbert and Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter by Seth Grahame-Smith. At Best Buy, I bought Sacrament by Lamb of God. I also visited Gameattack, the Screw Attack store. I would have gotten videos of it if my battery on my phone was not dying at the time. Just something better quality to upload to Screw Attack. I also picked up Dead Space. My copy was stolen, and I am looking forward to playing it again. The rest of the time. I was with my parents, grandparents and dogs. The flight home was just wonderful. I had to get home on Sunday to do a podcast, right? For those that do not know, I have a weekly podcast that I do with my friends on the subject of video games www.digital-delirium.com Shameless self promotion!!!!! Haha! I had to do that. I was flying home on Sunday. The flight from Dallas to Charolette was smooth. I didn't have much time in Charolette, or so I thought,. When I got there, I ran, literally, from one end of their airport to the other because my flight left 25 minutes from when we landed. The pilot said, when we got off the plane, to check the monitors because there are storms in the area. I do. IT says my flight is on time. Upon arriving at my gate at the polar opposite end of the airport, I find that my plane, which should be boarding right now, is not even there. This is wonderful. I get food and sit down to eat. About 30 minutes later, my plane arrive. I board. Everyone is seated., We sit there for 30 minutes or so. We finally pull away and sit in the middle of the big area for plane trafficking. The captain informs us that, because of the weather, people cannot direct traffic out on the field. Why, then, did we board? We sit and wait for another 30 minutes or so. The captain says that there are storms at one end of the run way. Planes will go over there and take off the other way so that they do not take off in the storm. He says this will take a while. We wait for another 30 minutes or so, all while rolling to the opposite end of the run way a little bit at a time. The captain comes on again and informs us that he has good news. HE says we are 11th or 12th in line. This is good news? You need to work on your definition of good. It is news, so he was half right. We wait another 20 minutes or so. He says we are second in line. I watch out the window as 2 planes take off. I think we are about to go. A plane lands. Son of a **** He gets out of the way, and I am finally in the air and on my way back to PA. I was something like 2 and a half hours late, and the podcast didn't even start until something like 11 o clock

As I am sure many of you know, Ronnie James Dio passed away on Sunday. After a long battle with stomach cancer, it finally got him. I am also sure that many of you know that I am very serious about my music. I am a metal head. I also love classic rock. Ronnie James Dio was both. He was one of the leading vocalists in heavy metal, and his music is classic. You will hear songs such as Holy Diver, Man on the Silver Mountain, Rainbow in the Dark and Last in Line on any classic rock station worth it's air space. With that in mind, I would like to say a few words about him and his passing.

Until I was robbed, I had two vinyl albums featuring the voice of Ronnie James Dio. I had both Ritchie Blackmore's Rainbow, which featured the big hit Man on the Silver Mountain, and Holy Diver by his solo band Dio, which featured Rainbow in the Dark, Stand Up and Shout and Rainbow on the Dark. There were four major hits between the two albums, and the albums are held up as ****cs. Rainbow was some of his earlier work, and it features the excellent guitar work of Ritchie Blackmore, formerly of Deep Purple.

Since being robbed, I have found one of these two on vinyl. I found Ritchie Blackmore's Rainbow again. I am listening to it now, actually. It is a beautiful and truly outstanding piece of rock and metal history, and it has some of Ronnie James' most beautiful singing. Catch the Rainbow and Temple of the King are some of the best examples of his outstanding vocal **** and it is not hard to hear why he was chosen for Black Sabbath after Ozzy Osbourne. With them, he produced three albums that are held as ****cs. He did Heaven and Hell, which has the ****c hit Neon Knights, The Mob Rules, whose title track was in the movie Heavy Metal, and Dehumanizer. They also did a live album together called Live Evil, in which he belts out Black Sabbath ****cs, and breathes new life into them. It is different hearing someone besides Ozzy sing a ****c like Iron Man, but it is very good, at the same time.

Anyway, Ritchie Blackmore's Rainbow and Holy Diver, which I have not had the fortune to find in record stores yet, were two of my most played records, and I love vinyl. I had a collection of over fifty albums that I could play. All of them were great. While I tried not to listen to my records too often, I cannot help but enjoy their beautiful sound quality. It is, after all, superior to CD if you have the system for it.

