The Inner Workings of a Very Complicated Cheeze.

Wednesday, March 31, 2004

If you are reading this, it means you have nothing better to do. So you might as well do some online gaming:

Sim Girls
Crazy Flash Puzzle Game

And then, after you have beaten both those games, watch these videos:
Mario Video1
Mario Video2
Mario Video3
Mario Video4


Monday, March 29, 2004

So...yeah...the ac is still busted...its pretty hot but not as bad as last week. And I got the electric bill yesterday, its still dirt cheap so can't complain there. Here's a quick time line of the ac saga:

-Monday: Guardian Heating and Cooling calls me to make an appointment. Soonest they can come out is Wednesday but I work from 9am to 11:30pm on Wednesdays. So they schedule a tech to come out between 8 & Noon on Thursday.
-Wednesday: Guardian Heating and Cooling calls to say their tech is sick and cannot come out in the morning and that a new person can come out that afternoon instead. I then procede to bitch them out saying that I am of the working class and cannot be home all day every day to accomodate their needs. I am put on hold for about 3 minutes and the guy comes back and says that a tech will be there between 7 & 10 instead.
-Thursday @ 10:50am: Wake up to the same guy from Guarding calling to say he cannot get ahold of his tech by radio. I said that is ok because I am sleepy. Approx. 3 minutes later the doorbell rings. I talked to the tech for a moment and he says that he doesn't have a ladder big enough to get on my roof so he ditches me instead of going to get a bigger ladder. I call both Guardian to say "wtf?" and my home warrenty people to tell them.
-Thursday @ 2pm: Get a call from Ambient Air to set a new appt. A long story short, the warrenty people will foot the bill for an "after-hours" call for Friday @ 6:15pm.
-Friday @ 6:15pm: I'm driving like mad trying to get home in time. The tech calls and says he's about 10 minutes away...whew!
-Friday @ 6:30pm: Tech shows up. We have a brief argument about who is suppose to pay the "after hours" fee and I win. AC is fixed by 7:15pm. Huzzah! I leave with Miguel almost immediately for Brady's party.
-Saturday @ 9pm: Me and Mike come home to feed the rats before we go out to a movie and then back to his place. It is very hot in the house (hotter than outside). I turn on the AC and proceed to feed the rats. Half hour later its still hot, I check the vents and its blowing hot air again. Grr! I leave a message on Ambient Air's Emergency line that its broke again and that the AC man said there may be a freon leak....well apparently there's a pretty big freon leak. Incidently they never call me back. "Emergency line" my ass!
-Today @ 8:10am: Set my alarm to call Ambient Air first thing in the morning today. Same tech is suppose to come by tomorrow between 7 and 9am tomorrow. I hope they just give me a new AC unit.

Other events of interest, hmm, I almost bought a brand new Ford Focus on Saturday at the huge Ford tent sale at Bank One Ballpark. Me and Mike carpooled down there and didn't intend to buy a car, we just wanted to get the free shit they were giving away, but I was introduced to all the many safety features of the Focus and was very impressed; its a cute design and super high safety rating. Plus, though my current car is paid off and that is nice, it does have over 112K miles on it. Its been very reliable and it may just decide to have a major thing break at any time....just for fun ya know?

On Sunday I got an email from Jason that Wizards of the Coast in Fiesta Mall is going out of business and has a 50-70% off sale. So I got Cranium for less than $20, if anyone wants to get together to play, we need at least 6 people...hint hint. I got a decent amount of homework done throughout the weekend. I'm not exactly as far as I want to be but I have a chapter and a half left to read before the test next Tuesday (not to be confused with tomorrow) so that isn't too bad. Mike has some competition with being the most favorite human male of the kitties, Miguel has been brushing Milo and Baby (Lilith doesn't really like to be brushed because she is loca) most every day. Baby is getting so soft and his dandruff is much much less. Mike says that he won't win because of time constraints and Miguel just has too much kitty opportunity time. I say Mike should actually hang out at my house once in a while besides at rat-feeding time; but Mike likes his house and his bed so I guess me liking my house doesn't count. Oh and me and Mike had a most wonderful date night on Saturday. We went to Black Angus with a coupon that made our meal, which otherwise would prolly be around $60, affordable. And afterwards saw Dawn of the Dead. It may be that it just hit way to close to home being that I'm from Wisconsin but after about 10 minutes I was scared enough to leave the theater. I stuck it out with my eyes closed a lot of the time and I'm glad I did. It was a very good and definitely scary zombie movie with some humor mixed in. I highly recommend that movie if you do not get quesy at the sight of human innerds (or zombie innerds for that matter).

