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    The electricity seemed to be screwy at home. All the lights had a slight flicker to them; and a couple times, when I for instance turned on a light, my cable modem would shut off. It was like I was on the very threshold of using too much power. This worried me, so I shut down the computer (which I hadn't done in months) before I left for work. Fast Food Friday for today was chicken tenders from Arby's. A couple hours later Reid and I had to go over to the boss's office to drop off some forms. We drove separately, since Reid would be able to go home afterward, and bizarrely my SERVICE ENGINE SOON light was not on anymore!

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    I got up at six again for another football game. It would be against rivals Michigan State, so I assumed U of M would recognize this game was big enough to actually show up for. Today's tailgate was breakfast with Dick frying eggs and Mike cooking up pancakes and sausage. (There was also taco salad for after the game.) It was colder than last week (and I wondered if this was why my SERVICE ENGINE light was staying off) but was still bearable. The worst part about it was how itchy my scalp was from my knit cap. As expected, the Wolverines trounced the Spartans. All the unused touchdowns from last week were spent today. Since we had the top row, Mike and I were able to stand against the wall for part of the game, which allows us a bit more elbow room. Near the end of the second quarter some litle twerp comes up and sits down right in front of us, in our seats. I was too bundled up to complain, so I let him be; but then, at halftime, he gets up and leaves his gloves and hat behind as if claiming the seat he stole. I couldn't believe the audacity; but I wanted to sit during halftime so I booted him out when he came back.
    On the way back, I asked Mike what he was doing this weekend. It would be my fortieth birthday Saturday and Li'l Stubby would be at The Blue Goose. I was kind of hoping I might discern some telltale hesitation that would suggest something was already planned for me -- after all my friends had thrown me a great surprise party for the my 30th. I wasn't sure if I could to The Blue Goose on Saturday, so I was at least planning on going Friday. Mike's younger son, Andrew, had a basketball game that night, but since the band would be starting late he might be able to make it.

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    The U2 listserv was abuzz over a VCD of a Slane Castle concert. I checked out Direct Connect and was able to download it. I also discovered someone who had SHNs of Bruce Springsteen's concert at the Palace. Unfortunately the guy had a slow connection, so I only got a couple tracks by the end of the day.

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    Since my SERVICE ENGINE SOON light was not on anymore I got out of taking my car back in. I left a little for work so I could go to the drug store for sinus pills and Cold Eez. As I got onto the expressway, I suddenly remembered my boss had asked me to come by his office again at noon. I sped as much as I could and showed up twenty minutes late. He was on the phone calling over to our room to see if I'd gone there instead.
    The new cartoons over at Homestar Runner had been great last week, but things turned ugly today on the message board. Some idiots were taking advantage of the lack of security measures and were posting things under other people's names. One of the regulars was so incensed with the libelous content that she announced she was leaving and not coming back. I felt sorry for her since she was one of the last of the regulars, holding out against the influx of n00bs. She has a weblog at Xanga.com, but unfortunately there was no way to write her without becoming a member. So I went ahead and did so anyway, starting another useless weblog in the process. At least I figured out how to Moreover.com to add news headlines to my SFG Food page.

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    I left early to vote. This went faster than expected so I had plenty of time before work. I stopped at Borders to browse around. The new Two Towers movie tie-in books would be coming out tomorrow, I found. I couldn't get over how lucky Bush is. His daddy buys him an oil company and then a baseball team; McCain drops out to let him win the nomination, the Supreme Court gift-wraps the presidency for him, some asshole Islamics reawaken our national pride with Bush the undeserving beneficiary, Congress rolls over and plays dead to let Bush take away our civil rights in the name of the ongoing war with Eurasia (or is it Oceana?), and now the whole country converts to Republican overnight so that emperor Bush can rule equally over all branches of government. And why? What has Bush done to earn so many breaks. Oh yeah, he gave me three hundred dollars once, and in doing so erased the surplus the Democrats had gathered.

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    Finally went back to the big & tall store to order a blazer. The other stores didn't have my size so I'd have to order it from their catalog. They said it would be shipped in five business days and I had it sent to my own address. I had time afterward so I went back to Borders and picked up The Two Towers movie tie-in books. I paged through the books at work, and the afternoon was dull that I managed to finish the Visual Companion before I left. I finally broke 300 posts on the Super Evil message board. I was also delighted to see Redhead was back from her hiatus and was busily writing several updates to her weblog.

