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. The guy behind the counter was eager to set up an appointment, but he then asked if I had one of those coupons. I told him that I didn't, but knew that it was once offered, and he told me that they had it "set up" so that it couldn't be done without the coupon. Now, this wasn't just some counter jockey... in fact, I think he even said that he was the one that had the coupons made up for the paper. He said that I could bring in my car this morning and that they'd send me home in a courtesy car while they checked mine out, but I decided if they can't bend the "coupons rules" just a little for a return customer, well, then maybe they just don't need me as a customer anymore. ![]()
Toe's "To Do" List for today, tomorrow, and Monday:
Just a brief mention... I had another Industrial Commission hearing this morning. 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. For now I'll just remain optimistic and keep my fingers and toes crossed.
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. What I'm hearing sounds promising... Lars seems to have dropped the tinny sounding drum kit, Kirk is still rippin some awesome solos... although Lars still sounds like a giant douche when he speaks. Some things never change.
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. ![]() 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. 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. ![]() 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. ![]()
Unless you bookmark my blog directly, you've probably already noticed that Rubbertoe.com has a new start page. 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. ![]()
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. ![]() The hole in the connector was bigger than I remembered. ![]() ![]()
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. 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. 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. 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." ![]() 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. But srsly... if my yard was just a bit bigger I'd want one for myself. ![]()
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. I haven't sung karaoke out in public anywhere for probably two years now, so I stuck with a couple of my "safe" songs and did alright... but these people were way better than me. I mean, they didn't just sing... they danced, screamed, etc... really performed their songs. I think I had more fun watching them than actually singing myself. One kewl thing though, even though it was pretty bad, was that me and Nick sang Bohemian Rhapsody - a song that we many times "entertained" the assembly line with while we were working... acapella. Our voices were about blown by then, but it was still fun to give it a shot.
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. 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. ![]()
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 ended up with a semi-cheezy brown design button shirt and a light tan t-shirt for underneath. Oh, and I got a new cap too... not for the karaoke, but just because. Four bucks for all of it.
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 never really had any use for that thing, and up until now I hadn't considered it as a computer stand, because my brain was still stuck in "this is how it is supposed to be" mode when it comes to how the living room looks. She was the one that got the round table, the cloth cover, and the little frilly thing that went on top of it. It just now occurred to me that I didn't have to have it that way anymore. Heh... I suppose eventually I'll feel completely like a single guy again... ![]()
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. 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. So yeah, it kinda sucks that I couldn't just roll it over... but at least I've got that little cash cushion there that can keep me going for quite a while if I can't get things going in the right direction with my case. I'll just do with GTA4 like I did for Halo 3... try to avoid any reference to or video of the game, so that way I can still get it and play it a year or two from now without having any of the surprises spoiled for me. All my WC bullshit will be over by then, right? Heh...
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. 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. 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. Hahaha... I can laugh about it, because Wendi was laughing when she told me about it. I can't imagine the rest of the ride home was very pleasant though, in a car full of people that smelled like vomit and air freshener. She says she's going home to break out the upholstery shampooer now.
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... 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. 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.
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. One good purchase I made a couple of years ago, and I think I only paid $20 for it, was a UPS for my PC. It has worked great, and saved my computer from many power outages since then. That was one of those "Oh yeah, I kinda need one of those." things that didn't hit me until I saw it there. Hopefully the weather will be nice... the outdoor flea market and all of the strange people walking around are the best parts of it all.
Jim and Alex stopped by last night. This makes the third or fourth time this week that they've been here. For years and years, since we both went to school at Millersport, it was tradition for a bunch of us to go to the Sweet Corn Festival to walk around, eat food, play a few games, and realize how old we're getting. After seeing the pictures of the rodeo, I think that our new tradition will be heading to Chillicothe on that weekend. Besides, the Sweet Corn Festival runs throughout the week, so we can always hit it up on any of those other days. With him dressed as Squirtman, and with Alex at his side, I think it'll be a good way for them to get some attention and toss out cards for their sites.
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I told him that I didn't, but knew that it was once offered, and he told me that they had it "set up" so that it couldn't be done without the coupon. Now, this wasn't just some counter jockey... in fact, I think he even said that he was the one that had the coupons made up for the paper. He said that I could bring in my car this morning and that they'd send me home in a courtesy car while they checked mine out, but I decided if they can't bend the "coupons rules" just a little for a return customer, well, then maybe they just don't need me as a customer anymore. 
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.
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.
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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. 
The hole in the connector was bigger than I remembered. 