That's all for now, here's my Sim-ulator for the day:

Hunger

Comfort

Hygiene

Energy

Fun

Social

Bladder

Room

Air Conditioning

Reach for the lasers with Antic's Sims-ulator!


Monday, March 22, 2004

What is the #1 reason to be happy that you are at work on a Monday after Spring Break? Answer: Because you are living in Arizona and the air conditioning broke yesterday. My goodness it was hot. I ran my hair under cold water every few hours to keep cool and took several mini car-riding trips to use the AC in the car.

This Spring Break wasn't that great, I've been pretty stressed during most of it and had way too much to do. Mike was gone so I didn't get to hang out with him, but I guess it turned out for the better since I had barely any time to myself anyways. He rocked out in Yuma, hanging out with parents and friends. I did not get Peak 1 finished in SSX3 but I did get close... just not enough time to play video games. I did manage to get all my homework done and bills paid so it wasn't a total loss. My stupid HOA sent me a bill for 27 cents because they told me the wrong amount to pay and then threatened to give me a late fee. I called the lady and got everything straightened out but geez, can't they get anything straight?

Last Monday I started my experiment with my rats. Currently all I am doing is taking 1 rat out of the cage at a time and giving them 10 minutes a day to eat as much as they want from a dish on my dining room table. This first phase of my experiment is designed to get my girls use to eating outside their cage by making it the only available option. Today is the 2nd week (8th day) and I'm bumping them up to 15 minutes a rat. Its a pain in the butt because sometimes I just don't feel like doing it, but its important and my research paper will kick ass.

I got my tetonis shot on Friday, that was not a pleasant experience. My arm is feeling better today, the searing pain is dying down. I thought that it would only hurt for 1 day, man was I wrong. But it was a necessary evil, I needed proof of the shot as a pre-req to being a research assistant in the ASU Operant Behavior Lab becaue we will work with rats and pigeons. This I will do in the summer.

This past weekend was awesome. It was definitely a break from the ironic stress of Spring Break. Friday night me and Mike went to a fancy smancy wine and fancy food event where everything was free. It was amazing! The food and drink was awesome. I tried food that would not normally appeal to me and I just had a darn good time. We even took a few pics so look at me and Mike. And then I gave these pics to Tracy who is the grand master of photoshop and she made this and this. I am amazed at her skills and how she made me into a glamor shot model in that last pic. She has got da skillz!

Saturday was me and Mike's 1 year anniversary. It was packed with hugs and kisses. We went to AZ Mills mall to reserve Resident Evil for the PS2 for Mike and while I was there I bought a used copy of Crazy Taxi. When we got home and tested it, it wouldn't work so we went back. I was just going to get my money back with a lesson learned from buying used non-cartridge games but the guy gave me a brand new copy instead...score!! We drove up to Sunset Point a bit later and had a picnic up there. It was great: wind, cool temperature, good company :), and tasty food. Only two things went wrong with our mini trip. First there was a traffic jam because every idiot on the highway had to gawk at a cop pulling someone over. This made us late and the sun had just hid behind the mountains when we got there. Two, we both forgot to bring a bottle opener for the apple cider - which incidently we've done more than just this one time. Mike, with the help of his house key, managed to pry the cap off with minimal fuss. After getting back into town we went to my house and fed the rats (see above for why this takes so long) and then headed off to AZ Mills mall for the 3rd time in 1 day to see Secret Window with Johnny Depp. I highly DO NOT recommend this movie. The ending was extremely dissappointing and cliche. I'm glad Mike liked it but I was very dissapointed with it. I really really want to see The Passion but Mike said that it most likely was depressing and he didn't want to watch a sad movie on our anniversary which is totally understandable. We will see it sometime, not sure when but it will happen.

