While out taking care of some errands yesterday I stopped by Kumler to see if they'd be able to take a look at my car anytime soon. But before I made any type of appointment I said that I'd bring it there for the repair as long as I wouldn't be charged the nearly $100 fee for just hooking it up to the computer to see what's wrong with it. Normally I wouldn't have even brought that up, but I remembered seeing some coupons they had in the paper a few weeks ago, offering just that discount.

Toe's "To Do" List for today, tomorrow, and Monday:

• Take car in for "check engine light" diagnostic / service.
• Set up two new doctor appointments.
• Sort, pay, and mail out current regular bills.
• Pay HUGE new COBRA insurance premium.
• Deposit "cashed out 401k" check, to slow the financial bleeding.
• Go to already scheduled doctor appointment.
• Skip Hamvention this weekend. (re: financial bleeding / busted ass car)
• Prep lots of WC / SSD paperwork.
• Wait patiently for recent IC hearing results.
• Buckle down with "pending move" prep, just in case things don't go my way and I need to temporarily move into teh ghetto.
• Try not to kill anyone.

Just a brief mention... I had another Industrial Commission hearing this morning. I actually feel pretty good about how this one went. It was to appeal the recent ruling which said that I had gotten to the "good as he's gonna get" point in my recovery, which also meant that my temporary total disability checks stopped. After you get through all the arguments and paperwork, what it really comes down to is whether or not the hearing officer will agree that my screwed up shoulder is a product of the original work injury. To that, I say "Well, of course it is." since I was perfectly fine before I got hurt... but like I said, this hearing was more about technicalities than anything else.

Each side still got to present their case though. Their guy did his best to make it sound like I'm a gluttonous baby, sucking on their financial teet, with no hopes of getting any better... ever. My attorney and I then did our best to explain that my continuing shoulder issues are indeed a product of the original injury, and that my doctor still thinks a shoulder stabilization surgery might be able to help me. I know I'm heavily biased, but I think we came across with a pretty strong case. In fact, I was allowed to speak towards the end of the hearing and did a pretty good job of verbally swatting down all the remarks that their attorney had made. It was nice to be a little more personally involved this time. I already had some notes, I took notes while their guy was talking, and I think it worked out pretty good.

As if I'm not already wanting to get Grand Theft Auto IV badly enough, now I'm finding photos on Flicker that make that temptation even worse. Someone has compiled a set of pictures which compare views in the game to actual views of the same stuff in New York City. The similarity and detail in the game images are amazing. If I had that game, I'd probably spend most of my time just wandering around and looking at stuff. Check out the slideshow here.

My friend Adam, and Jim's dad Lee, had a gig scheduled at Smitty's in Buckeye Lake a few nights ago. Since I've got a few of my old classmates within earshot via my Myspace page, I decided to invite a few of them up to the lake to watch the gig with me and Jim. Honestly, with such short notice I didn't expect any of them to be able to make it out, but Ami and Jason both showed up. Jason brought his sister Tilly, and Ami brought her friend Brianne, and we all ended up having a really good time.

          

We stayed inside Smitty's long enough to hear Lee and Adam both sing a few songs, but since we hadn't seen each other in so long we soon made our way out back to the patio area so we could talk and actually hear each other. Before we knew it, the hours had passed, Adam and Lee had packed up, and it was time to move along. We all headed over to Captain Woody's to finish out the night. Unfortunately that was where Jim, Alex, and Adam's night ended early. It's just that Alex isn't 21 yet, and in order for her to get in it would have cost twenty bucks. (I understand that they wouldn't make as much money off someone that is underage, but with the cover charge so high they just ended up pushing her away - along with two more people that were of age to buy alcohol. )

So that portion of our party left and the rest of us stayed at the club for another hour or so. Ami had already warned me that Brianne wanted to "rock out" and / or "shake her booty" that evening, and she ended up doing just that. The others danced too, and even I stood near the edge of the dance floor and wiggled around a bit when the right song came on (laugh), but mostly I just wandered around, checking out the place and the people, and taking pics. "That's what I do."

          

That was a great "escape" for that night. I didn't think much about my upcoming workers comp hearing, and I'm sure Ami and Brianne were relieved to get out and not have to be "Mommy!" for those few hours. Jason... well, I'm pretty sure Jason is gonna feel good no matter what he's doing... but I know he was glad we all got together again too. It's weird how seeing "long lost" friends like that can make you feel... I mean, these are people I've known since elementary school. So we sorta realize how old we are by how many years it's been since then, but at the same time it almost gives you that feelin' of being back in high school again, being around each other.

