The condiment museum. Behold…the power of the internet.

Statement of Purpose
The Condiment Packet Museum exists to provide documentation and display of condiments found in packets. The packets in the Museum are specifically all packets other than sugar packets, which are currently well documented by other sources. We think they look cool. So there.

Newtie just brought me his crinkle-mouse. Aww… an early valentine from my little boy. 🙂

Appointment with Dr Dolchin Monday, March 4, 1pm. Review sleep information, possible surgery, phasing out cpap.

Heavy Rain due tonight and tomorrow, Taxi it to work.

I’m glad that my sweetheart is doing better… was icky-sicky earlier in the week, with some looming flu hanging overhead. 🙂

Newt was gabby this morning…Not sure what he wanted… plenty of fresh sand, food and water, and I spent a goodly amount of the morning with him in my arms like a baby, giving him bouncy-loves, and smooches on the nose, and giving chase around the house. He really likes the amazon box that _Flyboy_ came in, and is flexing his shredding abilities on the flaps while he sits inside. I actually took him on a tour of the courtyard out front today, just to let him sniff the outside air and bat at the hedge-leaves as I held him in my arms. I suspect he was just wanting to hear the sound of his own voice. (I’m guilty of that, myself… I sing in the shower at times.) I’ve noticed that while he doesn’t watch TV directly, Newt digs the stereo left on, or the TV…I think he likes a little background noise. I think he likes the vibration as well as the heat from the tube, because he’ll lay on top of the speakers if the radio is on.

Set the laptop to install DirectX as I was heading out the door today… hopefully the missing file will find where it needs to fall.

After dropping things off at the post office, I caught the bus in to work…. something about the mild hum, and general quietness of the passengers lowered me into a torpor level of hibernation…vaguely aware of my surroundings, but mostly blanked, dropping the number of mental cylinders firing to about 3 or 4 our of the usual 12. You could tell that it’s Ash Wednesday, the bus was more crowded with a number of people dressed in church clothes and signature forehead-markings of the holiday.

I missed the transfer by moments, so I took a little walk over to McDonalds to grab a drink and return to the station to await the next bus… The girl behind the counter was a little tweaked. “May I take your order… uh, why are you looking at me like that?” I don’t think I had any expression on my face at all…or maybe she meant “Why the blank expression?” My reply was a smile and then “I don’t know… it’s just the face I’m wearing. I’m sleepy. May I have a large orange juice?” No dice. Apparently, they stop the orange juice with breakfast. Sort of weird to me, no prep involved to my knowledge… Don’t they do coffee all day? Anyhow, I settled for a large coke, hoping that the additional caffeine would give me a needed boost. (no luck there, either… but at least my thirst was finally quenched.) The girl behind the counter went over to another who was doing drive through duty , and pointed at me as I filled my soda from the fountain. I don’t think she realized that I was pretty much looking right at them as I was doing so, maybe off and to the right a bit. It’s kind of funny to me that people still have the same mannerisms year after year. Since I wandered over from the bus station, and meandered back, I suspect that they thought I was stoned or something. Had I more energy or interest, I might’ve had a bit of fun with them, gibbering about ants on my arms, the walls breathing or some such.

Still in the market for a nice bike, a beach cruiser to tool around on for morning walkies (will become rollies?) and commute to work on. I really don’t want a car, unless I have to make a bigger drive.

I just realized I’ve not done many “pictures of the day” since my vacation. I want to get back into that, as it’s nice to have an image to look back on the day as well as words. I’ve sent a couple to snap club, which is a fun thing…. 320 x 240 only. a neat archive of assorted folks pictures.

Well, back to work, dear journal. I hope the system you live on is happy and healthy, and the new features come into place soon. *hope hope* especially for an internal search engine. I really would like to type “poop” or whatever, and see what entries turn up (I imagine “sweetie” or “Newt” would return an interestingly high number of values).

Stuff happening in February this month in Fort Lauderdale. Couldn’t they spread it out a bit? flipside, there’s yummy food of every stripe available. 🙂 Sakes… Melting pot, indeed. I don’t even need to mention the Brazilian, Cuban, Finnish and Hatian elements that are a part of daily life, too.

Greek fest, African-American history celebration (I missed that one, it was last weekend), Canada fest, Irish fest, Italian fest, Seminole tribal fair, Texas chili cook-off, ren fest, mardi gras, Scottish festival … I imagine that next month it’ll be Belgians and People of Russo/Austrailain decent. Th elevel of diversity always impresses me…. I’m just surprised that so much is bundled into one small month!

The Germans get a month in September… not counting Oktoberfest.