This Friday Brady is having a poker, drinking and Monica-friendly gaming party. It should be fun. His new condo is so cool, the layout is awesome and I would have definitely looked into that place when I was looking for my house, but he is way far away on 19th Ave and Camelback which is just too far to even consider. Should be fun, I am looking forward to a night with games and friends where I don't have to be the one cleaning the next day. :)

Hunger

Comfort

Hygiene

Energy

Fun

Social

Bladder

Room

Luving Mike

Reach for the lasers with Antic's Sims-ulator!


Friday, March 12, 2004

Went to the Ren Fair last weekend. It was a blast, though we got separated from just about everyone throughout the day. Hooray for no sunburns!! Afterwords was another of the multi-annual BYOMBBQ (bring your own meat bbq). This one will stay in my memory as the absolute messiest party ever. At least at the Lilith-in-the-Box party the kitchen just wreaked of alcohol but it wasn't a complete mess. (For those of you who are new, the Lilith-in-a-Box party is practically legendary now, pictures to come soon even though I've had them almost a year now.) I'm amazed I got the daquiri out of the carpet (thank you Kirstin for slapping it out of Seth's hand! And thank you Seth for handing a daquiri to a drunk person right over my head! FYI: that stuff, when gotten in the eyes, completely blinds you momentarily.) I bought a digital camcorder the day before, finally used the $500 gift certificate I won. This camera is so fucking cool, it does night vision! I can record in complete darkness. I want to go camping and run around in the woods and then watch what I filmed.

So if you don't work at IT and/or haven't already heard all the rumors, we have between 2-3 hrs of footage from the party and many people are already wanting to see it (and many people on tape are wanting it to be erased). So I figure I got to get it onto the computer, edited, and onto a dvd soon. The problem: the stupid Best Buy lady didn't tell me I needed a firewire card in my computer! Arg! Also, the tapes are 15gb each and I don't have enough hard drive space to allow that. So don't bother asking about the tape on DVD until I buy a firewire card, a new hard drive, and a dvd burner. Currently that will run me about $230, so unless you want to pitch in, don't bother asking. At some point when I don't have class and have some free time I will make a webpage that has still images from parties and a spot where for a minor donation to cover the cost of duplicating the videos, people can "order" them. Whadaya think about them apples? Put some holes in the Swiss!!

Spring Break starts in 5 minutes for me because that is when I get off of work! Plans for Spring Break: 1) Go to the Library and take all my animal handling certification tests so that I can be an RA in the Operant Behavior Lab at ASU during the summer, 2) Write up my Methods section to my research proposal for class (yes I am actually going to run an entire experiment with my rats and write a research paper on it for my final paper in my class: Analysis of Behavior!! I'm so excited! Grad school just try to keep me out now!), 3) Finish Peak 1 in SSX 3 and get a good chunk of Peak 2 done.

And somebody still needs to teach me Beer Pong! Maybe at Mike D's party tomorrow night?? Eh? Any takers? Come on, it'll get me drunk! We all know you want that to happen. We will be getting there at 9pm.

Hunger

Comfort

Hygiene

Energy

Fun

Social

Bladder

Room

Spring Break!

Reach for the lasers with Antic's Sims-ulator!


Friday, March 05, 2004

"I don't accept IOU's for marriage."
-Me and Leslie got on the conversation of marrying a foreign guy so they could get their green card in exchange for money and that is what I said when we wondered what would happen if the guy was going to work off his debt to me in installments and then lost his job.

Rennaissance Fair is tomorrow, we are going to go super early and stay all day. Afterwards is a drinking/bbq/gaming party at my house. It will be good. Mike has promised to get sloshed along with the rest of us, he hasn't done that in a while. Here is a brief, summarized part of our AIM conversation:
Mike: I think I am going to get re-acquainted with Jose Cuervo.
Me: Oh baby no, don't do that.
Mike: :)
Me: I have off-white carpet.

Somebody teach me Beer Pong! That's it for now.

Hunger

Comfort

Hygiene

Energy

Fun

Social

Bladder

Room

Anticipation

Reach for the lasers with Antic's Sims-ulator!