Oh my FUCKING God!!! This is why my general philosophy in life is that I hate people (I'm willing to make, and have made, TONS of exceptions):

I'm driving behind a blue pickup on Lindbergh. He's fine. He's doing 45mph (it's a 40) and I'm cool with that. There's an older looking mid-sized sedan next to me, as we're passing him (he's doing around 40). Also fine. There's a bigger, white pickup truck behind him, riding his ass. He whips around him rather suddenly and is riding my ass. Okay, not like that's never happened so far...

The blue pickup & I get passed the sedan far enough so I can pass him, 'cause I prefer to do 50-55mph. I do it quickly, though not suddenly (and using my signal) because I have the feeling the guy behind me is a jackalope, to use a friend's saying. I accelerate as well, decently, so I'm passing the blue pickup fine (not at 1mph faster, IOW). The white pickup whips in behind me, no doubt cutting off the sedan, and rides my ass closer than he had been. Now I'm starting to get a little pissed.

As soon as I'm passed the blue truck far enough so I won't cut him off, I put on my signal and change lanes to the left lane (where I want to be). The white pickup, about a 1/2 second after I move, also moves (IOW, also cutting off the blue pickup), and starts accelerating, putting him yet closer.

Then, he whips it back over into the right lane, yelling who knows what at me (manual windows, so the right one is up) as he accelerates to around 60-65 (I'm doing 55-57 at this point).

After he's in front of me, he tosses a silver can (either beer or Barq's, as that's about the only soda -- aka non-alcoholic -- can I can bring to mind that's just about all silver) out his window. Fortunatley it lands behind his right rear tire, bounces, and goes off to the side somewhere (missing me completely). I flip him off, 'cause right about now I'm fucking pissed as hell, I slept like shit last night, I'm sick, and goddammit he's driving like a fucking moron & going to get people killed. So he holds another can out the window & shakes it like he's gonna toss it too. Whatever (he didn't).

We get to this light right before I-70 and it's red, so he stops and I stop. He fucking gets out of his car, yells something about being over the line (EXCUSE me, but being a bit anal about my driving, the only time I'm not in exactly ONE lane is the brief amount of time when I'm changing lanes... not sure exactly if this was his argument, but that's what I heard), and calls me a fucking bitch. Then he finally gets back in his car when seeing traffic move due to the green light (guess he decided beating my head in wasn't an option w/ all the traffic) and squeals his tires.

I of course can't accelerate that fast, nor do I want to, and then sort of simultaneously see a cop w/ his lights on in the left turn lane of the opposite direction, and behind me the guy in the blue pickup pointing furiously ahead of him (whether at me, the cop, or the white pickup I've no idea -- hoping it was either the cop so I'd notice, or the white truck because he was rooting the cop on to pull the fucker over). I stop & the cop makes a U-y to the left lane, and then I go.

Okay, now you're expecting the cop (who had to have seen this guy get out of his damn car) to pull the guy over, right? WRONG!! He turns off his lights after a short ways, and does around 48-50, and of course now the truck has decided that this is a good speed for now. So the asshole completely gets to go, unless the cop stayed with him passed where I got off (at the Rock Rd., which is just over the hill that goes over 70) and then pulled him over.

So, I guess the phrase "Where's a cop when you need one?" doesn't make much sense anymore. Even if there IS a cop when you need one, he doesn't give one fat shit about the situation or about doing his damn job. Oh, judging by the look of the asshole driver, he was a 50+ overweight guy w/ grey spiked hair, and had the total look & attitude of "I'm a good ol' boy, a big tough man, and all y'all other assholes better get the fuck outta my way, especially all you wimin folk who should be back in the kitchen & not on the roads, 'cause none o' y'all know how to drive right anyway." I know I'm stereotyping in a HUGE way, but that was my impression, this is my rant, and my page to rant on, and goddammit I'm still fucking pissed & wanting to beat the asshole about the head until he bleeds to death.

I guess it's good I don't have karate class today (though I doubt I'd go anyway, I feel like shit & have not much physical energy to move about), because I'd have a really hard time not beating the shit out of everyone & everything, and get way carried away. Who knows? Class is tomorrow night, and there's a good possibility I'll stew over this all the rest of today & tomorrow, and still be mad. Just not quite as brightly-burning mad as when it happened 10 minutes ago, but still very, very mad. Fucking cocksucking redneck selfish asshole!!!