As I said, Ritchie Blackmore's Rainbow and Dio's Holy Diver were two of my most played records. I would pull them out, lay them on the player and crank it quite often. I made a CD out of Holy Diver that I recorded directly from the vinyl myself. I mixed it and was quite proud of it. I put it in my car, and it did not leave my CD player for months. That is what I do with these albums. I pull them back out. I start listening to them again. I do not put them back up for months. That is how good they were.

Ronnie James Dio's voice was enchanting. It held many people in it's power, and would not let them go. He will never enter the studio to record new music. He will never play a live show again. Heaven and Hell is left singerless. Neon Knights and The Mob Rules will probably never be played live again. It broke my heart when I read that he was gone. The metal community lost one of it's greats, but that does not do him justice. The entire music industry lost a truly legendary and infinitely talented musician that it can never replace. Just writing this brings tears to my eyes, again. Rest in peace Ronnie James. We all loved you. You cannot be replaced, and you were amazing. Goodnight, sweet prince.

This earth lost a legend. Heaven gained an angel. He is enchanting the Lord with his beautiful voice now.

When evening falls
She'll run to me
Like whispered dreams
Your eyes can't see
Soft and warm
She'll touch my face
A bed of straw
Against the lace

* We believed we'd catch the rainbow
Ride the wind to the sun
Sail away on ships of wonder
But life's not a wheel
With chains made of steel
So bless me come the dawn
Come the dawn

Digital Delirium is a brand new video game centered website that features news, reviews, previews, opinions and a podcast. Before too long, it will feature forums. IT is still in the building stages. Check it out, though www.digital-delirium.com it is my own creation. The weekly podcast is called Press the Action Button. The first one is up, and it is titled Open the Barn Door. Please check it out. I am very proud of this

so....I will now.

Remember me saying that I was waiting for my dad to finish the computer that my brother gave me for Christmas? Well, he did. I received it a week ago last Thursday. IT is a quad core processor with 2 gig of memory and a GeForce 6200 LE video card. The video card is nothing special, but the processor isn't bad at all. I would like to replace the video card and put more memory in it some day, but that is a ways off. For the time being, I am happy to have something that can run most of my games. and it is nice, indeed. This computer is noticeably faster than my laptop. IT does not lock up when watching videos. I can finally watch all of the Invisible Walls podcasts and whatnot without having to restart the computer several times just to get through it. I hated that with my laptop. I also get to use my badass monitor, finally. It is a 22 inch wide screen LCD monitor with a resolution of 1680x1050. IT is so nice to be running something that will display at a higher resolution than 1024x768. You have no idea. I love it. This computer is so much better than the old one.

You may have also remembered that I said that my mom accidentally bought me Reservoir Dogs on Blu Ray when I already owned it. She replaced it with the 1989 Batman movie on Blu Ray with Michael Keaton as Batman. That arrived with the computer, and I could not be happier with it. The movie looks and sounds clean, crisp and clear. It's picture and sound is, far and away, the best this movie has looked probably since it was in theaters. On top of that, it is an excellent movie. It is exactly what a Batman movie is meant to be, which is something that cannot be said about any of it's three follow ups. Yes. This includes Batman Returns, even though I enjoy that movie too. This flick is dark and gritty. It isn't over the top. IT does have some 80's cheese, which is largely because the movie is 20 years old, more than anything. It could, however, do without the Prince songs. They feel out of place in a movie like this. Danny Elfman's brilliant and dark score for this fits the film perfectly, but the real story here is Jack Nicholson as the Joker. The man does not play the Joker. He IS the Joker. That is how good his performance is. He absolutely steals the show and, if you know anything about the comics, then you know he gets it absolutely right. This is the wise cracking psychopathic killer that we all know and love from the comics. They got it right, even down to the last detail. He even has the acid spraying flower that is a trademark of the Joker. I cannot praise his performance enough. If you have not seen this movie, shame on you. IT is everything at Batman movie should be.

