ich bin ein auslander

OK… where did I leave off? Talked about Friday’s nights hermitless hermit evening… Saturday day was spent recovering. Not entirely sure if we even left the house until late afternoon. Then it was off to beautiful La Verne, CA. Yes, La Verne. Where is that? Far away.

Time for another YAWN (yet another wedding night). This time my good bud and college roommate Lee tied the knot with the lovely Nicole. A lovely evening, all in all… Tim, my other college roommate, came out from Phoenix (and had a nice time, finding a single lady in the house)… a few other college friends were there, as well as Nicole and Lee’s current crowd, with which Wendy and I have had a number of fun evenings with. Had the chicken for dinner (of course) and plenty of beer. And wine. And other things. Still managed to avoid joining in the conga line.

Sunday… well, here I am. Haven’t done much yet today. Rented the Princess and the Warrior (same director and star as Run Lola Run, yet crap). Did a little shopping - still no bedding but a new BBQ - and had a nice dinner. I even cooked - made pinapple dump cake - and we’re about to sit down and have some while watching the latest of the admittedly crappy new season of Sex and the City.

So there you go. Possibly getting a new car tomorrow. We’ll see.

Yes, we got in the 10 minutes before they close pizza order! 2:30am pizza and ST:TNG dvd orgy!

Had a “friend of webhermits” evening at Finn McCools as none of the hermits showed up… one of our friends came, as did a bunch of Dave’s friends, including Jon and Steve. A good time was had by all, particularly myself, as I decided I needed to reaquaint myself with whiskey. Wendy didn’t do too shabby, either…

Now, off to sleep.

Not entirely sure what happened today; it all started off quietly enough but I think we easily hit the $1000 spending mark. Around lunch Wendy decided we needed new bedding - new pillows, new sheets, the works. OK, that’s going to be expensive, but I was sort of up for it. What the hell. 3 hours of wandering around Macy’s and not being able to agree on anything later, we gave up and went to Creative Computers and bought After Effects 5.5 for Mac. Quite the transition, no? But wait! There’s more!

I make the mistake of whining about spending a ton of money and not even getting what we set out for. So off to Bed Bath and Beyond, where we once again found absolutely nothing interesting in terms of bedding, yet still somehow walked out with a new set of pans, towels and various other things I didn’t know we needed.

Just doing our bit for the economy… and we still don’t have new bedding.

you’ve gotta do it yourself. As expected, the computer repair company kept my system for almost a week and were unable to do anything. They claimed the fan I needed wasn’t being produced anymore; considering it’s only a 2 year old motherboard, I found that somewhat surprising. 3 minutes on the phone with the manufacturer later, one was being shipped out to me - free of charge as the board is still covered under warrenty. Fucking stupid ass shitholes at the “Computer Experts” (on Lincoln in Santa Monica, avoid at all cost). Picked up the system and told them to stuff themselves and their “diagnostic fee”.

So, armed with the new knowledge I was hoping to avoid (the exact motherboard specs, processor, etc) it was a simple matter to find a quiet heatsink and fan, so I ordered that as well. Two days from now, both fans should be at my door, and I’ve decided to install them myself since I can obviously no longer ever rely on a repair place. Booyah!

Schwab managed to unbunghole my tax/ira accounts, so that went well today. Now I need to find a car in the next two weeks as my lease is up. Can’t wait to rant about the ass-reaming I’ll be getting from the associated bank. “Return charges” my ass. Last time I ever lease. And oh, the appointment at the DMV next week, what a joy and pleasure that’s sure to be. Also ordered the wedding present for Saturday’s joyous occasion. Sigh.

On the plus side, my parents have left on vacation so I won’t have to perform any over the phone VCR / answering machine / computer / anything that uses electricity debugging this week.

Unfortunately, this has been my life recently. I will start writing more interesting entries tomorrow. If need be, I will just start drinking all day, which should make for more interesting entries.