Well, goddammit, I'm sick again. This has not been a good 4-6 weeks for me (4-6 because I've lost track of exactly when I first got sick to begin with). I had a cold for a week, then I was fine for almost a week, then I got an ear infection that took a week to get rid of. Then it was allergy season. Now, starting yesterday (well... maybe Friday, even though I felt more or less fine then) I started having trouble, and by the time we got home from helping a friend party up his birthday (around 2:45am) I was miserable. I was in bed from 4:30am to 3:15pm (stayed up & watched TV till 4:30 'cause I couldn't sleep) and yet only got around 5-6 hrs of sleep!!! This is really driving me crazy that I can't get better.

At least my hair is healthier. In fact, I think it's healthier than I am. About a week and a half to two weeks ago, I read an article in the St. Louis Post Dispatch, in the Everyday section, about a book called Curly Girl by Lorraine Massey. She's a british woman with very curly hair who has set out to help teach woman in the world with wavy to highly curly hair, how to take care of it, keep it healthy, and make it look great. I did a search on her name, and found a website devoted to those with wavy or curly hair. I perused the site a bit, and quickly found their discussion forum. After lurking in there a day or two, and asking a few questions, I've bought the book (through DoubleDiscount.com [link removed; no longer exists] -- after shipping, it still cost about 50 cents less than had I bought it in a retail book store in town), and am now getting my hair a lot softer and healthier. Not to mention, it's starting to curl more. The only thing I really have left to do, is to get the last couple of inches chopped off to get rid of most of my split ends. I already have a recommendation of somewhere in St. Louis to go (ironically, from talking to a girl in the bathroom of a club while we were out last night). So, I'm going to look them up in the phone book and give them a call. And maybe they'll do hair & makeup for my wedding too (I can only hope, eh?).

Woo-hoo! I was right -- pollen is waayy down from where it was mid last week. The most important number, oak, is down to 820. While that's still high, it's a whole lot lower (about 1/3 of what it was on Friday). And yes, I broke my short "post-every-three-days" pattern I had going there, just to say that. Too bad!

Level 50! Yea! My amazon just reached level 50 in Diablo II.

Almost all our wedding invitations are addressed and ready to go (except stamps). J's family came out from Jeff City (well, his grandma from Wright City, not as far) and we all went to my parents' house and had an adderssing party. His dad went to look at trucks, and us ladies all addressed envelopes, both outer and inner ones. I just have a few I still need to get addresses for, so I took those home with me. And my mom said she'd stuff 'em all (except the ones I took home) and we're going to get maps into them all as well. Hopefully we can send them out tomorrow or Wednesday.

Oh -- and it rained most of the weekend (hard -- the wind broke one of my screens!) so pollen is apparently down (haven't checked #'s yet) 'cause I'm having less trouble. Yea!

Yea!!! Our wedding invitations came yesterday. I came home, and eventually went into the computer room. There, sitting on my computer chair, was a medium-sized box (took up the whole chair). I immediately knew that's what they were, since it's the only thing I've ordered, and of course the "Employee Printing Services" on the address label, hehe. I'm very impressed, because the order wasn't ready for processing until Friday, so that means it got to me in less than a week. Now I have to get addresses for everyone...

On a not-so-fun note... it's allergy season again. It seems like I'm severely allergic to just about every deciduous tree that grows in the midwest. I don't know if that's actually true, since there are an awful lot of different trees that grow around here, but... I know I'm allergic to at least a half dozen of them, and I know my allergic reaction to each is very high. (I had a skin test at around 14 or 15, and oak was off the charts, and several others were about at the top of the scale. If you've ever had an allergy test, they gave me a 4++++ for oak -- the rating is numbers 1 thru 4, with + symbols added for in between, etc. So oak is baaaaad. I tested above a 4 for I think 3 others, and above a 3 for several more.)

On Monday, oak pollen was listed at moderate, in the double digits (49 or something?). I looked today (Friday), and it's high at 2300!!! Not to mention, I've only been on my allergy meds since Monday (they don't kick into full gear immediately but have to "build up" in your system), and I'm trying a different one than I've been using for a while. I had been on Zyrtec, which helps pretty well, but I wanted to see if I could get complete relief. The doctor gave me a month's supply of Allegra, and lemme tell ya, I'm having trouble.