I could rave on and on about how good this movie is, but eventually you would just get sick of me reading it, and it might sound like I am fanboying all over it. I am going to move on now. It has been extremely cold here on Pennsylvania late.y .We are talking the high for the day is not above freezing and the temperature dips into the teens at night. Yikes that is cold. No matter what we did, we could not seem to keep our apartment heated. It sucked. All the base board heating seemed to be doing was costing us a lot of money. My parents took note of this and bought us a heater. Thank God for that. IT does a better job of raising the temperature in here and it costs a lot less money. Ok. IT still gets cold. That cannot be helped. IT is Pennsylvania. It get's cold. that is just the way it is. IT truly sucks, but it is a lot better, especially on the electric bill side of things.

I have picked up a couple of movies and a couple of albums recently. I finally broke down and bought Killers by Iron Maiden. I paid more than I wanted to, but at least I have it and thoroughly enjoy it. I wanted to find it at Best Buy so that I could pay about 5 bucks less for it than I wound up paying, but I kept checking. I have never seen it there. What can you do? The album is great, anyway. I also bought Number of the Beast by the same band. IT is excellent as well. I love it. It, of course, has Run to the Hills, Hallowed Be Thy Name and the title track on it, which are some of Maiden's most popular songs. That is always cool. I also got The Departed and 2001: A Space Odyssey on Blu Ray. I have not watched either of them yet, but I have already seen both of them. I owned 2001 on DVD and gave the DVD copy to a friend. I hope he enjoys it. It is a truly fantastic and thought provoking movie. I absolutely love it and cannot wait to see it in high definition. I have a feeling that this movie is one of the reasons that God allowed us humans to have HD in the first place :P I expect its art to stand out strong and be even more breath taking than it was on DVD.

I seem to have the absolute worst luck with women, and women have a tendancy to piss me off more than anything else on the planet. Occasionally, women just seem to have a knack to drive me up the wall to the point where I just want to run to the nearest living thing and kill it. I am not singling anyone out with this. Let me repeat that, in case you missed the single most important sentence in this entire paragraph. I AM NOT SINGLING ANYONE OUT WITH THIS. I am just venting my frustrations. I ask that you do not take it personally. I seem to be the guy that women come to to complain when they get frustrated with whatever man they are currently dating that is bad for them. They come to me and tell me that they cannot find an honest man or a good man or a man that cares about something more than sex. I hate this. I really really hate this, but I care. I never say that I hate this because I care. I never say what I am thinking because I care. I just keep my mouth shut because I do not want to hurt her. It pisses me off though. You know how many times I have cheated? Never. Nada. Zip. Zero. Ziltch. Not one single time. I have NEVER cheated, and I never would. I have felt that pain. I have felt it 4 times from 3 different women, and I would not wish it upon anyone. It is one of the single most hurtful things you can do to someone. It isn't just a betrayal by someone you love dearly. It is a serious blow to self confidence and self esteem. "Why am I not good enough?" That is what we think. What is the logic behind it.

I digress. The point I was getting at is that women come to **** to honest guys that they cannot find an honest guy. We sit there and thing "I am **** sitting right here." We think, "It isn't that you cannot find an honest guy. It is that you do not want one when you do find it." Speaking as someone who hates lying and cheating, honest guys do exist. We just have a tendency to get thrown to the side for a jackass. I do not know why, but being an ass seems to attract women. Someone explain that to me. How does treating women poorly land them in your lap? No. Seriously. I want to know. The knowledge would not do me any good anyway because I cannot bring myself to be a dick. I can be a smart ass, but not a dick. It frustrates me to no end. All I find are women that want to be my friend and **** at me. When I do find a woman that wants more than that, she is a ticking time bomb. IT is only a matter of time until she cheats on me, and it upsets me. A lot.

Anyway, we have had a lot of snow lately. We had something like a foot and a half over the weekend. A foot and a half? Are you freaking kidding me? I had to dig my car out of the snow the other day. It was probably 20 degrees. It took me an hour and a half. By the time I got done, my pants were wet. I was extremely cold. I was very tired and just a little irritated. IT has snowed a lot since then as well. I think it snowed another 16 inches. What the hell? Where is all this snow coming from? I know it is Pennsylvania but it is like being in the middle of a **** blizzard. I hate it. I cannot drive anywhere because the roads are full of slush. My car does not handle on slush,. It is a rear wheel drive that is front heavy with 8 cylinders under the hood. IT is powerful and handles like a dream in dry conditions. This snowy and icy crap? I throw it out trying to turn a simple corner going less than 10 miles an hour. That is how crappy my car handles on snow.

