Of the Day's Annoyances, These:

As you all know by now, I love football. Pro football is definitely third on the list behind high school and college, but I love it nonetheless, and especially on Monday night. There's nothing like watching a good matchup with Al Michaels and John Madden on the mics, on a Monday night when nothing else is competing for my attention. Unfortunately, ABC has, in their final year of hosting Monday Night Football before it moves to ESPN, chosen to fill part of their halftime show with "entertainment" from Tim McGraw and Jimmy Kimmel. This means that each Monday I'll be looking for someone to knock me unconscious for about twenty minutes.

Of course, that's an annoyance from yesterday, not today, so it's a little out of line with this post's heading, but hey, I'm the one calling the shots here, and I say it's okay.

Today, first and foremost, I'm irritated with myself to a high degree. At work, I finally ran into the lady I need to talk to about a pay raise and had a golden opportunity to ask for a few minutes of her time so I could make the request. Instead, I totally froze. I just asked how she was doing and kept moving. I don't know what my problem is. I know I deserve more money, and I'm nearly certain I'll get more once I ask for it (whether I get as much as I ask for remains to be seen, of course), so what's my deal? I need to just do it and get it over with, because I know I'm not getting a raise unless I do ask for it.

Staying with work-related issues for a moment, there is one person in my department who is annoying beyond belief. Conveniently, her desk is situated directly behind mine. She has caused me to ponder the very nature of inherently irritating people, and to wonder whether or not they have any clue how annoying they are. I don't think she does, at least. She talks all the time, which in itself isn't necessarily a bad thing: being rather quiet myself, I have a tendency to like talkative people. This person, though, has a whining edge in her voice even in normal conversation. She also feels the need to inject herself into every single conversation that takes place in our office, no matter how trivial, even if she has to contribute something totally unrelated in order to do it. It's amazing, really. She was relatively quiet when she was first moved to her current location (she was moved, I might add, primarily because the people on the other side of the office couldn't stand her), but she's been getting progressively worse.

I had to stop at the grocery after work today, and for some reason browsing through the aisles reminded me of several product variations that I absolutely loved which have, for whatever reason, gone away. Quite some time ago, Pepsi was available with different fruit flavors added, and I was quite fond of the raspberry version (Wikipedia reminds me that it was called "Raging Raspberry," and says it was only test-marketed). I remember having some around Halloween during my freshman year of high school, which was in 1991. Fourteen years later I still haven't forgotten it, which means either it was really good or I just have a hell of a memory (or both). At least a little later than that, there was a variety of Skittles that came in an orange bag. I can't remember what the variety was called, but it doesn't matter. They're gone. Salsa Verde Doritos? According to Frito-Lay's website they still exist, but I sure as hell can't find them, and I look in every grocery store, convenience store, gas station, and vending machine my travels bring into my path.

I'm getting dangerously close to stomping on my iPod. Actually, as I've noted in previous complaints, that's not entirely true: I love my iPod, but iTunes (the software that transfers the music files onto the iPod) is a piece of shit. Right now it's selectively refusing to put music on my iPod. It was kind enough to transfer several songs that I purchased from the iTunes online music store, but it's refusing to transfer some tracks I ripped from CDs I own, as well as a couple of other tracks I downloaded from an artist's website. It also will not create or update playlists on the iPod. I've been playing with it for several days, trying everything I can think of to make it work. Eventually I got to a point where iTunes was convinced there were only 14 songs on the iPod (there are, in fact, better than 2,700); then I got it to believe the iPod was blank (it wasn't). Starting from that point, it's now theoretically re-transferring every single track; I'm hoping, in the process, that it will finally actually add the 14 songs that started this whole mess. I have a feeling I'm going to be disappointed.

The Perfect Pizza (and So Forth)

Last night I ordered pizza from Papa John's for dinner. When the pizza arrived, I opened the box to find the most incredible-looking pizza I have ever seen. It looked so good, in fact, that I found it necessary to take a picture:



The photograph simply doesn't do this pizza justice, but rest assured that it looked even better in real life than it does above, where it still looks pretty damned good. I took a leftover slice to work with me today for my lunch, and a couple of people in the lunchroom commented on how good it looked.