Unless you bookmark my blog directly, you've probably already noticed that Rubbertoe.com has a new start page. Something about the old page just bothered me, and I couldn't figure out what it was until today... it didn't have the same tan background as the rest of the pages. Unfortunately for the old "toes ripping through the page" graphic, it didn't work well with transparency and background images so it has been shelved in favor of the new digital watch theme.

Actually, at first I wanted to use the face of an ATM machine, but I couldn't find any good pictures that would work with what I had in mind. Then I kinda considered using an arcade machine, with the buttons and slots as menu options, but that ended up being too much of a pain in the ass. So through some bizarre pattern of searching and clicking, I came across the picture of the watch that I'm using. All I had to do was remove the original LCD elements from the face, wipe the buttons clean of their original indicators, and then plop my own menu selections in their place. There's also a "hidden" clickable area that will take you to a secret page, so go back to the main menu and mouse around until you find it plz, kthnx.

EDIT: I kinda missed having the toes, so I added a few more tweaks to the pages.

I'm feeling pretty good today, after falling into a drug-induced sleep at a reasonable hour last night, so I decided that I'd break open the pack of Mighty Putty that I got the other day while I was at Target. One side of my kitchen sink has had a pretty beefy leak for the past few months, so I figured I'd give that putty a shot instead of just not using that side of the sink and / or having a bucket underneath of it to catch the leak. For ten bucks I got three sticks of the stuff, which you have to knead to activate. It comes it rubber gloves, but I just went ahead and did it bare handed and quickly washed off whatever was stuck on my hands.

The hole in the connector was bigger than I remembered.

I globbed on a whole stick, to be safe.

What a miserable day. Not just the weather, even though it does indeed suck... but just miserable in general. I didn't sleep worth a shit last night, and woke up with my neck more jacked up than usual. Jim and Alex stopped by late last night, and when we get to talking about goofy shit I tend to talk with my hands too much. We were talking about Squirtman skits, Mario Kart Wii and our old "Battle Kart" days, and other random shit that somehow had me moving my arms around way too friggin' much. It's my own fault. I just have to remind myself that just because I'm feelin' good at that moment, it doesn't mean my shoulder isn't still fucked up.

Didn't get to sleep until almost sunrise, then woke up in the early afternoon... went out to check my mail and found that my windchimes had gotten beaten up by the wind last night, and several of the chimey tube things had fallen off. And like I said, it's all rainy and gray out, so I can't mow my lawn - which is now taunting me with fields of dandelion poofs. I hopped in the car to take a game to Joe and a CD to Matt, and of course I was reminded by my car's "check engine" light that I'm going to need to drop a load of cash on it soon, to make it happy again. Oh, and I'm almost on empty, so that means I'll get to fill 'er up at about $3.75 a gallon soon too. Hooray!

I made some pot pies for lunch, and of course I burnt the shit out of the roof of my mouf with the lava-hot filling. I had some pickles on the plate too, and for some reason they tasted like dirt. So, lunch was pretty much teh suck. I took my normal batch of pills for my shoulder issue, but now I've got this wicked headache working on me. I only woke up about six hours ago, but I think I might just take some Tylenol PM and go to bed and try again tomorrow.

Okay, I know this is one of the things that "your aren't supposed to talk about" or whatever... but seriously, it really has me wondering. There have been many news articles addressing the fact that Barack Obama got 90% of the African American vote in Indiana and North Carolina. Yeah... 9 out of every 10 people that voted, voted for him. Now this makes me ask myself a few things. Has the IN / NC black community as a whole just taken it upon themselves to completely study both of the Democratic candidates, and 90% of them have come to an educated decision that Obama is simply the better candidate? Or did a significant portion just vote for him because of race?

If they studied everything about both candidates, and Obama really is the better choice, how is it that so many white voters don't see the same thing? Obviously race plays into these figures somehow, and I'm just wondering if it's "I'm voting for Obama because I'm black" or "I'm not voting for Obama because he's black." I suppose it's an (un)healthy mix of both of those things. I'm white, and I'd prefer Clinton at the moment, but not because of age, race, or gender. I prefer Hillary's ideas when it comes to her version of "universal health coverage" as well as they way she talks much more about issues, rather than just giving motivational speeches.

Don't get me wrong... when it comes to getting voters pumped up, Obama is the man. There's no denying that he can make anyone feel good about his vision and plans for change. But the thing is... it's harder to find out exactly what his plans are. Without any added effort, I've seen many specifics about Clinton's plans on various news programs. However, Obama... all I've really seen is the "feel good" stuff. I don't mind being sprinkled with verbal sunshine dust, but gimme a little content too plz.