IT is a double edged sword as well. There is an apartment above us that has a porch. The porch is directly above our kitchen. Snow gathers on the porch above us and melts. Guess where all that snow goes. If you guessed our kitchen, you guessed right. The ceiling panels slowly got more and more soaking wet as time went on to the point where it was literally bowing down toward the floor. IT, then, started to drip, WHILE I WAS COOKING SUPPER! It was dripping right in front of the stove. That is a nice wake up call. Cold water was dripping from my ceiling onto me while I was cooking. The land lord's husband has been out here twice and replaced two tiles. It has snowed since he replaced the second one. The ceiling is getting wet again. It is only a matter of time for it to start dripping again. IT isn't fun. At all. We had a walkthrough of the apartment the other day, and I am glad he had just replaced the ceiling tile a few hours before it so that it wasn't dripping onto our floor during the walkthrough. It still sucked to have t he ceiling wet for it, especially after spending about 3 hours cleaning this place up and making it look nice for said walkthrough.

Ugh. I am one frustrated and annoyed pyrenees pup. That is just great. I needed more negative emotions to add to being depressed.

and I have had my W2 from Fed Ex for about a week now. I opened the envelope for it, but I have not removed it from the. I had two jobs this year, not one. I have not received my W2 from my overnight job at the candy packing place that I had for about a month prior to working at Fed Ex. I need it. Where is it? I cannot properly fill out my taxes without it, and I do not want to fill it out improperly. It's getting annoying. The damn thing should be here by now. I guess I am going to have to go there myself and find out what's going on with that and where it is. If I cannot get a copy of it there, maybe I can at least figure out why I have not gotten it yet. I do not know what good that would do me, though. I am very annoyed by this. I do not want to get into trouble because they can't get their act together. I took a nap at around 5 o clock today. I had a very vivid dream that I was laying in bed and listening to music in my room in Texas. It felt so incredibly real, and when I woke up and found myself stuck in Pennsylvania, I became depressed. Has that ever happened to you? You have a vivid dream that feels incredibly real, and you are happy in it. You wake up to find that it is not true and become depressed as a result of it? I have probably already **** about Pennsylvania and how much I hate it here, so I will spare you that. I just want to go back home and stay there. IT is where I belong. I need a different job. This Fex Ex thing isn't cutting it right now. I mean, the pay rate is good, but what good is a good pay rate if you only get about 10 hours a week? I make a bit more than 100 dollars a week working at Fed Ex. I need something that is going to give me at least double the amount of hours. I want 25 to 30 a week, I suppose. That is what I need anyway. What I want is to get paid and do nothing to actually earn it. Don't we all want that, though? :P Anyway, I applied at Sbarros. I doubt I would make more than probably 8.50 or 9 an hour there, but I could live with that big of a pay drop if I will get 5 hour shifts 5 days a week. I would be better with 25 hours a week. I would get more money doing that than what I am doing now. I also enjoy cooking. I have worked at Sbarros in the past and enjoyed it, aside from my higher ups. They were completely useless. That was my only problem with that job. Here I would have different managers. Maybe they won't stand there and yak my ear off when we are extremely busy without ever actually helping this time. I don't mind chatting during work, but work while you chat for Christ sake. I really need to pay them a follow up visit and see if I can land an interview. It would be much better for me than Fed Ex is. I finished the book that I was reading. It was a collection of stories by HP Lovecraft. I thoroughly enjoyed every single page of it. They were some truly entertaining horror stories. I think it is safe to say that I have found another author that I absolutely love. I started another book by him, actually. I started At the Mountains of Madness. I am about 70 pages into it so far, and it is extremely entertaining. I find it hard to put down when I start reading it. I do not want to stop. I probably mentioned this, as well, but my mother accidentally bought me a copy of Reservoir Dogs on Blu Ray when I already owned it. She traded it in for a copy of Tim Burton's Batman, also on Blu Ray. She has received that from Amazon and will be shipping it up to me very soon, along with the computer my brother gave me. My dad finished setting that up for me. I am really looking forward to getting that. I can't wait to play Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth. My monitor is already here. It is 22 inch wide screen with a resolution of 1650x1050. I am really looking forward to hooking that bad boy up to my computer. That reminds me. I need to tell my dad that he should send me a DVI cable with the computer, if he can. I am also very much looking forward to seeing Batman on Blu Ray. Nicholson is the best Joker ever. I picked up Killers by Iron Maiden the other day. I have been looking for this one for a while now. I knew that I could go to FYE and pick it up, but it was 19 bucks there. Ouch. That is too much for a one disc album. That should be the price of a two disc album. I knew that if I could find it at Best Buy or some place like that, I could get it for cheaper than that. I have been there several times, though. They always have the same albums. They always have Number of the Beast, Seventh Son of a Seventh Son, Fear of the Dark and a few newer ones. They never have Killers. Why? I wound up paying 20 bucks for it after tax. I love the album, as I knew I would. It is brilliant, just like everything else Maiden does. I still think I paid too much for it, though

