I just finally got my computer to boot up again for the first time in days. I was worried there for a while that my computer had crashed and I had lost all my files and documents. Thank goodness it didn't.

I've gotten to thinking a little in the last few days about this website. Frankly, I think I have Blog Burn-out. I can look now at the few entries displayed on this page and see how completely pointless my scribblings have become. Hell, look back at my first entries from three-and-an-half years ago and one can see how pointless they are. I have kept a diary for the past 5-1/2 years and that's where I do most of my real writing. As I've come to see, most of what I write here is little more than filler and time wasting. I think the end may be coming soon for this blog.

Now, this isn't to say that this is the last of my web presence. This isn't even to say that this is necessarily the death knell of blueflower.org (although I don't really know much of what the point would be without the blog). I'll definitely still be maintaining sites like the Too Much Trivia in the Pants site and I'm still intending to finish the Tavern Tour website. I have ideas in mind for other projects also which are yet to come to fruition. I have just found too many better and other things to do with my life than sit talking to a computer. I'll keep you all posted, but definitely don't expect new entries very often until I figure out what I'm going to do next.

Just as my family was about to leave to spend the weekend at my grandma's, my parents got into some ridiculous argument about who-knows-what. My mom and The Brat left, but my dad decided now to stay here. Damn it. There goes a weekend with the house to myself. I really need to get my own place so that this would no longer be an issue. I'm hoping right now that my mom will decide to come back and pick him up, but they've already been gone for at least 20 minutes, so they're probably halfway there already. Poop.

UPDATE: Well, it just got worse. The fam returned an half-hour later. I'm not sure where my mom and The Brat had gone, but I assume the plan was to come back and pick up my dad. My dad and The Brat got into it, and now none of them are going anywhere, my dad went for a walk, The Brat is in his room crying, and my mom is unloading the car. Maybe I should drive to my grandma's just to get away from the three of them.

UPDATE #2: Another hour has passed, and now the three of them decided once again to get in the car and drive on. That's definitely not a car I would want to be in right now. I'll believe that they're really gone for the weekend though come Saturday or Sunday... not any time tonight.

Finally - a day when I got out of work on time. I picked up several hours of overtime over the weekend... but not by choice. Saturday night we had a maintenance issue and had to wait for Mesaba mechanics to drive from Rhinelander and Central Wisconsin. The didn't finally arrive until 1:45, and Tracy and I didn't finally get to clock out and go home until almost 3. It all turned out to be for naught, as the mechanics ran test after test and couldn't reproduce the failure. I suppose though that that's a good thing, as we would surely have still been there when the morning crew arrived otherwise. As for Sunday night, I didn't get out until almost 9:30 (I was supposed to be done at 7), as our last departure was delayed several hours.

There really hasn't been too much else that I've been upto in the ten days since I lasted posted. Mostly just the same old routine of work, work, drink, and work. I did finally sit down and type up the first draft of my personal statement for my grad school applications. It needs lots of work, so I'll probably spend a good chunk of my off day tomorrow revising and rewriting that.

So I'm just randomly looking around the country for interesting jobs when I see that the Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley, CA is hiring a part-time print traffic manager (aka film shipper). The minimum starting wage is $14.71 and you get 3 weeks vacation. And I'm still in Wisconsin because...?

I'm sitting here working on my homework assignment for class and decided to listen to NPR. The topic of my homework assignment? North Korea's nuclear capabilities. The current topic of discussion on NPR? North Korea's nuclear capabilities.

I just figured out my UWO email sign-in (so I could use the UWO website for my homework assignment that's due tonight), and upon opening my email inbox for the first time, I found that I had 13 messages in my inbox. 13! It doesn't look like I've missed anything important, but I suppose I should have tried opening this thing up sooner. Sheesh.

Happy Birthday Dad!

That's just our starter today. I have quite a bit I could write about if I could only remember it all. Let's start with some of the most recent....

That Packers-Eagles game last night was awful. I know the weather wasn't the greatest, but come on, both teams just looked pathetic. Kudos to the Eagles for finally deciding to win a game that Green Bay apparently never had any interest in winning from the start. Realistically, about 99% of the blame deserves to go on Mike Sherman and Tom Rossely. I don't care who the QB is, a Pop Warner player could tell that Favre couldn't grip the ball last night with the combination of his cast and the rain. Why not put Doug Pederson in? Hell, Gilbert Brown could just as effectively hand off to Ahman Green and fumble every time he drops back to pass. Even without that bullheadedness, what was with the Packers' second-to-last offensive series. You know, the one where they quite effectively ran out the clock by not even making an attempt to get a first down, guaranteeing the Eagles a chance to march down the field and win the game - which they did. The Packers have this horrible history of deciding that their lead is enough and the don't need to run up the score... and then they lose. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

How about those Gophers? The Minnesota football team is 9-2 going into Iowa City this weekend. A win would give them a 10-2 record, and since the top 3 teams in the Big Ten play games against each other over the next two weeks (Purdue at Ohio State this Saturday and Ohio State at Michigan the following Saturday), the Gophers could potentially move up in the conference. In fact - and maybe I should wait until after this Saturday to say this - but with the help of an upset by either Northwestern over Michigan and/or Indiana over Purdue, the possibility still exists for the Gophers to head to Pasadena. Like I said, I'll wait until after this Saturday's game to start getting excited. Now if only they hadn't blown that huge lead against Michigan....