Night before last, I did the typical stupid thing I do at least once at the beginning of the season: rubbed my eyes when they itched. Rubbed 'em too much, esp. the right eye, and it swelled up a lot. I put allergy eye drops in both eyes, used a cold wet cloth for about 10 min, then went to bed. A shocker: I woke up for whatever reason around 4am, and I could not open my right eye!! When my alarm went off at 7, I could just barely open it! Since I got up almost right away, I took 10 min out to lie on the couch w/ a soaking wet cold washcloth draped over my eyes. No luck. Cucumber gel? No luck.

I finally wake J up asking what he thought I could/should do. It being my right eye, I wasn't safe to drive (we're talking about going from having the typical small blind spot on the right side of your car, to having the whole right half of the car being in one gigantic blind spot!). But I needed to get to work. He suggested trying ice. So, I took an ice cube, wrapped it in a paper towel, wet the towel, and sat dabbing it against different parts of my eyelids (moving it around means it doesn't start to hurt). I did that until the cube was completely melted, and voila! I could open my eye comfortably half way (no excessive watering, etc.). So, I got ready for work, put another ice cube in a paper towel (dry) and put that in a baggie, so I could finish opening it up at work.

Much better now (still slightly puffy, but not swollen, although very bloodshot). Also, my mom suggested buying a bottle of witchhazel, because it's good for reducing swelling and isn't damaging to the tissues the way ice is. Not sure where to look for it (health food stores?) but I'm going to look asap.

Wow, this is getting very long. But hey, that's what this thing is for, right?

I noticed I forgot to mention something I'd wanted to mention...

I told my mom the next Wed. (the 10th) I couldn't find that list anywhere, and she said, "Oh, okay. I'll go get my copy." I forgot she had the originals & just had my dad make a copy on the scanner for us. (Might explain why I didn't find it... was looking for notebook paper when I shoulda been looking for printer paper...) So, she just gave me those.

It turns out between the two lists (my side & J's side) I only needed 56 invitations, so I ordered 75 late Wed. night 'cause I figure I shouldn't need more than 19 extras for friends (considering that there are already >100 people on those two family lists, and we only have room for 125...). So, I should get the invitations by Saturday, or Monday at the absolute latest. Woulda been by Saturday for sure, but there were a couple things I didn't know how to fill out, so I thought maybe they were optional & left them blank. Jeremy called me at work Friday telling me to call so-and-so about them, and I got it straightened out then. So either this coming weekend (if they get here on Saturday) or the next (if Monday) me, my mom, J's grandma, and a friend of mine, will probably all have a big "addressing" party.

Well, we've done it. We've finally set up some bridal registrations. Yea! We're so far registered at three places: Sears, Kohl's, and Pier 1 Imports. Kohl's has the least amount of stuff on our list (some placemats, cloth napkins, a queen size flannel throw, and a comforter set). There are several things on the other two lists though, and between all three lists we have a price range between $3.99 and $150. Oughta be something in there for everyone.

Also, I'm heading out to St. Peters to check out the bouquets a friend of mine's mom has made for my two bridesmaids and me, so I might register us at a fourth store that's at Mid Rivers Mall: Bed Bath and Beyond. Definitely not somewhere I could talk Jeremy into going with me, so I'll get to pick out all the stuff. And, before I go out, I'll be calling David's Bridal to see about having my wedding dress shortened & bustled, etc. If they can do the fitting that day (which I doubt) I'll bring the dress out with me too.

Lotsa fun schtuff happenin'!

I had fun today. Got to go gift registry shopping for our wedding. We registered at three places: Sears, Pier 1 Imports, and Kohl's. Kohl's has the smallest list; the other two have a fair amount listed. Of course, there's a good possibility we'll still have to add more stuff. And, I might be stopping by a Bed Bath & Beyond to see if they have anything, so that might add more stuff too.

One more thing scratched off the "to-do" list...

