Three-Letter Acronyms & Four-Letter Words

I have been sleeping a ton the last couple of days. I hope it is just me recovering from fatigue of sort almost burning the candle at both ends the last couple of weeks and not a cold.

I have been wrapping Gina's gifts over the last two days, I am still not done yet. Partially because there are quite a few, but also because I keep falling asleep on the couch with the Emma and Buddy.

I would have been picking Gina up from the airport at midnight tonight.

However, because of the weather in the Mid-West, she was rescheduled to fly out tomorrow morning. I hope she doesn't get delayed again, otherwise she might miss out on the holiday festivities that are planned. (We will be watching x-mas movies with the Arntz's tomorrow night.)

She is due in at 10:20 AM tomorrow morning, I will make sure to set an alarm, even though I have not needed to the last few days. Even with as sleepy as I have been, I have been waking up between 7:00 - 7:30 AM.

Crazy huh?

Anyway, if I could have rented an elf, then I could have slept the last couple of days away completely, while the elf was wrapping the presents and maybe feeding the dogs.

Yesterday Jeremy and I went on a beer quest. It started over at World Market. However, the selection of beer there was not all that great. A couple of decent imports, but overall nothing very spectacular.

Upon my suggestion we headed over to Central Market. Their wine and beer section is quite amazing. They had all sorts of beer, too many to choose from really.

I forget everything we picked up, but I do remember that Jeremy picked up a 'sixer' of some beer with a crazy looking dog on it. And I grabbed a bottle of Chimay (burgandy label) and a bottle of Young's Christmas Ale. I think we picked up a sixer of Abita's Christmas Ale.

Gina request a particular Pinot Noir, something by the name of 'Rus'. She wasn't sure of the name exactly, either way Central Market didn't have anything like that. I picked up a couple of bottle of good looking Pinot Noir while I was over at Target.

I also picked up some popping corn, white and black kernel. The popping corn, beer, and wine are all for tomorrow's movie night.

Well, I need to get back to wrapping gifts. (unless I pass out again.)

Laterz

Been at the office way too late the last couple of days.

The dogs have been eating kind of late this week.

However, last night it was even later than I had originally planned.

I ran out of beef to boil for Emma, yup boil.

I need to ask Gina exactly why it is that I boil the meat. I understand that the recipe Gina is following has the beef boiled, but I guess I don't fully understand the difference between boiling it and just cooking it in the pan. It would have appox the same amount of fat.

Anyway, I had to run over to Randall's to get Emma some beef. I bought one of the smaller packs of ground beef and portioned it out, should last the next week or so.

I wrapped up the gifts for my staff while the beef and the rice were cooking. (Everyone seemed to like them, they opened them today.)

By the time everything was all said and done it was about 1:30 in the morning.

The last couple of days I don't even remember the alarm clock going off in the morning. I only remember waking up around 6 or 6:30 in the morning and dragging myself out of bed.

John should be over here in about 15 minutes.

I think I am going to try to get a round of halo in before he arrives.

More to come.

Laterz

It is 10 AM local time and I just got up about 5 minutes ago.

I sort of woke up probably about 2 hours ago, but forced myself back to sleep. It wasn't that I woke up on my own either, since we got settled in and went to sleep about 2 AM last night. There was this rumbling noise, which at first I thought was some sort of earthquake, but I was able to dismiss that when I actually woke up enough to tell the room wasn't shaking at all and that it was someone's Harley Motorcycle revving.

We missed the free breakfast, the sign says that they stop serving that at 9:30 AM. Hopefully we can grab something quick on the way back to the interstate, but nothing too greasy. We ate at a Sbarro in Pennsylvania (pretty sure it was Pennsylvania) for lunch yesterday, in the end the grease didn't agree with me. However, the choices at that particular location were between the Sbarro and some fast food burgers, so I figured the odds were better with pizza than with some burger and fries.

We stopped and had Wendy's for dinner, I had a chicken sandwich and a potato. It was still raining and we were in Virginia, that was before we hit the traffic caused by the accident.

We have been keeping a log of the time and the mileage, I will put something up on the blog after we get into Austin (mostly because I left it in the car and don't feel like going out there for it).

We have also been keeping track of the gas mileage. The first reading looked very promising, 32/mpg. However, every subsequent reading has been around the 27/mpg mark. With the couple of reading coming through the mountains dropping down to 26/mpg.

Well, it is getting to be about that time, time to hit the road.

Laterz

I am pretty sure I fell asleep last night while we were watching 'Lord of the Rings III: Return of the King'.

I remember watching the rider guys (Rohan sp?) assemble, then I sort of remember crawling into bed.

The reason this is Deja Vu, when Return of the King was first released we went to a midnight showing of it. The movie is like 3 hours long!!