Our cold spat over the last week finally dropped most all of the leaves off the trees in the neighborhood. We have new neighbors from Texas living in the house just to the south of us, and up until late this afternoon, their yard was covered in leaves, but not anymore. Nope, now the neighbor is out there in his camouflage and clearing the yard with his electric leaf blower. Our neighborhood is being overrun. When we first moved into this house, the neighborhood mostly consisted of elderly residents who actually owned their homes. There are still a few actual homeowners in the area, but most of the houses are rental properties now. It started then to become totally white trash, and while it's still dominated by white trash, it's now becoming just plain trash.

Continuing on with my neighborhood, I think we have a My Two Dads situation down the street, but I can't confirm it yet. If I happen to be home at the time, I see mothers walking their kids to over to the grade school or back home all the time. Well, recently I've started noticing two men doing the same. I would think nothing of it normally, but these two have the same glasses, the same facial hair, and are quite similarly dressed. Oh, and there's only one child with the two of them. More as the situation develops.

I had to take a drug test again yesterday. I had barely walked in the door and clocked in when I was called into the office and handed the paperwork. Just a random drug test. I was only gone an hour, which surprised me, because there were a lot of people waiting in the waiting room. I have no idea what sorts of things they were waiting for, because most of them were there before me, yet I was done before them.

My one and only homework assignment of the semester for my class is due tomorrow night and I haven't even started it yet. In fact, I had completely forgotten about it until late this afternoon. I guess I know what I'm doing tomorrow.

I guess I hadn't mentioned yet that I came back out to my car last Tuesday while at the library and found I had received a parking ticket. Nothing better to do. My meter had run 15 minutes over at the library and I came out to find a parking ticket. Yes, technically I broke the law, but since the police in this town have nothing better to do, they had to come put a ticket on my car. And people think we need to legalize concealed weapons in this state? For what? To protect you from those evil scofflaws in this state who do things like park illegally or speed? This is Wisconsin, people! Nothing remotely illegal ever happens here!

Yay, today was pay day!

I also went around last Tuesday looking for a coat rack, but to no avail. How come nobody sells coat racks anymore? Okay, sorry, I'm not being fair here - Target has coat racks. The mall Target had one style of coat rack, while the eastside Target had 3 from which to choose. The two that the eastside one had that the mall didn't were sort of cheap and tacky looking. The one that they both had was at least acceptable, but the eastside store was sold out and I didn't feel like driving back to the mall. Even so, I still wasn't all that crazy about the acceptable coat rack. Don't people buy coat racks anymore? I guess most people just have closets now and have no need for coat racks. Come day I'll find my coat rack.

I was going to write more, but I'm sure nobody is really even going to read this much. I have stuff to do before "Gilmore Girls" anyway. We're going out to eat after that for my dad's birthday. Nighty night.

Oh boy, The Brat is home for the weekend. Well, that's what I'm assuming. I woke up about an hour ago and heard commotion in the house. I was curious at first which of my parents was home. Then I saw his room piled high with crap and a bag of dirty laundry sitting by the front door. I'm hopeful that he won't be here all weekend, but I'm sure that'll be the case. Fuck. Now I really need to get out of this house as much as possible this weekend.

Colin Quinn's "Tough Crowd" on Comedy Central was never exactly a good show, but it was much, much funnier when it first began airing. The difference between the show then and now is that back then Colin Quinn would actually crack jokes. As time has gone on, Quinn has been telling fewer jokes and spending more time defending his über-conservative point-of-view against the joking guests he has on the show. If Quinn is going to cut out the comedy and just spend 30 minutes spewing garbage, why not put him on Fox News with his other pals?

Another Tuesday afternoon following another Tuesday morning during which I did absolutely nothing. Well, that's not the total truth. I mean, assuming one counts fondling the remote and rolling off the couch to use the bathroom as viable activities. At any rate, I need to head on down to the library this afternoon. I think the one homework project in my class might be due tomorrow night. I also need to look over a few random books. Well, that, and it's a good excuse to get the hell out of the house. There's something sort of sexy (in a geeky-chic sort of way) about going to the library or telling someone you're going to the library. So, ladies, it's time to start lining up or getting out your library cards.