Well... a server had a fan blow out, so it overheated and lost a bunch of user files. Every file I had up here was blown away. So, I've spent the last hour or so uploading everything. I think I've gotten just about everything up (except the "Pet Peeves" section, because it's on a different computer), and I also took the time to make sure I didn't upload anything I didn't need to upload (like extraneous picture files I had been using but am not now, and hadn't cleaned out). So, I've sort of had a spring cleaning. If anything comes up missing, go ahead and drop me a line.

This from the NetComments page:

"Ok, my host has allowed me to put commenting back online until netcomments moves to its new hosting (and new domain - probably netcomments.com)."

So it's here for now, but we'll see what happens...

Okay, I've actually added and changed a couple things. I decided that even though I haven't put any new ones up lately, I had quite enough webpoll results that they shouldn't be taking up all that space on my links page. So, they're now on a separate page [link changed - webpolls are now a blog category] of their own. Also, since I found another webcomic that likes to "travel abroad", and it's a lot bigger typically than Bruno, I decided to make a separate page [link removed because it no longer exists] for that too (who knows, I might find others to put there). Anyway, it's not really obvious from here on the main page, or on the links page, as besides this news update there's no direct link to just the whole pages, but you also get to them any time you click on a "see here" type of link. I might put links to them on the left of this page, if I get around to it, but I think there are plenty of links over there already, don't you? I already feel a site design tweak coming around the corner...

Also, I've added a few more comics on my links page (four to be precise), so go check 'em out, hehe.

Well, a teensy bit of bad news... NetComments is down right now. It seems that the host, Waveflex, claimed unlimited bandwidth but is threatening to shut him down for using too much... (haven't seen the actual ToS/agreement, haven't been to their site, etc., so I've no clue about that part).

Anyway, there's no commenting up right now 'cause he didn't want to be shut down. The code's all still in here but from what I can tell it just doesn't do anything right now. So, in case you really, really, really wanted to comment, go "tell me all about it" on my Message Board.

I've decided it's an extra good thing we don't do our laundry downstairs. Already, it was just two washers & two dryers, and not only does everyone in our four-building "court" seem to use it (that's up to 16 units) but apparently lots of others do as well. I sometimes wonder if ours is the only basement on the whole street of apts & townhomes that has any laundry facilities at all....

But now we're down to 1 washer. This is because some idiot overfilled the washer yesterday. I mean, this thing was full to the very top of the dang hole! We heard a mechanical screaming sound from upstairs, and J decided to check it out. I started the vacuum again (could hear it a wee bit over that even). He came back up & said he'd gone down to the basement to find the smell of burning rubber, and that it was one of the washers essentially "trying to kill itself." He lifted the lid on the washer to turn it off, so the thing didn't explode or whatever. But the squeal was the motor trying (and failing) to spin the washer, and the belt sliding across the other end it was supposed to be turning.

And the washer hadn't even reached spin cycle. There was still liquid detergent to be seen on the clothes. Now, the best-case scenario is the belt having to be replaced. The worst case, is that the motor was damaged, which means may as well replace the washer. Great job, moron! When it says to fill to a certain capacity, you don't overfill it! I mean, I want to get as much out of my $ as the next guy, but for cryin' out loud, if you fill it to the point that the washer breaks, your clothes don't get done & you wasted your money, not to mention ruined it for everyone else. I thought by the time a person was able to live out on their own (could afford decent rent, transportation to work, etc., etc.) they had enough common sense to know how to do their damn laundry. Apparently not...

Okay, to-do list for this afternoon/this evening:

1. Put away my clothes.
2. Vacuum the apartment.
3. Look for the wedding invitation list for my side of the family.
4. Call my friend back.
5. After J gets home, if I found the list mentioned on #3, discuss actual time of wedding & reception, and then order invitations online.

Now let's see if I can get all this stuff done, hehe.... (the vacuuming should be done after the clothes-picking-up 'cause the clothes are on the floor... and it also needs to be done at a reasonable hour so as not to annoy the crap out of the neighbors.)

Edit: One down so far... er, make that two.

Looked everywhere for that damn list, and it seems to have disappeared into thin air. I did look everywhere for it; it's just nowhere to be found. Did talk about when to have the wedding (decided 2pm) but since I haven't found the list, I can't be sure how many to order.