I guess I should write about it. On New Years eve, I woke up to go to work and ate. After eating, I started feeling sick to my stomach. I laid back down and fell back asleep. I eventually got up and took a shower. It wound up being a good thing that I didn't go to work because I threw up while I was in the shower. Great. The day I go home and I am sick. Typical of my luck. I only threw up that once. I didn't let it stop me from going home, though. After a little bit of trouble, I found the Harrisburg Airport. Seemed like I drove forever once I got there to actually get to the long term parking. I took a bus there to the one terminal. The airport is small. From there, everything went by rather smoothly and I eventually found myself back in Texas, where I belong.

When I arrived in Texas, I texted my mom that I had landed and didn't have to wait for too long for her to show up. It was cold there that night. What the hell! I thought I left that crap back in Pennsylvania. I wanted it to be not cold. What the hell Texas? You are not supposed to be cold!

Anyway, my mom picked me up at the airport. She had Pierre with her. Pierre is my mother's 6 year old Yorkshire Terrier. I love the little guy! He was so happy to see me, too. Who says dogs don't have a memory, huh? :P I guess if you live in the house as a person for 6 years, you have to remember them. We drove around looking for a place to eat. We didn't find anything open, except for Applebees. IT was New Years Eve. OF course everything was closed. We didn't go to Applebees because we had the dog with us. We didn't want to leave him in the car. We wound up going home and cooking a pizza. We watched the Dallas New Years festivities on TV and had a fire going. My bottle of shampoo burst open. That wasn't fun to clean up. Oh. The dogs (Roxy, a 2 year old Yorky and Oreo, a 7 year old Pointer/Lab mix) hounded me and were also glad to see me. I missed them so much.

On Friday, I went out and bought presents for family Christmas. I went to Best Buy, where I bought Uncharted: Drake's Fortune for my brother and Ghostbusters on Blu Ray for my dad. I got to the counter and the card my mom gave me didn't work. My dad had to drive up to Best Buy and pay for it himself. He did not find out what was in the bag. Thank God for that
:P I got in my dad's car and we went to Bed Bath and Beyond where I got a set of plastic food dishes for my mom for leftovers and whatnot as well as a new set of silverware and a few other assorted items. My dad drove me back to Best Buy and I got in my mom's car and stopped by Gamestop, where my friend Joe was working. I talked to him for a while. When I got home, my uncles Ron and Preston were there. They were going to watch the OSU game with my dad. The place was too crowded, so I went over to spend the night at my brothers. We played some games and his yorky, Buckley, was very happy to see me as well. We played some games, watched a movie and crashed.

On Saturday, my mom picked me up at my brothers place and we drove up to Manitou, Oklahoma to get my uncle Mike. He wanted to come down for family Christmas. I got to go up there and see his two German Shepherds again. Their names are Sampson and Delilah. Sampson is a big dog. He is 120 pounds and none of it is fat. He is a beautiful dog too. I think he is 2 years old now, though I am not sure. Delilah is 8 months old I believe. SHe isn't full grown yet. She is very cuddly and always wants to get loved on. Sampson loves to play frisbee. On the way back home, we listened to the Oklahoma State game. They lost. Damn it. My uncles Ron and Preston went home that day. My uncle Mike wound up staying in my old room, so I slept in my brothers old room.

