Weekly Update

Kate called me out yesterday, noting that it had been eight days and I still had not updated my blog. Her blog, however, is partly to blame, as I spent all my spare time crafting long winded comments in response to her short and concise ones. See what I did there - totally flipping it onto her. Yeah, I'm cool like that.

The problem is that half of what has consumed the last week of my life, I cannot really disclose. I genuinely feared for my safety for at least a day or two, as I watched an attorney roll the dice and throw his entire career away. I am fairly sure that he never meant to let it get as far as it did and he has taken the steps necessary and turned himself in to the authorities, but it is quite possible the worse is not over yet.

I also have not been able to sleep. This has done wonders for my reading. I finished some book this week that Stephen King called the best mystery of the decade, which makes it quite obvious to me that Mr. King does not read. Ok, maybe he reads, but he certainly does not read mysteries. What a waste of my life that book was. I thought the author's writing style - when she was not hopping back and forth across the story time line and switching character point of view at the drop of a hat - was really interesting. Some of the techniques she used to paint the scenes were really cool, but the storyline itself seemed to be a waste of pages that never really led to the climax that I had hoped so desperately for.

On the bright side, the last Harry Potter novel comes out this week. I recently disclosed to my girlfriend that I have my doubts that J.K. Rowling actually wrote any of the books past Book 2. I imagine she may have written the rough drafts or something, but those books (Books 3 through 6, thus far), when you compare them to the first two, are just leaps and bounds beyond anything that J.K. Rowling seemed capable of. I am sure many die-hard Rowling fans would want to lynch me for such blasphemy, but seriously, either she invested in some serious writing classes with the proceeds from the first two books, or she found someone to do the grunt work for her, knowing that Harry Potter had a momentum all its own and she was now just the figurehead for all of it. A cog in the wheel. Either way, she was going to have enough money at the end of the trip to retire. Hell, she'll have enough money for her and at least four other families of four to retire.

I just read Stephanie Klein's latest post, and it was so sad to read. Stephanie was one of the first bloggers I ever read regularly and based upon the comments I see there, ever since she got married and had children, I seem to be one of the few men that still reads her. It's become a virtual estrogen love-fest/hate-fest for the ages. Well, she recently had twins, and she just had to take her son to the ER yesterday. They had to perform some sort of surgery to relieve a very abnormal amount of pressure in his brain and have determined that he has some sort of illness that I know nothing about. He is now hooked-up to monitors and such and they do not seem to know if he will recover and be healthy. They really do not seem to know much of anything. I feel so sad for her and her son.

My Weekly Thing

So I appear to only be updating my blog about once or twice per week. I have become a slacker. I used to think I was a slacker before, but now it is completely clear to me that you do not really become a complete slacker until you do not even use one of your best means of procrastination.

On Sunday, I went to fill my asthma medicine prescription and learned that my prescription - you know the one I have to fill every month or I could die - yeah, it's $60 a pop now. $60! That's over $700 per year for one medication. It's crazy. I don't know why I have insurance. I asked my pharmacist if there was any other medication that was comparable and he said no. But my insurance company says maybe and so I have called my doctor. My girlfriend asked if I wanted to go see Sicko and I told her I didn't think I needed to, as I now appear to be living it.

After the minor setback with the medication, we went to Dave and Busters for some drinks, pool, and video game action. I single handedly won over 400 tickets, after hitting jackpot over and over on that Wheel of Fortune game, but that was nothing compared to how many tickets we won through computer glitches in the games. We ended up walking out of there with well over 3,000 tickets, which we were able to trade in for valuable prizes and merchandise. Even better, my dinner came with another $20 game card, so we can totally go back and do it all again soon.

Last night was spent at the beach. See, there I go again - slacking off at a beach when I could be sitting and updating my blog. However, the ocean water is now over 80 degrees and it was gently calling, "J, come to my beautiful shores." It is hard to argue with the ocean, you see because it just keeps saying the same thing over and over again until you give in. Then it takes you and caresses you with its gentle waves and warm ocean breezes. Unless, of course, it crushes you with its waves and has sharks eat you or infects you with sea lice. Depends on the ocean's mood, I tell you.

I also learned that Wordpress blogs are now free. So for all of you out there that were sitting there thinking, "Damn, I wish I too could have a Wordpress blog, but I am a cheap bastard and do not like paying for such things," now is your time to shine. It even has a tool that they claim will import your old blog (including a Blogger blog) so that you can have an entirely seamless experience. The Website also claims that Wordpress blogs plays nice with personal domain names. So get out there and see the world, or the virtual world of Wordpress.

I shopped for a new T-Mobile phone this weekend too. T-Mobile has this really cool new thing going on with some of its phones. You can now use the T-Mobile Hot*Spots (available at places like Starbucks) and any other open WiFi access point, including the one in your home (what do you mean you don't have WiFi in your home? Have you been living under a rock? Everyone is wireless nowadays) to make phone calls and the calls do not count against your minutes. Plus, if you start the call at a WiFi point and walk out to say, go to the beach or something, the call gets handed over to the cellular network and you just keep talking like nothing ever happened and those minutes *still* do not count toward your monthly total. The way I see it is that given that there is pretty much a Starbucks everywhere, all you ever really have to do when you want to call someone is get within the vicinity of one, place the call and then walkout to go do whatever terribly important thing it was you had to do, like go play video games and win cheap and overpriced prizes.