And, I called my friend back around 9:30, and we talked for a while. So I accomplished everything on my list (technically) and almost everything I wanted to (I wanted to find that invitation list & order invitations tonight). Could be worse I guess...

Alright. I'm finally feeling a lot better. Not all better yet, but mostly. I only have 3 more antibiotic pills to take, after my dose last night, so hopefully I'll be back to normal soon. (Heh, of course in a week or so the Red Cross will be calling me at work again... they called Friday, but I told 'em I was sick. I guess if they can't reach you at home they'll track you down at work.)

Been playing Diablo II a lot in the last week or so... since picking it up again my Amazon has gone from level 42 to level 47. I've died 3 or 4 times, which sucked, but not a biggie I guess. I finally have a belt that holds 16 potions instead of 12. Gotta thank Jeremy for that. I'd been carrying around this other one I'd found (a set item, but not all that cool) for ages (prob'ly thru 20 level-ups or so!). So, after being on Act III for a while when I'd quit before, I killed Mephisto, and have gone to Act IV all the way into the Chaos Sanctuary, and of course have killed Hephasto & smashed M's soulstone. But I'm not quite sure I'm ready to start opening those seals yet... I use up enough potions (blue in particular) as it is, just getting to the sanctuary, and then killing everything already in it.

K, enough procrastinating for one day, or at least for one morning, hehe...

Ugh! I just discovered my Blog template cannot be edited in Netscape 6. All they do is grab the template straight out, and paste it between <textarea> tags. So, while the source says it's all there, there ends up being a ton of crap missing. All it would take, would be to write out the source of the HTML to convert things like the < and the > to &lt; &gt; etc., and all would be well. Is this going to happen? Not bloody likely. "But it works in IE and Netscape 4!" And your point is...? It should matter, because after all, if you're going to put HTML within a textfield like that, it should always be output properly (even though some browsers apparently interpret it as intended anyway) in the first place.

But I'm sure it'll never happen. So... just for any template editing I want to do at home, I have to keep Netscape 4.78 around, even though I so rarely use it I was considering uninstalling it. And I refuse, patently refuse, to use IE5.0, because it is such a piece of crap (both here and at work -- in fact at work it's worse) that I use it even less (the occasional double-check to make sure my HTML & Javascript work in it). In fact, I find it practically useless on my machine. Maybe I could d/l Opera to use for editing my Blog template, if it works. It's so much smaller, that I could keep it for that instead of N4, and free up a li'l space....

Well... I'm feeling better now, or at least my ear is. The pressure seems mostly gone (except occasionally when I feel it more) and it's a little less sore. Of course, I've been blowing my nose so bloody much I now have a very red and very sore nose & upper lip. In fact, I've run out of tissues at work already and am using a cheapie roll of toilet paper, which makes it worse (I normally use Puffs w/ lotion, which helps a lot). And I slept more last night, maybe as much as four hours.

My only current rant, other than that I want to be all better now (no more red sore nose, etc.), is our apartment door(s). They installed a new door to the building earlier in the week. Bare wood. They installed new apartment doors yesterday & today (bottom 2 yesterday, meaning ours was, and top 2 today). Bare wood. In other words, they're going to paint them after they're hung. This means our doors are going to stick for a while to the door jambs (it's not like we can just leave our doors hanging open until they dry completely... that'd be a li'l insecure). So it's going to be fun wresting our door open to go in and out.

There are a couple good points at least. They painted the inside of the main door white instead of the black we thought they'd use, so hopefully they won't paint the doors black like they painted all the doorframes, stair railings, etc., a few weeks ago. Looks better that way. Also, the main door now has window panes in it, so you can see whether someone's getting their mail before you plunge thru & knock someone over. And we got brand new doorjambs. Ours, where the deadbolt was (it's a little higher now), looked like someone (a neighbor suggested the owner...) had tried to open the door with a crowbar or something. Was a little bent up & a little loose. Oh, and we don't have to hold the door in a just-so position to lock it, as the lock & the hole for it actually line up better.

Can you tell I'm bored? I've actually had work to do at work today (fancy that...) but I'm at a sticking point, and the coworker I have to ask questions of is busy solving another problem. Not that I mind; this is just a proof-of-concept type of thing, so there's no giant push to get it finished "yesterday", so I can always play solitaire (or write in my "whine journal"...) with no worries. Esp. because da boss went home already.