I dunno... either one of them are probably going to a good job, defined by Democratic party standards anyway... so I'm just looking forward to all of this crap being done with so we can nail down a nominee and see what happens in the next many months against McCain. I just hope everything isn't so borked between the Obama and Clinton supporters that it's gonna mess things up for the Dems in the long run.

I went over to grandma's place to wait with my aunt for the riding mower to be delivered this afternoon. The guy brought it over, kinda gave it the once over about what's what, then left us to figure out how well we were gonna do with it. She rode it around for a few laps and cut some grass, but she let me take over to do most of the rest of it. I'll tell ya what... with as much as it hurts me to push a regular mower, that riding mower really is a treat. The only drawback is that I ended up getting a blister on my right hand, since I was driving only with one hand the whole time - navigating an obstacle course of bushes, lawn decorations, flower beds, etc. Hopefully all the tulips will crap out soon so we can at least mow over them.

I went up to campus to hang out with Nick for Cinco de Mayo. I can't remember the last time I've been out to do anything fun, and since it had been quite a while since I've even seen Nick, I figured Cinco de Mayo was as good of an excuse as any. We ended up going to The Thirsty Scholar since they were doing karaoke. I thought I'd feel like "the old dude" with all the college kids, but it was a pretty good mix of ages / types / etc in there. It was also nice that Erin, the bartender, was old enough that me and her could reminisce about the early days of MTV and all the first veejays and such - while Nick sat there and just looked confused.

The other day Toni called and asked if I wanted to go to the park to hang out with her and Anna for a little bit, since she promised Anna that she could go to the playground and play for a while. Toni kinda half-heartedly said something about climbing Mt Pleasant... I'm not sure if she really wanted to or not, but since I had my little cheapy camera in-tow I was all up for it. I guess it's been a while since Toni had been up there, and it's been a while since I had been up there that late in the afternoon. After the way Toni and I ended up huffing and puffing climbing up and back down the trail, I'm starting to rethink my plans that I considered... of walking from my house, to the park, up the hill, back down the hill, and then back home again. I think that might be pushing my luck a little.

The past couple of days I've also been trying to help Matt get his new iPod Nano working with his PC. The first time we tried hooking it up to his PC, it said that the iPod needed a newer version of iTunes than he had on his system. Since he doesn't have internet access at his house yet, I went back home and downloaded the newest iTunes to take over the next day. So I went back over and started to install the new program... only for it to tell me that the newest version of iTunes requires Windows Service Pack 2 to be installed. So again... back home, download SP2, back to Matt's, and started the installation of SP2. About 45 minutes later, in which Toni had enough time to go pick up some BK for dinner for us, SP2 was installed, the new iTunes was installed, and we finally got the PC to talk to the iPod. After all that hubbub everything seems to be working fine. We dumped what music he already had onto the Nano, along with a handful of selections that I took over.

The riding mower purchase has been completed, and now we just have to wait for it to be delivered to grandma's house next week. Aunt Carol said it feels a little big when she sits on it, but I'm sure once she's had a few passes on the lawn she'll take to it without any problem. I'm gonna go on the day they deliver it to see if I can negotiate all the flower beds, trees, and bushes in the back yard better than she'd be able to. It looks like it steers pretty easy, so I think I'll be aiight driving single-armed.

I decided to swap out the stand that my monitor has been sitting on in the living room. It used to be a cheapie round table with a red cloth cover over it, which hung all the way to the floor. Of course since Kitty has to have his nose into every nook and cranny in the house, he was always trying to pass between that and the chair... and of course coating everything with a layer of white cat hair as he went through. I noticed my PC was starting to ingest some of that hair, so I figured I better do something different.

I did pretty good when the XBOX 360 first came out. I didn't get one then, even though I knew that would be the only way I'd get to play Halo 3. Then when Halo 3 was released, again I was tempted - but didn't buy the system and game. Now here comes temptation again... in the form of Grand Theft Auto 4.

It's alright though, I'm staying strong... I'm still not gonna buy another system. I've got my PS2 and my Wii, and plenty of games to keep me busy between those two systems, so GTA4 and Halo 3 will just have to wait. What makes it a little harder to "just say no" this time is the fact that I just got a check for my 401k from my last employer. It is sitting here taunting me, acting like it just wants to be spent. But the right thing to do, and what I'm gonna do, is drop it into a savings account and not even touch it unless I absolutely have to. Ideally I would have rolled it over into my IRA, but with things being uncertain with my workers comp case, and with no check coming in at this particular moment, I figured I might as well make that money accessable in case I need it.