Sunday was family Christmas. What can I say? Christmas kicks ass. I got: Sacred 2: Fallen Angel, a PC that will be decent for gaming, Boondock Saints (Blu Ray), Alien vs Predator Requiem (Blu Ray. I don't care for this movie. I traded it in for The Simpsons season 9 and the Chickenfoot album), Reservoir Dogs (Blu Ray. Already owned this. Oops. Trading it in for Batman on Blu Ray. The 1989 flick with Nicholson as the Joker. Amazing flick. Still waiting to get it), Planet of the Apes (Original. Blu Ray), Species (Blu Ray), Inglorious Basterds (Blu Ray), 200 dollars (Which I used to buy a PSP 3000, a 256 gig memory stick, Ratchet and Clank Size Matters and Resistance Retribution) and randomly assorted things for the kitchen at my apartment and long sleeved shirts. I also got At the Mountains of Madness by HP Lovecraft, A Feast of Crows by George RR Martin and Sharper Than a Serpent's Tooth by Simon R Green. I love to read

That night, my dad called us and told us that an ice storm was headed to Oklahoma earlier than expected. If we wanted to make it in ahead of the storm, we would have to leave the next day. We did this. We drove to Manitou first to drop my uncle off and, from there, to Mustang, Oklahoma, where my uncle lives. We spent the night there and watched coach. The next day, we went from there to my grandparents place outside of Hydro, Oklahoma, where we held Chrismas at their place. There, I got 3 more books, randomly assorted things for the apartment, Red Dwarf: Back to Earth (DVD) and another 225 dollars, which I used to buy: component cables for my PSP 3000, Darksiders: Wrath of War, a second PS3 controller Frampton Comes Alive by Peter Frampton (vinyl), Speak English or Die by SOD (vinyl), Ritchie Blackmore's Rainbow (Vinyl), The Magician's Birthday by Uriah Heep (Vinyl), A Farewell to Kings by Rush (Vinyl) and Christmas presents for my room mate (a white tiger plush toy and Batman for the NES) and his brother (A Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess bean cap). The rest I gave to my Room Mate.

After coming home from this. I was finally able to relax and quit running around so much. I visited my brother one more time. I watched the Cowboys kick the thunder out of the Eagles...twice. I spent a lot of time with my mom and the dogs. I watched Black Adder (Prior to going home, I had ordered two discs of Black Adder for my dad and Red Dwarf: Back to Earth on Blu Ray for my brother) and Inglorious Basterds with my mom and dad. I went to Game Attack, the Screw Attack store. I spent a lot of time playing with the dogs and was sad when I had to finally come home. Texas is where I belong, not Pennsylvania

I packed most of my stuff tonight. I still need to pack up this laptop, which I will do tonight after I get done using it. I still need to pack up toiletries, which I need to use to get ready for work tomorrow.Shoving that in my bag will be the last thing I do tomorrow. I will leave for the airport straight from work. I still need to figure out where the hell I get my actual ticket. I thought it would be coming in the mail or something, but it hasn't. I will fly to Charolette and, from there, to Texas. I will be home again. I am really looking forward to it. I am excited about seeing my family, friends and dogs again. I miss them all a lot. Anyway, I wont be online, quite possibly, at all tomorrow. That is just a heads up. I won't even get the chance. I am sure the airport has free wifi. They all do, don't they? It will not do me any good. My battery life on this lap top is terrible Even if it wasn't, I cannot get the wireless card to turn on. I have to use wired internet, or I cannot get internet at all. I came home from work today and took a nap. The nap wound up lasting something like 3 hours or so. It was quite a long nap. After I woke up. I began looking for my bags. I looked everywhere, and it would seem that I don't have them anymore. What the hell. My backpack for my laptop is gone, and I have no idea what happened to it. IT is annoying. I am borrowing a bag from my room mate. I have to cram everything into it because I can only take one carry on bag and one computer bag. I don't have my computer bag, for some strange reason. As such, I am stuck with one carry on bag. I do not have the cash to check a bag, so I really have no other choice. Ugh. Annoying. I was talking to someone that I care very deeply about earlier. She asked me what I think of lip piercings. I told her. I see it as pointless. I find them to be ugly. I do not like how they look. They just add a hole in your lip that runs a high risk of getting infected. She asks me what I think of tatoos. I tell her this as well. I think they are a blemish on the skin's natural beauty. I do not like them. We wind up arguing about this, and I get upset when her and tell her bye to go lay down. I tell her to text me of she wants and, honestly, I was kind of hoping that she did because I do not like being upset with her. She doesn't text me. I take my nap and wake up to find that she is not online. I suspect that she has blocked me. I call her. This confirms it. She blocked my number. Excuse me?! You asked for my opinion. Do not get upset when I give it to you. If you don't want my opinion that badly, DO NOT ASK ME MY **** OPINION. Now I am upset. I am angry and frustrated., I feel guilty like I have done something wrong. Maybe I sounded forceful, commanding, demanding or controlling with some of the things I said while we were arguing. I do not know. I just want to talk to her and try to smooth things over, but I can't get into contact with her at all. IT is annoying. Ugh. I am frustrated. this is the last thing I needed. Something to upset me the night before I go home' My family will hold Christmas after I get home. I am finally going to get my Christmas