Hmmm… somehow, I got a major scrape behind my left knee. Was I attacked by newt during the night? catch the flesh on some sharp object? Aliens botching a chip implant (or removal?) I need a personal forensics team to dance for my amusement. A few notes before I hop into the shower.

galactic battlegrounds will have to wait. for some reason, ol’ directx 8.1 doesn’t want to install. I suspect lappie needs a reformat, and I’m not going to do that until I can back up the vital stuff off of the hard drive.

Hey… Alton Brown has a place to rant? How neat! Probably the most nifty guy on cable that’s not involved with the discovery channel. Not very frequently updated, though. I’m impressed by his scientific knowledge, humor, and mass of trivial data. Mind you, his website is a mass of useless graphics, but it can be looked past. Tonight’s Episode of good eats is about cocoa. Food network, at 9pm EST.

Speaking of chocolate… note to self: overnight the yummies to my dearest before work today, along with some other goodies… been lacking in my timelyness…more tricky to do net-ordering of stuff from work, too.

Ok.. time for the pod to enter the rain-box.

I need to call Val up, and wish her a happy birthday.

Taking a moment to reflect on the good things.

I have three very important beings whom I love very much in my life, in different capacities, but they all bring a sort of power and happiness…. I’m healthy, all my parts work well within operating norms, and I can enjoy walking in my environment. I’m paid regularly to do work that while challenging isn’t back-breaking or repellant to me. There’s an embarrassment of wealth in my pantry… enough food for a village in most parts of the world. Clean water, indoor plumbing, an oven. I’m secure financially, in no monetary debt. I can read what I want, when I want, and the same goes for eating and speaking.

Not a bad scenario, really.

Alternating feast or famine… either a load of work, or nothing to do at all. Just staggered enough to prevent me from doing any real writing work. Eating bad food today, I’m going to have to start bringing more healthful snacks in again. (Hit up the roach coach for tea, and all they had that was palatable to me was orange Gatorade…here! have some brominated vegetable oil and ester of wood rosin! Doesn’t sound like food ingredients, but maybe a floor wax.) a nice cheese sub from Di’s later for a snack.

Commenced reading the _Tales of the Arabian Nights_ last eve… entertaining nest of stories. I’m sort of fond of the genius / genii over the more contemporary genie/genies. The tale of the doctor’s decapitated head, the vizier, and the golden book reminded me quite a bit of name of the rose. Some plot devices live eternal, it seems.

I’ve got to call the brother tonight, see how he’s doing, and if he’s in need of anything. When last we spoke he was in pretty good spirits, fortunately. I need to get all the vital information regarding the officer name, case number, etc.

That reminds me, still no more information on my cousin… to the best of my knowledge she’s doing ok, but is still on the mend.

I’m missing my sweetie, landlocked here at work and looking forward to seeing her later. I’m glad that I have her in my heart to get me through the day…but I miss chatting with her terribly. I’ve got some lovely Valentine’s day surprises lined up for her. 🙂 Hooray for overnight mail!

It appears that I’ll be cross-training over with Bonbon, the Bonbon spawn, and possibly others to help pick up the slack next door. I don’t foresee it being too much of a problem, except for folks having to make the time for training instead of working. That should be fun, save for more of the political infighting…. they defused a situation regarding Bonbon’s flipping out as a result of the one-two punch of internet denial and Chupacabra’s rumor-mongering. (Saying blatant untruths, because she doesn’t know what’s really going on…had Bon worried for her job over nothing.) She went off at the production meeting, and it took three people to bring her down from the anxious knot she’d tied herself into. It was literally to the point of her wailing about the rumor and the other meeting-folk assuring her that it wasn’t so for a good half-hour. I swear, we need a good human resources person. I think it’s time for me to maybe look again more carefully at other venues…meetings like that are why I don’t like this business.

back from walkies… cool, but nice. in the low 60s. I needed the walk to wake up, though I still have a case of the yawnies, at least my morning grogginess has passed. The fog surrounding my mind seemed especially thick earlier. I had a feeling that I could kick off of the sidewalk and just float up, and fly around a bit. I saw a few bleached shells and rocks, scattered on the ground… made me think about teeth, my walking on the jawline of some leviathan.

It’s officially the Year of the Horse…

Lots of luck and red envelopes for everyone!

There’s a right way to cook a Palm Pilot and a wrong way. OK… there’s just a wrong way. Some senior exec got his Palm VII wet, put it in the oven to dry it and then proceeded to cook a pizza with the Palm still in the oven. Oopsie! Pictures of the aftermath are included.