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    Since the weekend was approaching I e-mailed Mike and Paul to see if they were interested in seeing Li'l Stubby at The Blue Goose. Can't say I was too surprised when they declined. It looked like I'd once again be going alone, but in the back of my mind I couldn't help wondering if my friends might surprise me there after all. This optimism was short-lived. I found a message on my machine from the suit warehouse. My blazer was on backorder and wouldn't be shipped till a week from Friday. This would make it impossible for it to show up in time for the party Sunday. Also, during the day my car had been bombarded by seagulls. Turning forty and friendless, I felt like my car looked: shat on from a great height.

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    I went back to the big & tall store to see how I could speed up my order. The salesman told me I'd come to the right person since he knew just what to do. We looked through the catalog, found a nice Palm Beach blazer for forty bucks more, and then he called up the Palm Beach warehouse to confirm they had the right color and size. Then he called up the store's own office, canceled my order, and put in the new order. It seemed pretty fool-proof, so I looked forward to getting my new and improved jacket.
    I'd been hoping for Taco Bell for Fast Food Friday, but the Reid and Jeremy opted for Arby's. When I mentioned my yen for Taco Bell Jeremy said they'd been thinking about KFC but had chosen Arby's since my homepage listed I'd had KFC yesterday. Actually, the KFC entry was from Tuesday; I'd had Arby's yesterday, so I got it to have it twice in a row. I was puzzled by a DVD Planet e-mail about my FOTR Edition Edition order. The receipt said "BACKORDERED" on it, which made me wonder if this meant my long wait for the special edition might be made even longer. I wasn't sure if the "BACKORDERED" referred to the fact I'd pre-ordered the discs or that there was something wrong.
    I got up to St Clair Shores at around nine, after work. I'd brought my digital gear so I got a table close to the band and made my usual bootleg. I have to admit I did not think they sounded that great. They were breaking in a new keyboard player, and I'd have to get used to his sound.

Two couples came up to sit with me at my table; this was fine by me since now I'd be able to leave and go pee. However, there was one song I really wanted to tape tonight, so I could include it on my fan page, and the doofus sitting next to me started singing and pounding the table when that song started. They took off after the second set. I bought a fourth bottle of beer and quietly toasted my big milestone birthday.

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    Woke up stinking of cigarette smoke. The smoke had been so bad I still had a bad enough sinus headache that I felt like I'd drunk twelve beers instead of just four. My parents offered to take me out to dinner, so I still wondered if there might be a surprise party awaiting me. We went to the Big Bear Lodge. We actually waited an hour and a half to sit down. At least the food was fast, but it was hardly worth the wait or the price (it was just a grilled boneless chicken breast, after all). I got the new SNL book Live from New York, I got the new Leonard Maltin video guide (which pissed me off with an average three-star rating for Fellowship of the Ring), and by coincidence the new Santabear showed up in the mail. I also got stomach problems from my dinner. I'd kind of intended to go back to St Clair Shores and see Li'l Stubby's second show, since I'd obviously have to throw my own birthday party, but instead I was forced to spend much of the night in the bathroom. Yippee. Happy birthday to me.

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    I tried cleaning Fish's new vase today. I was more worried about all the glass than about the fish, frankly. At least the decorative stones are amazingly easy to clean compared to the old gravel. I also worked on making a new MP3 for my Stubby page from Friday's tape. I noticed a little stutter to the music, like the sound of stuck CD. I thought I might have encoded it like this, but I discovered it's on my master tape. This means either the tape was bad or, worse, my expensive DAT recorder might be wearing down.

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    I'd been hoping to get my extended Fellowship DVDs today, but I didn't realize till I was in the shower that today was Veterans Day and there would be no mail. I was further disappointed later on. Just before I left I got a message on the answering machine about my suit jacket. Unbelievably, the warehouse was reporting that my jacket was on backorder and would not show up till December 6! I was flabbergasted. Hadn't the salesman called up the warehouse specifically to confirm they had a jacket in my size before placing the order? Then how the hell could it now be on backorder? Why was this backorder three times longer than the first one? I was furious, but I didn't have time to call or to stop at the store.
    Making up for it all, Reid had bought me a big Mrs Field's chocolate chip cookie for my birthday. Strong Bad's 50th e-mail was supposed to show up today. We waited around for it, but it didn't show up till around 11 PM.

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    I went to the big and tall shop today. That salesman was not in, unfortunately, so I left a message for him telling him how the warehouse had lied to him when they'd said my order could be filled. I was interested what his reply would be.
    Bob T came by to work with us about our database. He's creating software to interface between our database and the help desk's, but he was running into problems. My Fellowship DVDs were waiting for me in the evening, so of course I spent the whole night watching them. As promised, my name was even in the credits; it was a kick to see whose names next to mine.