Speaking of work, tomorrow is our company Christmas party, which should be pretty interesting. The people I've talked to have all said that company parties are generally a good time, so I'm looking forward to it. I saw some of the prizes sitting in our company president's office yesterday, and they were good ones.

Also, our department was told today that we're being taken out to lunch one day next week on the president's dime. We've been told not to wear jeans that day, so we must be going someplace really nice. I think we're being rewarded for a job well done with our last catalog deadline, which was last week. We already had a meeting to be congratulated and thanked for getting it done well and on time. I can't even believe the contrast in this area from my last job, where no one was ever congratulated, thanked, or rewarded for anything. In addition, the president made a point to pull me aside today to ask how things are going so far. I can tell already that he really is interested in keeping employees happy, as well as customers. I think that's awesome.

I found out last night that former BGSU quarterback Josh Harris has signed with the Cleveland Browns to be a backup there for the rest of the season. I hate the Browns with every ounce of my soul, but I am excited for Josh. I would love to see him do well in the pros. I think he will, after some seasoning, and this move may give him a chance to get some playing time and some much-needed experience this year. I'm really hoping, personally, that he doesn't end up with the Browns long-term, but as long as he does well, I'm all for it, no matter which team he plays for.

The extended edition of The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King came out today on DVD, and I hustled out after work to pick up my copy. Brandi and I watched it tonight, and it's incredible. The added and extended scenes add about 50 minutes to the film, making it over four hours long, but it's totally worth it. Everything added serves to give the film just a little bit more flavor, or to help clear some things up. I wish the makers of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban would have done something similar--as good as that movie was, they left some gaping holes in it. That aside, I really have to say that the Lord of the Rings trilogy is the finest series of movies I've ever seen, and by a pretty wide margin. I intend that as no slight to the Star Wars films, which I love. The LotR films are just incredible in every aspect. Of course, watching the movie has given me the urge to read the books again, so I'll probably start on those pretty soon.

I've been using Mozilla's Firefox browser the past couple of days, trying it out as an alternative to Internet Explorer. I'm still getting used to some aspects of it, but overall I like it. It really does seem to be faster, and that's nice.

Thursday Thoughts

The best thing about Thursday is that it's almost Friday.

You may have noticed quite a few posts about sports lately. This is a trend you should probably get used to. With football season fast approaching (eight days until the high school season starts) I'll be attending/watching a lot of games and probably writing about them. I'm guessing I'll probably end up just posting more in general, as I have no intention of paying short shrift to other topics and issues that come up.

Brandi is an enabler. For some reason she has decided to help feed my sports addiction, particularly my affinity for sports video games. A few months ago she bought me a college basketball game for my PlayStation 2. Yesterday she surprised me with ESPN NFL 2K5. It's pretty sweet, I must say. I started a franchise with the Bengals, and my first official act was to trade Carson Palmer and a first-round pick to Atlanta for Michael Vick. Then I traded Casey Bramlet and T.J. Houshmandzadeh to Baltimore for Josh Harris. My interest in the NFL has really bloomed over the past two years, so this game should be a lot of fun.

I'm pleased to report that my car started right up this morning (and on my lunch break) and ran fine despite the fact that it has been raining quite a bit. I'm hoping that means my troubles are truly behind me, but I'm knocking on wood as I type this. Still, as soon as I have the financial means, I plan to start looking into something new. That may be a while.

There are few simple pleasures more satisfying than driving along with some good tunes and singing along. I was cruising to work this morning, belting out "Some Guys Have All the Luck" with Rod Stewart, taking in the expansive flatlands view of farmland under an overcast sky, and feeling pretty content. I think that's pretty significant--I usually don't enjoy much of anything before noon.

Music by itself just makes me feel pretty good, actually. I really wish I could have some sort of music-playing device here at work. It would make my time here more bearable.

