Topic: Personal
Gaaaaah!

Have gained 10 pounds since the wedding. If same rate of increase continues, by the time I'm 40 I would be generating my own gravitational field. Small animals would be orbiting my butt in a spacious and yet somehow mildly aesthetic series of ellipses. This planetary prospect fills me with dread.

Topic: Personal
On Monday, I came to work in the morning to find no computer at my desk. The IT technician had taken it away for rebuilding, and had promised me that it'd be back by Monday. So, I call the help desk, and it being Monday morning, got transferred to their "overflow" answer service, which I think is located in Bangladesh, based on the amount of help I was able to get from them.

Anyways, the technician arrives with my computer at 9am, by which time I was fuming. The man walked into such a tirade as you would not believe. I had sadly lost my normally composed mien, and berated him roundly for several minutes. Then, while he was busy working on my computer, I start to go through my InBox...where I found some health-insurance snafu paperwork. So I call R, and berate him roundly for a minute or two, just to stay on my roll.

I put the phone down, looked at the technician beavering away at the computer (and trying to make himself as small as possible), and said, "You a married man, John?" He replies, "Hell no."

Ah ha ha.

So finally he's finished with the work, and informs me that I needed FMIS installed but he couldn't do it, the FMIS guy has to come do it. I shot him a look - perhaps you know to what type of 'look' I am referring here - and he stepped back away from me, whipped out his Nextel, and says, "I'll call him RIGHT NOW."

Laughing, I said, "Yeah, better him than you, eh?"

His response? "Well, I wouldn't wish you on anybody or anything, but..."

WHAT?

"...when you call the help desk, we all draw straws, and the short straw has to call you back."

I related the story to S, who said, "Is that what happened to R? Did he take one for the team?"

Oh, people think they're so funny...

Topic: Review
How simple stories move me.

Every Cat, by Laura Wenger, as posted on http://www.1000words.net/

Seems as good an idea as any.
Topic: Fun

Japanese businessmen hold a service aimed at fending off viruses and glitches for their computers in a purification ceremony conducted by a Shinto priest according to Shinto rituals at Kanda Myojin shrine in Tokyo January 6, 2004. REUTERS/Haruyoshi Yamaguchi

Topic: Fun
In a rare moment of candor, Washington insiders reveal something you NEVER thought they would!

From San Diego's STAR100.7 radio station site...

Topic: Fun
What happens when you have:

1) nothing to do;

2) a sharp knife;

3) a large lime;

4) a patient cat;

5) too much tequila and

6) it's football season?

Are You Stresse?

"Stress sneaks upon us so easily, that so very often we're not even aware of it when it hits. Take this self-stress test by hitting the link below. You might be surprised as to how stressed out you really are."

This might prove to you that you're needing a vacation.

Topic: Cute

A pony rubs his nose on a cat in the Budakeszi game park near Budapest, Hungary on Wednesday, Jan. 7, 2004, after snow started to fall in the morning hours in some parts of Hungary. (AP Photo / MTI, Mate Nandorfi)

You know in the Lord of the Rings movie, when Elrond's people were leaving Rivendell in droves?

Right.

Would you say, while looking at the emptied Rivendell, that...

"Elves have left the building"?

Topic: Personal

The good-luck bamboo in my office shriveled up & died. Should I be concerned?