As some of you might remember, way back around the time when I got hurt at work, I had purchased a brand new electronic drum kit, with the hopes of spending my free time accumulating some drumming skillz. (I was motivated after watching my cousin Casey and Uncle Jay playing in some of their gigs.) After my surgery to fix the problems with the pinched nerves in my neck, my left arm never made a full recovery, so after having those drums sitting unopened in my house for well over a year - I ended up selling them on eBay a few weeks ago. Heh... me selling those drums was basically the equivalent of me saying "Shit... I give up... this arm ain't gettin' any better." So while it was good to sell them and get a little more cash in the bank, since I sold them for about what I had paid for them, it still kinda sucked that I was giving up on something that I really wanted to be able to do.

So the other day when Jim and Alex were here, we were kinda talking about how I was doing, how my cash situation was now that I'm not getting the workers comp check, etc... and I told him about selling the drums. He's also familiar with the "letting go of your dream" aspect of selling a musical instrument, as he had to sell all his guitar gear when he was hard up for money several years ago. He said that for my next birthday he's gonna get me a set of "finger drums" that he saw online. Now all I have to do is find a teeny guitar and a teeny bass and then maybe me, him, and Mongo can still start up a band.

EDIT: Holy crap... I think I want one of THESE. Looks like they run about $150 on eBay.

Wendi stopped by to tell me about what happened to her on the way home from the wedding yesterday. She said that she left early because she had a really bad headache... so much so that she didn't even eat or drink much of anything at the reception. She toughed it out for quite a while, but ended up taking off before the band started to play. But anyways, as they were driving home, Wendi mentioned to her boyfriend Matt that as soon as she saw a place to pull over, she was gonna stop the car because she was feeling sick. Only a few seconds later, with the car still quite in motion, she proceeded to puke all over her steering wheel as she was driving.

I just got back a little while ago from my cousin Shannon's wedding and reception. It was planned as an outdoor event, so I wasn't sure what to expect after it had rained most of this morning. I wasn't sure if it would have to be moved inside, with a billion people all crammed into a tiny building or what... but luckily shortly after noon the sun came out, dried everything up, and everything went off without a hitch. Lots of people, lots of gifts, beautiful decorations, live music, and good food.

The pastor that did their ceremony was the same one that did mine and Genesee's wedding, as well as Toni and Matt's wedding. He's the perfect kind of person to do an outdoor, nature-feelin' type wedding. Some of the things he said were familiar from the earlier weddings, but he threw in enough new stuff that it made it seem like their own thing. Since I didn't have any official duties as photographer, I figured it'd be a nice break for me not to even take a camera with me. That way I could just enjoy the ceremony and not worry about making my shoulder angry from raising and lowering the camera over and over. Well, the photographer in me wasn't havin' any of that.

Shortly after I got there and saw how nice everything was, and how elaborate everything was laid out, I went back to the car to grab my cell phone so I could at least take a bunch of pictures with my crappy cell phone camera. My cousin Mongo was the official video guy, so he was busy with that stuff, and there were already several of Shannon's photographer friends there - so I'm sure once everyone gets together with all their stuff, there is going to be a ton of good photos and videos to look through later. But like I said, I still snapped a bunch of pics with my phone, and I've got 'em all uploaded into a Flickr set already. I mean... heh... why not?

With all of the distractions in my life right now, I almost forgot that Hamvention is coming up in a few weeks. Dad and I have gone to it, off and on, for well over a decade. If I remember correctly, that's actually where I got my first VIC-20 computer that I mentioned in another entry. Yeah, back in the day people were getting rid of all of their VIC-20 stuff so they could upgrade to either C64 or IBM PC amateur radio apps. One year I even won a printer in the big drawing they have. I think the last time we went together was two or three years ago. We actually both went last year, but on different days due to some scheduling conflicts. Not sure if he's plannin' on it this year or not.

Jim and Alex stopped by last night. This makes the third or fourth time this week that they've been here. He's been on vacation all week, and it seems like they've been spending most of their time around these parts. The other day they went to my cousin's house with plans to go to Citi Bar, with Jim dressed as Squirtman, but those plans failed when Jamie couldn't find her ID. Heh... so Squirtman just hung around the house and roamed the streets of Lancaster for a while, or so I heard.