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    I'd stayed up late because of the Fellowship DVDs, but by coincidence I could go in late today since I was working later. The guy with the Homestar secrets page had created a message board. I was a bit miffed since I'd had the idea first. His board had pop-ups ads, a gruesomely horrid color scheme, yet it still already had more members.
    I got Attack of the Clones on DVD in the evening. The digital transfer looked a bit video-ish and of course the movie blows, so I still stuck with Fellowship.

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    I got to go in late again today. However, Reid had only worked a halfday, so he could take his girlfriend someplace. This left Jeremy alone, and it just so happened that this morning's special show was a complete and total cluster. He'd even asked me on my Shoutbox to come in early, but I hadn't seen the message. The furor had died down by the time I got in. There had been a ton of calls about the show and Jeremy had found out that the show's authorizations had been changed without our knowledge. The idiot producer of the show had decided yesterday that all dealers should be able to see the show, and had changed this info in the schedule software (as if thinking this would create some global change) but hadn't actually notified anyone about it.

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    Fast Food Friday was at Taco Bell today. The bags seemed a little light but it took me a couple blocks before I realized they'd forgotten Reid's pizza. I went back with my receipt and got it, but it made me about ten minutes late. I found from Mike that I was still invited to tomorrow's U of M game. I stopped at Rite Aid on the way home for VHS tapes and I spent the night copying stuff to bring over to Mike's tomorrow. I got Amazon UK package today, containing Ab Fab: The Last Shout and the uncensored Eyes Wide Shut. Yes, it is true: I dared to look upon the pantomime thrusting that the MPAA has deemed too great for my American eyes.

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    It was supposed to be cold, so I wore several layers of clothing for the game today. I got to Mike's a little after seven:thirty. Mike had joked last time about having ribs, but he'd actually brought some. Dick brought chili. It actually got colder as the day wore on. I finally remembered the binoculars, which really helped keep up my interest in the game. I hung out at Mike's in the evening; I wanted to show off my Fellowship DVDs, but he wanted to watch his new Attack of the Clones DVD first. I ended up leaving afterward.

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    Today was the day for which I'd needed my infamous and nonexistent suit jacket. My uncle's 80th birthday party was held in a basement room at Ernesto's in Plymouth. It was a nice lunch with a big turnout. My uncle was completely surprised (although he might've been suspicious when his granddaughter's boyfriend happened to be walking to the restroom when they entered the restaurant).

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    Amazingly, there were repercussions from Thursday's screw-up. It was obvious who was at fault, but still we were being asked to double-check all sorts of stuff. I got my box of Two Towers Topps cards tonight. The one autograph card it contained was Cate Blanchett's, so now the way was paved for many eBay bids to get the others.

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    I went to Meijer's before work, buying some plastic sheets for my Topps cards. Because of stupid last Thursday, we almost had to start going through our database to doublecheck the thousands of IRDs, but we got a repriece from the governor when Dennis told us to hold off for now.
    Redhead had started a message board. Reid signed in and we wondered how long "Frolixo" would last before he got banned. It was less than an hour.

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    It looked like I'd been banned from Redhead's message board too. I couldn't even access the board from home. I wondered if she somehow thought I might be "Frolixo"? I suppose I could see why, since Reid and Jeremy and I have the same IP at work, but I'd already explained this to hear last time. I could understand being banned at work, but not at home.
    Dennis came by, to discuss all the threatened database work. Dennis believed Bob T could run queries against our database and come up with a list of troublesome IRDs rather than our going through each IRD one by one. Complicating things further, we were having trouble saving tier reports. We'd contacted San Diego and they seemed to think a software upgrade might help, since we're three versions behind the latest one.

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    Reid and Dennis and San Diego were in a conference call about our software problem. Not much was decided however. I brought in my 2003 Leonard Maltin book in for the heck of it, and we spent some of the downtime looking up reviews. I was already disappointed he'd given such an ambitious movie as Fellowship a plain three-stars. Reid was incensed to find out Memento had gotten a paltry one-and-a-half! So Jeremy and I much of the day teasing Reid by finding movies that were just as good as Memento -- titles such as Dr Giggles, Monkeybone, Tomb Raider, and Hot Dog: The Movie.

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    It had rained yesterday but there was snow on the ground now. However, the snow lessened as I headed north to Dearborn, which is usually the opposite. Our company in Atlanta had given Dennis money for a holiday party. We'd decided to have pizzas today, so there was no Fast Food Friday. Dennis and Jonard hung around for pizza before returning to their offices.
    We got a 57-page list of IRDs to go through; Reid was planning on coming in to work on it over the weekend. I got maybe two pages done, in the afternoon, before Dennis called to say Bob T was sending over his lists. He had four lists between eight and eleven pages long, which was a great improvement over this morning's. Dennis contacted Reid too, who still planned on coming in. I got one of the lists done before I left.