The Toledo Blade ran this story this morning, citing a study that shows that heart attacks in Bowling Green have decreased by 45% since the city enacted a smoking ban in restaurants. Of course, correlation does not mean causation, but I think it's safe to say that the ban has had some impact. Besides that, it just makes dining out a whole lot more pleasant. I personally wish the ban would have included bars. The bar scene in BG is strong enough that I doubt it would have had much of a negative impact on business.

I had lunch at Magic Wok today, and finally ate something that was "pretty good" instead of just "decent." It was the princess chicken, which was the special of the day. I hope it's a regular menu item so I can get it again. It was spicy and had lots of different vegetables, and I liked it a lot. I really like eating there. I've yet to eat there when screaming kids were in attendance (again knocking on wood), and that's a huge plus. Besides that, the radio station they play in the restaurant plays mostly 80s pop/rock, and that kicks ass.

From my fortune cookie: "You will get something new within a week." Since I got this fortune today, I'm guessing the video game I got last night doesn't count. I just hope it's something good.

Lonely, Lonely, Lonely Monday Morning

Okay, who besides me remembers rapper/one-hit wonder Snow? His one hit, "Informer," was popular at some point in the early 90s. I was one of the lucky ones who actually paid money for the CD, 12" of Snow (which includes the song "Lonely Monday Morning," which provided the title for this entry). Over the years, I've thinned my CD collection a couple of times by selling some of them to used CD stores, but I've kept that one, and I still listen to it from time to time. The songs are so terrible, lyrically, that you can't help but find them amusing. When you can understand what he's saying, of course.

And a lonely Monday morning it is. Monday mornings are always a little rough. I hate getting up at 7:00 a.m. anytime, let alone after two days of sleeping in. Getting out of bed and leaving for work this morning brought about the end of a good weekend with Brandi, and I likely won't see her again until Saturday. There are certainly better ways for a week to start.

I really can't complain too much, though, because as I said, the weekend that ended this morning was a good one. It started, for all intents and purposes, on Thursday evening. Brandi had a bit of a financial windfall, and thus decided to come to Bowling Green that night and stay for the weekend. That was nice: I certainly don't mind driving to Stow, but it's good to occasionally have a weekend when I don't have to. Besides that, I wasn't planning to go to Stow until Saturday afternoon, after the BGSU basketball game. With Brandi deciding to come on Thursday, we got two extra days.

Weekend highlights:

We went out to dinner on Friday night at Easystreet Cafe in downtown Bowling Green. It's one of our favorite places to eat, and since Brandi is in BG so infrequently, I didn't want to miss the opportunity. We went pretty late--it was after 9:00--but we still had to wait for a table. That was fine, because it gave us a chance to sit at the bar and have a glass of wine.

Through dinner, we debated whether or not we wanted to go out afterwards for drinks. About halfway through her second glass of wine, Brandi decided she was ready to go. So, after dinner we headed over to BW3, intending just to kick back and relax, listen to some tunes and have a few drinks. As it happened, we ran into some friends (Adam, Jamie, and Mike and Charissa), so we ended up joining them. We hung out there for a while, then went en masse to another bar called Downtown. It was pretty crowded there--that can make it fun, but it can also make it a real pain to get a drink, especially when you've got a jackass behind the bar who only waits on females. That aside, it was a lot of fun to hang out with everyone for a while. Brandi and I finished the night at Uptown, which is a dance club right above Downtown (clever, yes?).

As a sidenote, I'm discovering that I have a higher alcohol tolerance than I have any business having, given the size of my body and my relative inexperience with drinking. I had seven drinks on Friday night, and never a hint of a buzz.

