2001-01-09 -

Who's Who Cheat Sheet

Who I Read

On the internal soundtrack: Theme from "Malcolm in the Middle"

Well, I seem to FINALLY be better. That was the weirdest cold I've ever had. Sneezy one day, dry the next, then sneezy again, then not. Maybe I was almost better the second day, but the poor night's sleep I had brought the cold back. Either that, or those little yellow antihistamine pills REALLY work, and I only have to take a half a pill every 24 hours to get the desired results. If that's the case, I'm ecstatic.

My day got off to a horrific start. It's very blustery and cold today, the kind of weather where 30 seconds outside without gloves makes my hands hurt. And it's in this kind of weather that I had to run four errands. Every time I got out of the car it was agony.

One of the errands was dropping off our mixed paper to be recycled. Of course, the wind whipped out some papers and blew them all over the ground, and it's really hard to pick up papers off asphalt when you have gloves on, but I wasn't about to take them off either.

I mailed a bill and four thank-you notes, only to get back to the office and discover that the rate increase took place yesterday. Argh. The bill was already sort of late, too, although it's a prepaid kind of thing for parking so they can't fuss at me too much.

Then I got to the office and discovered I had no milk for my cereal (I'd forgotten that I took it home), and I had to eat breakfast at 10:30. Argh.

I really should just go back to bed.

Poindexter is flirting with the cashier girls at the lunch place again. They seem to like him a lot. I'd like to see this. I'm always amused when other girls are taken with Poindexter, largely because I know exactly how they feel. Unfortunately it often leads to them bungling my order somehow. They're distracted, I presume, and understandably so, but it's annoying.

Poindexter has a new hat. It's a black knit cap, "like the brothers wear", and he calls it his "homey hat". He mentioned to his mother that he wanted one to keep his ears warm, and next thing you know she's found one and mailed it to him. He wears it every evening, until bedtime. Since he spends a good portion of his channel-surfing time watching the girls' butts wiggle on BET, it seems oddly appropriate.

Oops, IM from Poindexter. He's got my cold. Poor thing. At least I'm well and immune and I can nurse him.

My horrible morning was capped with a perfect evening, too. I had to upload a file from a CD to the UNIX machine before I left. It would take about 20 minutes, so I went to Burger King to get the 99-cent chicken sandwiches Poindexter and I had agreed on for dinner. I came back, download done, packed up, went to the car and ... wouldn't start.

Same thing that happened right before the hockey game. Argh. On a short trip like that, the choke never goes off (doesn't warm up enough) so it floods the engine when the car gets turned off. Or something like that.

Waited half an hour, still wouldn't start, so Poindexter comes and helps me push the car over to a downhill section of the parking lot. He puts it in second gear, coasts down hill, lets out the clutch, and vroom vroom, away we go.

I was irritated, because I know you can do this with a manual transmission. I've done it with the VW just because I can. In this case, I wasn't able to push the car back out of the space and push it over to the hill all by myself so I had to rely on a man. I hate that. On the positive side, I did help with the pushing, right?

Note to self: always park the car facing downhill after going out for a short ride in the winter.

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