Ok., A few months ago, a guy named John that my room mate is friends with was getting kicked out of his house. His parents moved away for whatever reason and ownership of their trailer transfered to a cousin of John's. This cousin had another mother/father/=child that needed the trailer as well, which means that John and his brother had to move out. He is a friend of Alex, so we take him into our place, even though it is a violation of the lease. He has been living with us since September, really. We got a letter from the land lord saying that we would be evicted if we were in violation of our contract even one more time. Here is the list of things she needed us to fix/take care of, followed by an explanation of each: - Failure to properly dispose of our garbage There have been skunks running around in our area that have been knocking peoples garbage cans down and digging through their trash. This has happened to Alex and I before while both of us were at work. Evidently complaints were lodged before we could put stuff back in the can. Somehow, skunks digging through peoples garbage is our fault -The hard wired smoke detector was ripped out of the wall and set in the rain. This one is partly true. Every time we cooked, the smoke alarm went off. John got up at 4in the morning one day when he could not sleep. He was going to cook himself some ramen. Not wanting to wake Alex and I up, he took the smoke detector down. The letter makes it sound violent, but that is not the case. The thing was beeping, and he couldn't get it to stop. He said even removing the battery didn't get it to stop beeping, so he set it outside. HE forgot about it. It rained the next day.Alex and I were oblivious to this happening until the land lord's husband told us. Either way, this was John doing something dumb. -Broken cabinet doors There was only one broken cabinet door. Again, this was John. He said he kneed it on accident while washing dishes and it broke. We fixed this in like...October. That should tell you how long it has been since the LAnd Lord has actually seen the place. - Unreasonable amount of things hung on the walls hung in an improper way that caused damage This one confuses me the most. When I moved in,. I told the Land Lord that I had a lot of posters that I would like to hang up. I asked her what method I should use to go about this. She told me to used either thumb tacks or double sided tape. We bought thumb tacks and found out that the walls are not dry wall. We could not force the thumb tacks in, so we used double sided tape. Why is this improper if the land lord told us to use it, and how is double sided tape damaging to the walls? There is one other thing of note. When we moved in, the towel rack and the toilet paper holder were very lose where they were hanging on the wall. Every time you put any weight on them at all, they fell down. That, practically, makes them useless. We used a strong form of glue to glue both of these items back to the wall, and have had no problems since. That being said, the glue dripped down a bit below the two previously mentioned items. Getting the glue off the wall wound up pulling the paint off the wall. This is wall damage, for certain. -Noise complaints no one has ever told me anything. The land lord has never, prior to this letter, said anything to me about noise complaints. This is the first I have heard of it. We asked our neighbor, and he says he never hears us. We don't turn music up loud or anything like that. I wonder if the noise complaints were because the smoke alarm went off every day we cooked anything (The vent for the stove just blows the smoke back out at the top of the room. IT is pointless). I need to talk to the land lord on this one, especially. We are paranoid to turn anything up much at all. When I play video games past about 8 PM or so, I am afraid to turn the game up loud enough for me to actually hear the dialog for fear of getting evicted. -Allowing a third party to live with us. This would be John. The note said that this is the most important one. One more thing. the note said to fix these things at our own expense immediately. I have been. We vacuumed, swept, mopped and cleaned this place from head to toe. We took down every single poster on the walls. I went and bought paint and a paint brush and painted over the spots where there was wall damage in the bathroom. The paint doesn't match 100%, but it does look a lot better than it did. I also bought a smoke detector and put that up in the kitchen. This just leaves John. We told John that he needs to move out. He said he understands and will do so. We leave him