Saturday essentially began with Brandi's first trip to Anderson Arena, as the Bowling Green Falcons took on the Youngstown State Penguins in an ESPN Bracket Buster game. It was fun, as games at Anderson have a tendency to be, but it could have been better. The Falcons won going away, despite a couple of injuries, and the crowd was small and lackluster. I wanted it to be more exciting so Brandi could get the full effect, but it was not to be. I think she had fun, but it could have been better. I wish she could make it to the game coming up this Wednesday, which is against our hated archrivals, the great unwashed, the Toledo Rockets. I sincerely hope we can pack "The House That Roars" for that one, at least.

The game was followed by a trip to Wal-Mart for some necessities. That was quite irritating. Apparently Wal-Mart has stopped allowing debit MasterCards to be used as credit cards, which is how they're supposed to be used. They now make you enter your PIN number to use them. The kicker, of course, is that my card, for whatever reason, won't allow itself to be used that way, so it kept rejecting my PIN, and I ended up having to use an actual credit card. Something is going to have to be done about this--the great thing about such a debit card is that it can be used so easily, and if it's going to be such a pain in the ass, we might as well go back to writing checks.

Anyway, that night we ended up going out to dinner again. We thought about going to Olive Garden, which is another of our favorites, but didn't really feel like driving to Toledo. Eventually we remembered that there's a new Italian place in downtown Bowling Green, so we decided to check it out. First, though, we stumbled into another place, called Cohen & Cooke--it's another new place downtown, so we thought it was what we were looking for. It wasn't: too high priced, and you didn't seem to be able to choose what you got. Once we got a look at the menu, we were out of there. The Italian place was a few doors down, and it's called Cucina di Betto.

Trust me, this place deserves a paragraph all to itself. It was incredible. The service was great, and the food was awesome. As usual, we started with a glass of wine. Then they brought out a basket of bread, with a seasoned olive oil dipping sauce, and our salads. I love a good salad, and this one was really good--a good variety of vegetables, including some yellow pepper, which was excellent. All the veggies were fresh and crispy, as were the croutons. For dinner, I ordered chicken marsala, and I got the best chicken marsala I've ever had (and that's saying something). The chicken was very tender, the dish was covered in mushrooms, and the sauce had a slightly nutty flavor. Brandi was equally pleased with her dinner, which was portabella ravioli. My only critique is that their menu could offer a bit more selection. Other than that, it was outstanding, and I highly recommend this place.

No, I'm not a professional restaurant reviewer, but apparently I play one on the internet.

Sunday was a pretty laid-back kind of day, which is what Sundays are for. I watched the first half of the Cavs-Knicks game, as I always try to catch Lebron when I get a chance. After that we went over to the Wood County Humane Society to hang out with some cats. Brandi really loves cats, and I like them pretty well myself, although I tend to identify myself as more of a dog person. Unfortunately, neither of us is allowed to have pets in our respective apartments, so we visit the Humane Society from time to time to get our fix. Animals are just funny, and even moreso when there's an entire room full of them (two rooms, actually). At one point, Brandi crouched down to pet one cat, and another cat leapt up onto her back, and was thinking about climbing on top of her head before I plucked it off (the cat, that is; not Brandi's head). Another cat was hanging out in the sink. Some of this stuff you just have to see to know how funny it is. There was one cat we both really liked, a gray one named Doc. He was sleeping when we first got there, but Brandi eventually petted him awake. He was pretty calm and lovable, and sat on both of our laps for a while. Of course, that meant Brandi talked about him for the rest of the day.

The only other really notable thing about Sunday (besides a nice long nap upon arriving home from the Humane Society) was the weather. Mostly sunny, calm (which is a big deal for Bowling Green, which is normally extremely windy), and pretty warm for a day in February. It inspired a trip to Dairy Queen, and we took a walk later in the evening, onto campus and around town.

After all that, I had to come to work today. What a letdown. This should be a good week, though. Tonight I'm just going to chill out and relax; on Tuesday night, I think I'm hitting the town with a friend for Mardi Gras; Wednesday I get to watch the Falcons defuse the Rockets; Thursday is a possible roadtrip to go see the Troy Trojans play in the first round of the Ohio High School Division I tournament. On Friday, of course, I get the rev the whole thing up again.