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    I had a busy day today. I did a lot of writing in the morning, put up the Dickens Village buildings in the afternoon, and did more writing at night. I did not put up the Dickens Village accessories or even light the buildings, since I could save that for Christmas.

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    I went in to work at around eleven. Jeremy had been in because of programming and Reid had come in too, so they'd finished two of the lists. I needed to do the fourth and last. I brought my Rolling Stones 40 Licks CDs to listen to in the meantime. I got home at around four:thirty or five. I did some work on this very November diary page. Several Topps auctions were ending tonight at nine:thirty, in the middle of Sopranos. I placed some large proxy bids so I wouldn't have to leave the TV. I also finished my Spider-man NetFlix rental.

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    It hated to get a haircut so close to Thanksgiving, but it was obvious I would need one soon. Just in case there were a lot of people ahead of me I woke up early and left early. Amazingly, there was no one ahead of me at the nearby Bo-Ric's, so I got my haircut done and still had plenty of time on my hands. I showed up to work about ten after twelve, twenty minutes early. Bob T came by to update our copy of the software he was working on. We'd finished his lists from Friday, so he was going to re-run them so we could doublecheck our work.

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    Reid had a hospital appointment so I was working his morning schedule. I got up at five and left at quarter after six. I stopped at McDonalds for breakfast burritos. I lucked out since there were no special shows this morning, so my shift should be pretty normal. Jeremy got word from the help desk that we'd have to work later on Thanksgiving and Friday. At the beginning of the month we hadn't expected to work at all, since no US or Canadian shows were scheduled; but in the meantime, Canada, realizing how they could screw with us, had started adding shows, and now the help desk wanted us to show up at eight just in case. Reid would be gone this weekend, so it was up to Jeremy and me to work these days; we'd planned on working one day each, but now we'd have to split the shifts.

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    AOL was actually featuring a short clip from The Two Towers. Later on TORN had links to a couple other clips, from Entertainment Tonight and Extra. To make up for being out of town this weekend, Reid had offered to buy us Buddy's pizzas for lunch. Later on, Joe sent out the first invitations for next month's Guys' Shopping Night. I got a lot of calls from Mexico this evening. Back at home I had quite the musical evening: ABC had a two-hour McCartney concert while at the same time Windsor channel 9 had U2's Boston show.

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    Jeremy was working Tnanksgiving morning. I watched WDIV's coverage of Detroit's "America's Parade", even though their inane blather perenially irritates me. I had to leave before it ended, so I listened to the audio on WJR-AM. They cut over to WDIV's coverage for audio from the Santa stage, but the audio was horrid and kept cutting out, so the ending of the parade sucked and WDIV's heavily-hyped HDTV broadcast was a bust.
    The front doors of course were locked so I had to go through the east entrance. The long hallway in the basement was blocked off while the floor was waxed. I was completely thrown by how to get to my room. I'd never used any other way but I backtracked and wandered about, went upstairs, and eventually spotted familiar territory and made my way to the room. Jeremy was waiting and I warned him about the long detour he'd need to get out.
    The day was quite dull. Jeremy said the only call he'd gotten was from his girlfriend, and the only call I got was for Jeremy. I couldn't resist sneaking out, so I left a halfhour early, at four:thirty, so I could insure getting to my parents' house for Thanksgiving dinner.

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    I worked the morning shift this time, getting up at six. This shift was as dull as yesterday's. Jeremy is usually quite early, but he told me how was dog-sitting at his dad's and had lost track of time.
    Back at home I ordered a set of nice plastic card holders for my Two Towers autographed cards. I also decided to reinstall BeOS for the heck of it. I only allocated 500 MBs for it, so it wouldn't be a big deal; it still took a while since I installed version 4.5 before upgrading to 5.0. But I was able to watch TV through most of it. Just like Wednesday, there was more music on the networks: this time CBS had a U2 special from Slane Castle.

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    I tried to put the lights in my Dickens Village but I didn't have enough multi-strings. I got started on my Christmas shopping, ordering The Nightmare for Before Christmas for my nephew John, as well as Mr Show and Band of Brothers for myself. I found an interesting Java game at, of all things, some David Hasselhoff site. I liked the game a lot, found out where it came from, downloaded the scripts, and tried to convert it so it could work with my SFG site. Later on, I removed all the games links from my homepage and instead created a separate Game Menu. After dinner I went to Ray Hunter but, surprisingly, they didn't have any multi-strings either. Overnight, I got around to checking out the second disc of Attack of the Clones.

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