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I’m sitting here at my desk in front of my window, watching the remnants of Katrina outside. It’s very humid, rainy, and windy. Next to me, the kittens are playing with each other. It’s times like these that make you look at the big picture sometimes. Sure, I may not like my job right now. Sure, I may have a lot of shit on my plate right now that I have no clue how to get done. And sure, things may be very tight financially, but it could be worse. I think about the people who faced this storm head on, and think about what they lost. At least I still have a home to sit in, a window to look out, and kittens to watch play. It’s times like these that life doesn’t seem so bad after all.

I’ve been working night the past 3 days, and it honestly hasn’t been too bad. I get home arounf 10:30pm, grab a quick snack, hang out with Jess until she crashes around midnight or so, and then go do my thing for an hour or two before I crash. The nights have been cool, so sleeping is great. So, with all of this said, why do I wake up dead tired every morning? I had to literally throw myself out of bed at 10:30am this morning. If I had not done this, I would have easily slept until noon, which then would have made me late for work at 1pm. I just don’t get it.

Just when I thought things might start slowing down, they seem to be picking up pace again. The business is going along briskly, and although I loathe to complain about it, I just wish it was more steady then these short bursts of craziness. Take this coming Sunday for example. My last 2 days off were spent camping with Jess’s family, therefore I was out of town and not able to do much around the house. This Sunday is my first day off in 6 days, and I have it somehow now almost totally booked with things to do that do not involve the house at all. Although in all honesty, until we get the new roof put on, all that can be done around the house is straightening it up and cutting the grass. Hopefully the new roof will be on within the next month.

Ok, I think I’m all done bitching for now. It’s time to start to get ready for work soon anyway. However as a side note, I styarted folling around with my Pocket PC again last night, starting to install i/o Computers data on there. If I can get it configed the way I want to, I should have a nice little portable office to take around with me.

I was over at /. this morning, when I read a news article linking to this. 10 years ago today Microsoft launched Windows 95. I vivdily remember the launch and wanting a copy for myself and my mighty 486. I did in fact, buy a copy, and then return it after my computer coughed and garggled after installing it. It was then that I learned a quick lesson – “Minimum System Requirements” meant just that. It’ll install and your system and run…but don’t expect to do much with it. It was fun to play around with, especially the “Active Desktop” features. Although a complete memory hog, it was cool, for the first time, to use JPEGs as your background wallpaper. Eventually, a few years later, I bought a PII IBM machine with Windows 95 on it and it’s still running great today as my in home server.

This is really ironic becuase I was out shopping with Jess last night and I got into a nostalgic video game mood. I don’t know why, but I could not stop thinking about all the games that I used to play back in 1996. Final Fantasy VII, Mortal Kombat3, Castlevania: Symphony of The Night, Mortal Kombat Trilogy, Twisted Metal 2, Tekken 3, and Tobal #1. Those were all great games, and I really felt like I was out of the video game cicrle. It is true that I play less and less games each year, but a lot of that is not by choice. Life seems to get more hectic for me each year, and thus, video games tend to take a back seat. I really want to try and get back to playing more video games. In fact, I hooked up my PS2 last night and played some games for about an hour….and then I felt really old because I had to go to bed at midnight because I could not keep my eyes open anymore. But, I did manage to play a little Tekken 5, Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance, and Maximo. I’m going to see if I can make a little time tonight to play some of them as well. I did want to play them this morning before work but I needed to catch up on some sleep and decided to sleep in instead. I’m thinking that I’ll start a nice new game of Maximo tonight. For now though, it’s back to being an adult and cleaning out the litter box, and maybe trying to do the dishes before work. Later…

Everyone here in the house has taken the death of Gandalf very hard. Even Lola has taken it very hard, as she tends to just sit there and stare under the chair where Gandalf used to sleep. Jess and I went camping with her family this weekend, and over the 2 days we were away, we did quite a bit of talking. We realized that we now had a hole in our family. No one could ever reaplce Gandalf, and nor would we ever try to. He was a wonderful, unique kitten and we really feel lucky to have had the 2 short months we had with him.

Where am I going with this?

Well, we got back a litlte earlier then we expected to today, so we went to some local pet shops. We weren’t out to get new kitten, but just wanted to start looking. Well, as fate would have it, we found a wonderful little kitten to bring home with us.

I present to you Marmalade. She is a female, born 6/6/05.

Good night buddy…

Bored again. Here’s my desktop:

Yesterday was a “mental health” day for me. Translation–I called off sick so I could have 3 days off in a row and refrain from either quitting my job or killing someone.

Yesterday was actually a pretty fun, relaxing day. I slept in a bit, woke up and had some breakfast, and then decided to call off around 12:30pm or so. After that, I talked on the phone with a few of my firneds for a while, and then Jess and I had a nice lunch outside on the porch. It was so nice out in fact, that we decided to go down my parent’s house and setup my tent and air it out for the upcoming camping trip next weekend. Once the tent was up, we were getting hungry for dinner, so we came home and made some hamburgers on the grill. While grilling the burgers, I went down to check out the garden, and had the opportunity to pick our very first tomato of the year! In fact, it’s sitting on our kitchen windowsill right now reddening. (not sure if that’s a real word or not) Last night was equally as fun. I tried a new free MMORPG game called “Conquer” that came with my new MAximum PC magazine. I played it for about 15 minutes before realizing that it sucked total ass. So, to get that bad taste out of my mouth, I played Guild Wars for about an hour and gained a full level with my Elementalist/Monk. Once I was finished with that game, I hung out online with JP for a few hours. He was working on a new script for the i/o Computers store, and I was back and forth with working on a project in Photoshop, downloading some new deasktop wallpapers, and help Jess with Psychonauts. (she’s so cute when she gets frustrated by a game) After all was said and done, we went to bed.

I know that may not seem like much to most people, but a day off where I don’t have to be somewhere or do something that was setup weeks in advance is very welcome in my life right now. I today and tomorrow off as well. Even though I have some plans tonight and tomorrow night, they are plans that were made by me of my own free will. These are things that I actually want to do, not obligated to do. I needed that.