alone about it for hte weekend, and he doesn't do anything. We ask him on Monday to move his stuff to where he will be staying now while Alex and I are at work. He promises he will We come home to find him on his lap top, having not done that which he promised to do. On Tuesday, we offer to move his stuff for him. He refuses, saying he will do it himself. He still doesn't. On Wednesday, we have been waiting for John to move out since we received the letter on Thursday. He hasn't done it. I am pissed. To me, it looks like he is riding our kindness for as long as he possibly can, even if it means Alex and I losing our apartment. He didn't seem to care. I tell Alex that if he hasn't moved his stuff by the time I get home from work. I will move it for him. I told Alex straight forward "John is not sleeping here tonight." This is exactly what I did. I made 3 seperate trips. I take most of his stuff to the place down the street where he is supposed to live now. I am over there, hanging out with Paul and chatting with him when he gets a phone call. It's John, and he is pissed off at me for what I have done. He tells me to bring his stuff back over to my apartment. I tell him no. Straight faced. I tell him no. He hangs up on me. Alex and John drop by Paul's place. They hang out for a bit and then Alex and I go back to our place. John follows about 30 minutes later. He sits there and doesnt say a word while watching Godzilla on Blu Ray. As he leaves, he tells me he hates my guts. HE leaves me messages on aim willing me to kill myself. Yeesh. Let me tell you a bit more about him. He was a drug addict. He got himself clean of everything except weed. HE drinks alcohol and smokes. He is supposed to be Christian, but his apologies are worthless. He will apologize for something and act as if he feels genuinely guilty about whatever he has done. He does not stop doing what he apologized for, however. That, essentially, makes the apology worthless. He takes advantage of Alex's kindness and tries to talk Alex into buying stuff that he can't afford yet (Usually beer or something else small, though the laptop was Alex's purchase as well, and he hasn't paid Alex every week for it, despite promising that he would.) Alex recently got a perscription for Aderol. It really helps Alex stay focused at work. Aderol basically doubles as a form of speed, however, and John has a tendancy to use it as such...a lot. John would freely take aderol from the perscription bottle. He was basically steal it. Then, he would lie about how much he has had, as if it isnt obvious from the fact that the bottle is either empty or almost empty. He emptied e veyr single pill of it's contents, confessed to Alex and apologized. Alex started hiding it, and he has admitted to seeking it actively. He has done similar things with Ian, Alex's younger brother. Stealing perscription pills right in front of him and then apologizing for it later and doing it all again. On top of this, he is very self righteous. HE believes he is better than I am. He **** to Alex all the time about me when he thinks I am not listening and talks to Alex about kicking me out of the apartment. He also calls me childish or a baby and things like that He said I am immature and don't have a sense of responsibility. This is coming from someone who steals perscription pills from someone that it actually does them some good. He works in the evenings, but during the day, he rarely, if ever does things such as dishes or cleaning up. The living room looks like a mess a lot of the time specifically because of him just throwing his clothes whereever, and he cannot stick to his weekly commitments such as giving Alex monehy. He talked Alex into buying him a laptop when he didn't have the cash for it, and he wants to call me irresponsible, childish and immature?! Last time I checked, I give Alex money every single week from my pay check. Last time I checked, I waited until I had the vast majority of the money before I asked Alex to help me with a major purchase (used PS3 slim. I paid 220 of it. He paid 69.). Last time I checked, I do the dishes pretty much every single day. Last time I checked, I keep my room relatively clean. This **** isnt going to fly. You dont get to be a guest in someones house and then **** about the host the entire time. That isn't how it works *sigh* He just came back here at 4 in the **** morning because he cannot sleep on the floor at his other place. I shojld have locked the doors so he cannot get back in. I swear to God I am going to call the cops on him. He is treading on very thin ice with me right now, and he will not win this.