I did manage to once be allowed to publish, but now publishing and template editing are down again. Hopefully tomorrow I'll be able to publish this...

I have NetComments pretty much customized the way I like it now, although I noticed an interesting quirk: for some reason it's not popping up the window to the right size I've defined, in Netscape 6.2 (which I use at home). Netscape 4.7x and IE5.0 seem to behave properly; I don't know if the script needs updating or what, but that part doesn't work. Oh well, definitely a minor nit.

Well, I finally found a remotely-hosted comment system that's still accepting members (BlogBack & YACCS are not -- YACCSS stopped accepting them midnight yesterday!) and doesn't give file not found errors (ahem, Reblogger...). It's NetComments and it looks like it'll be really cool.

The bummer is, I just tried to change my Blogger template, and I got a message instead said that the "template editor is being worked on" so it's offline. So I can't paste the codes into the template.

And of course, as I'm typing this, I just noticed the message "Sorry, publishing is temporarily unavailable. [why?]". Clicked on the why and it said "Server overload. Sorry. (For priority servers access, upgrade to Pro.)" Not going to do that either. So I'm just going to post it for now (which just stores it there) and publish it when publishing is back up. Presumably template editing will be up around the same time... (no explanation about that one that I could find).

As usual, I am eternally amazed at how much snot the human body can produce, without shrivelling up like a raisin from dehydration.

I've been blowing my nose all day, and ever since lunch my nose has been a constantly-dripping faucet. I even had to sit thru a 40min meeting dripping, with no Puffs to so much as dab my nose with. Talk about gross! I did manage not to drop on my sweater by sniffing a lot.

Somehow I have all this snot pouring forth, I can feel more sinuses clogged than were clogged on Monday afternoon, and my ear is still under the same amount of pressure and pain as Monday. For cryin' out loud, where's it all coming from? And why isn't my ear clearing up at all??

I thought medicine was supposed to make me feel better... he didn't warn me it'd get worse first.

Another day... *sigh*. For some reason I just could not sleep last night. I'd almost fall asleep, then wake right back up again. I did that until around 4am! And even after that, I'd sleep for a while (30-60min) and wake up to toss over. Not to mention the weird dreams... So I prob'ly got 2 hrs of sleep tops between 2am and 7am. Granted I had about an hour or hour & a half nap early last night but that shouldn't make that big a difference.

And my stupid ear isn't any less clogged than it was when I went to the doctor, even after 2 doses of antibiotic & 4 doses (well, 5 after this morning) of decongestant. Very frustrating!

I think when J gets home from class, we'll eat dinner, maybe hang out for a while, then I'm going to bed! Hopefully I can be in bed by 10pm.

Wow, I actually slept through the phone ringing. Either that or it didn't ring...

Was taking a nap on the pile of sheets & pillows on the bed (J did laundry so the bed wasn't made yet). The two cats were curled up with me. I woke up around 8pm, eventually got up, and went to make some soup. The answering machine was blinking, and it had a hang-up on it.

I guess I'm kinda glad I didn't hear it: the caller-id box said it was the Red Cross, no doubt calling to ask me to schedule an appointment to donate blood. I don't think they would want me to while I'm taking 500mg antibiotic pills for an ear infection, do you?

I like meetings that are relatively short, are informative, and I actually get to participate in. Those are a nice change of pace from the usual long, relatively useless (to me) meetings where I just sit there and try to pay attention.

I hate ear infections. I've never had one until now, and I can tell ya they suck big hairy donkey balls. They hurt, they make other things hurt (your face, your neck, your teeth!), and you can't hear worth a crap. Heh, and he told me it was a mild one & that I caught it early. I don't want to know what a full-blown ear infection would be like!

As if it isn't enough that I have not only a guestbook, but also a message board, I decided to go for the gusto and sign up for a weblog. That's right. I went to Blogger.com and signed up for a free weblog. I figure this is where I can do all my quality whining about whatever's bugging me at the time, that I can't get anyone to sit down and listen to. If you actually do care about what I have to whine about, you can at least read it instead of listening to it in all its whiny-voiced glory. There, did I provide enough links in this post?