I distinctly remember nodding off several times during the last 45 minutes of the movie. Nod off, wake up, nod off, wake up.

This is not a comment on the movie, merely a comment on the fact that I need to drink a Jolt or a ZipFizz before sitting down to watch this particular film.

Back to the grind.

Laterz

Come back at night when I'm sleeping.

OK, I should be ecstatic that it is raining. This means that my trees and lawn will grow strong an healthy before the drought like weather of summer comes along.

However, I'm not. I hate it when it is rainy out.

As I have pointed out in the past, it makes me sleepy.

Anyway, enough bitching.

Back to the grind.

Laterz

Over the years I've spent a good deal of time with headphones piping music into my cranium or with the radio on in the background.

I normally use the music as an additional stimulant, something to get the blood pumping, even if I am just sitting at the computer typing. However, I remember listening to Green Day and Stone Temple Pilots while mowing the lawn back at my mom's house in Michigan. (Notably on a 'walkman' (portable personal cassette player to anyone too young to remember.)

Last night I spent some time searching for a song that might not even exist. I did a lyric search and what came back was a song by Garbage on their Garbage 2.0 album. I have that album and I don't think it is the song that I was thinking about, I need to find it and listen to it to make sure.

But I digress, the point is I spent time listening to samples of various tracks from the 80s, 90s and 2000s. There were songs that got my blood pumping, even from the 30 second sample. I bought a few of them, I don't remember which ones but I can look them up and post them after I get home later today.

However, as I was listening to some of the samples I sort of remembered the first time I heard them. It made me sort of feel like I was reliving my youth. Sitting up in the journalism room on the 3rd floor after hours doing the desktop publishing for the theatre's programs for the various plays and musicals I assisted (and performed) in over those 4 years.

I remembered, mowing the lawn, jogging or being down in Mexico for that summer before high school. My taste in music is best termed as eclectic. The word eclectic is usually reserved for folks that tend to collect taxidermy fruit or other such general weirdness.

Growing up I listened to pretty much whatever my mom liked, which meant lots of MoTown. However, at some point Bill Joel got inserted into the mix. I am not sure what made me like it, I think it is the piano. But I managed to kill two cassette tapes of his greatest hits. (I have since bought the CD set, which came with about 5 new songs.)

Sometime in 1995 I started driving, this meant that I had control of the radio. I listened almost exclusively to 92.1 the Edge, alternative rock, previously I listened to FM95 (i think that was the name) it ran a Top 40 line up. Sometime in 1995 I got my own CD player, so moving beyond just listening to Alternative on the radio I start buying CDs. (Here in Austin, I listen almost exclusively to 101X, alternative rock.)

I didn't really listen to 80s rock growing up, so when I hear it on the flashback lunch breaks I still occasionally hear a new song. I really like some of it, but not all of it. I bought some 80s alternative rock last night. My reason for mentioning that is because when it came to buying music for the next 10 years or so, I only bought stuff that I had been listening to since 1995. There are a few albums in my collection that date prior to 1995 (ie Billy Joel, and some artists that I liked enough to buy their older stuff).

Back to the title of this post 'Music as a stimulant?'.

As I was saying, I normally listen to music to keep myself motivated. I remember back in the early days of being down here in Texas, Gene used to listen to Metallica all the time. Then as the techno music movement made it's way through Austin, many of the programmers got really into techno music. (Notably some were there before and after the movement.)

I think everyone has music that gets their blood pumping. I think there are a lot of people that listen to music to calm down too.

As they say 'Music soothes the savage beast.'

I know that there are artists that calm me down. Almost all classical music for instance puts me to sleep. I mean that literally, and mean no offense to those that enjoy, compose, or play classical music. I find classical music to be quite relaxing and will normally get relaxed enough to just nod off while listening to it. Particularly if it has cello. I played cell back in middle school and was told at one point during that time 'The cello has the closet equivalent range to the female voice.'

I think this might be true, given that most of the artists that make me relax are women, who tend to have prominent solos or ensemble vocal pieces.

Anyway, I forget entirely why I thought this would be interesting to write about. But I do remember that yesterday my boss told me that I sounded tired. (which I am.)

It has been raining here for the last few days (nice and sunny at the moment). As I have stated in the past 'i am solar powered', so the rain makes me sleepy. He said 'Wow, you must have been really tired back in Michigan.'

I don't remember it raining constantly there, I remember it raining regularly then dissipating. However, I replied 'maybe that is why I formed my caffeine habit, because I was tired all the time in Michigan.'

Which later as I was listening to the various samples last night, maybe that is also why I got hooked on music too.

I think I am addicted to Music (and caffeine).

Back to the grind.

Laterz