Author: Shawn

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Wrapping up NaBloWriMo

I’m a teensy-weensy bit sorry that yesterday’s entry was just a saying of the day, but I wanted to get a couple hours of sleep in the late PM hours so I could stay up all night and not accomplish anything. Okay, fine, I was editing and writing a section of a group paper for class tomorrow, but most of the time, I wasn’t accomplishing anything.

Earlier in the afternoon, I went to the local Y and took a ride on an exercise bike for 30 minutes, my first exercise in over a month. I got home and my knee was still functional, so I take that as a good sign. I’m not going to push myself too hard because I want it to continue being functional—it pops a lot more than it used to, but that’s going to be part of life from here on out. I’m tough, I’ll manage. Loud noises don’t scare me. Unless they’re coming from malfunctioning carbon monoxide/gas detectors that tell you your house is about to explode.

I’m not sure if I mentioned it on here before, but it’s not that exciting of a story. At least not that exciting to read. It was exciting to experience, but not in a good way. I got some monster adrenaline bursts when the really loud alarm started blaring because it “detected gas” and said alarm was blaring maybe four feet away from my head. We opened some doors and windows in the house and it stopped, but it went off again a few days later. We replaced it and there haven’t been any problems since then. (Instead of getting rid of the old one right away, we switched it with one of the gas detectors upstairs, so Dad had the pleasant experience of being woken up in the middle of the night because there was supposedly gas in his room, too. You know, the toxic kind… natural gas… the stuff that goes through the pipes to help heat the house. That kind of gas.)

Lastly, I want to finish up the month by letting you all know that I probably won’t be posting in here nearly as often as I have in the last month (i.e., not every day)—for those of you who just found the blog and have been surfing through past entries, it’ll give you some time to catch up. For those who have gotten used to this frequency of posting, I feel a teensy-weensy bit bad for defying your expectations, but not enough to keep going for the rest of the year. You’re tough, you’ll manage.

And that’s about it. To quote George Carlin, “I have no ending to this, so I take a small bow.”

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Cyber yummies

This may be a bit late for those of you who live overseas, but I wanted to mention that Marie Porter, a friend of mine and an Evil Cake Overlord, is an awesome cook and she’s selling her cookbooks (which she publishes and sells independently) for a good discount. If you like desserts, she’s your hookup. Thus, if you can still buy a book or two on Cyber Monday, here’s the link. If you’re still interested after Monday, that link might not work anymore, so here’s the main page where you can buy the books and also find some recipes that aren’t in either one. I hope you’ll enjoy them as much as I have. Yummy…

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“C’mon, clock, hurry up!”

It just figures that laying my head down on the pillow a few hours earlier than usual would backfire. I was tired, couldn’t think of anything to do and wanted to see if there’d be anything worth buying online on Cyber Monday (or at least anything I’d think would be worth buying, ’cause there’s a ton of stuff that’ll be on sale really soon). Instead, I woke up on Sunday at 11:15pm.

That may have been a blessing in disguise since I neglected to write a blog entry today. There was something I wanted to write about and I’ll probably do it tomorrow, but as I was crawling into bed, I was too pooped to think about it. When I woke up and looked at the clock, my first thought was “Dammit…”, immediately followed by “Eek! What am I going to write for my blog entry?” Thankfully, that thought process didn’t take very long.

As a side note, I find it both sad and amusing that I mentioned 750words.com a few weeks ago as a way to motivate oneself to write every day. I’ve written something in here every day in November, but I have yet to visit the website this month. Part of that is due to my concern about writing 750 words—most (if not all) of my November blog entries have been shorter—and I wouldn’t want to sit in front of my computer thinking, “Okay, I’m done, now what? I’ve still got 400 words to go!” I’d rather be distracted with making sure the wording in here is absolutely perfect. In a way, it’s kinda depressing how meticulous I can be writing blog entries versus papers for school. Then again, I don’t need to worry about a grade on here. I can just pat myself on the back about the results. That may be the only appreciation I receive (I promise I’m not trying to milk you for compliments), but I think that’s good enough.

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“Shop Local Saturday”

I’d never heard of it before this year, but it’s apparently a much less violent version of Black Friday that costs way more. And by “way more”, I mean regular prices (as opposed to super-duper discounts) that are a little more expensive because they come from local businesses instead of big franchises where people have been shot and pepper sprayed the day before.

Admittedly, my shopping spree with Mom and Dad began with a trip to Walgreen’s and a local Sprint store. I couldn’t think of a local store that sells fish oil and I ran out of capsules a while ago, so I bought two bottles there. At Sprint… I don’t know what the hell was going on. I decided to get an iPhone 4S because I wanted 16GB of storage space (the only iPhone 4 they still sell has 8GB). I was doing research on Sprint’s website ahead of time and… I’m just way confused.

The staff member wanted to save us the most money possible, which was cool, but the prices she was quoting sounded exactly like what was online. My parents have a family plan and I wouldn’t be using an extra line from them (which costs ten bucks a month), but they have an old calling plan that isn’t offered anymore, plus she said I’d have to use one of their free phone upgrades to get my phone at the price listed on Sprint’s website… I’m just way confused. It was tempting to buy a phone off the website and be done with it, but I decided to let them back order one for me and we can figure stuff out from there. I hope.

Next, we stopped at a local hardware store. I thought about getting a flashlight that I could attach to my car keys, but given how much larger the new iPhone could be, I’m not sure if there’d be room in my pocket. Plus I should be able to download an app that’ll turn it into a miniature spotlight. I’ve used my current cell phone as a light before, but I doubt I’d be able to flag down ships if I was trapped on a desert island. Of course, the battery on my current cell phone would last a lot longer if I was trapped on a desert island, but I wouldn’t be able to check my e-mail or download por… watch YouTube videos! YouTube videos!

Then it was time for lunch at a local bar and restaurant. The parking lot was packed and we were afraid there was going to be a waiting list, but it was almost empty inside. That’s because most of them were in the bar in the other room where they were playing Bingo. I didn’t hear any screams of joy, but I didn’t hear any screams of pain because of gunfire or pepper spray, so I figured that was okay. Plus the chips with salsa con queso and chicken Alfredo pizza we ordered were really yummy, so I was glad we went.

Those were the only local shops we visited, but I think we did our part to help the community. I ordered a new phone, we have a lot of leftover pizza for breakfast tomorrow and I resisted the temptation to buy pepper spray at the hardware store. (I wish I was kidding about that last one, but I saw it on the shelves.) Yeah, I’d say it’s been a good day.

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How dark does Black Friday have to be?

I stayed up late enough last night that I could have been in line for… well, I haven’t the slightest idea what “door buster sales” might have started at midnight, but I feel no shame in not participating. Nor do I feel shame in sleeping late. Nor taking a nap. Nor not buying a damn thing today. (I thought about getting something from Amazon.com, but I’ll see how things look on Cyber Monday instead.)

Meanwhile, I read an article online referring to police reports about how some people were so intent on getting good deals today that there were several shootings, a bomb threat and a woman who used pepper spray to clear out her competition. You’d think that in a Wal-Mart (yes, all of these incidents in the article happened at Wal-Mart stores), someone in the sporting goods section would grab a golf club or something, but noooooo, they were all too busy trying to get cheap DVD players instead. And besides, if there’s not a “door buster sale” on golf clubs, why would anyone be in that part of the store?