Hey guys, just an FYI I'm going to give Blogger a shot for a bit - so I'm over here now:

http://balirw.blogspot.com/

I am also going to be changing my email address, so if you don't get the new one, let me know.

Well, got it installed, and so far nothing seems any different whatsoever.  Which is good, in a way.  I should probably find some notes on it to see what it did.

On the home front, now that Gina is working full time (well, almost, a ton more than her previous job) things are starting to settle down a little.  Some of the stress is gone.  Of course, we can't have that, so there have been rumors of layoffs at work. Fun.  Regardless, the daily phone calls are dropping off as things get paid. Thank God.

Speaking of spending money on silly things, I bought metal reinforcing pedals for my and Chuck's drum sets - I had broken his in a fit of mad drumming on Rock Band, and the pedal plate worked great.  Fixed it right up.  I swear, this is the only video game that I ever have broken a sweat playing. Heheh

Rachel seems to be doing better in school, so I am happy about that.  Next Saturday is the band trip to 6 flags, so I have to remember to get to be on time on Friday night - we have to be at the school at 6:45a; meaning I have to be up by 6.  Ugh. I hate that, but it will be an awesome day.

That's all I've got for now. :)

We had a blast at the air show, took Rachel to see a U2, we went inside a super loader all kinds of neat planes.  The show had the coast guard airdropping supplies, medivac teams rappelling from choppers, a bunch of insane guys in stunt planes stalling out constantly and of course, the Blue Angles.  Was fun.  Attaching pictures. :)  Chuck took a bunch of HD video.

Rachel got a new hat, and I got a new sunburn. Weee!

Quote of the day:
There's no present. There's only the immediate future and the recent past. - George Carlin

So far, so good - no caffeine at all.  Thank god for decaf.  I've been feeling really good lately, tired when it's bedtime and actually sleeping well.  It's also nice to be able to have coffee before bed and know that it's not going to keep me awake.

Got some decaf Lipton, and wow it's pretty good when brewed with Splenda.  Trying to use straight water to quench thirst, and just have tea or soda (with 0 calories, 0 caffeine, 0 sugar) with meals or just for taste.

Starting today on cutting back on smoking again now that I'm over the caffeine headaches.  No more smoking in my office; I'm restricting myself to garage or front patio only.

I feel like I've lost a couple of pounds but I don't have anything to back it up. I need a scale. heheh

I hope the whole extra tax return thing happens.  I think we might use it for more stuff around the house.  Bought lighting fixtures for the garage to replace the ones that were older than I am, and put in some track lighting in the main room - what a difference good lighting makes.  Got some chairs for the front patio finally, now we just need a small table, something to put your feet on or drinks or whatever.

Rachel seems to be doing better in school with having computer games being not allowed during the week.  Helping her with algebra has been tough on the old brain.

Quote of the day:
If the automobile had followed the same development cycle as the computer, a Rolls-Royce would today cost $100, get a million miles per gallon, and explode once a year, killing everyone inside. - Robert X. Cringely

I think I'm finally past the withdrawals.  Yesterday, I felt the absolute best I've felt in a long time.  High spirits, and tons of energy.  I had a shake for breakfast, a couple egg sandwiches (with low carb bread),  a meal bar and we went to fresh choice where I had a small salad with a caffeine free lean green tea which just about knocked me over it was so strong lol.  I got the extra little dish of chicken for the salad.. chicken never tasted so goooood.  I even have started drinking water during the day when I get thirsty instead of always having a soda! *gasp!*

We also went to Office Max and got a whiteboard which I promptly mounted properly on the wall using the hardware provided and went over Rachel's algebra homework with her.  Also went to Home Depot where I got hardware to mount the A/C and seal it up again.  This time, there is wood in the window that won't soak through instead of drywall.  Duh.

Then me and Gina watched a movie last night before bed.  I slept like a freakin' rock.

So.. things are starting to look up.  The incessantly nagging headache is gone, and I feel great. :D

Quote of the day:
As you journey through life take a minute every now and then to give a thought for the other fellow. He could be plotting something. - Hagar the Horrible

Well, it's been a week with no caffeine and very little carbs.  I must say I feel healthier.   Rode the river bike trail with Rachel and Chuck last night, and whoo boy am I sore.  My lower back was having pangs to begin with - now it's all my extremities too. heheh

I do feel like I've turned a corner, and I'm less irritable.  Thank God.  I guess I just needed a good workout.  We might wait a day before going back out.  I hope so, because I'm having pain meds at every available opportunity. LOL This guy conveys how I feel. :P

I like my new avatar.  It makes me laugh when I see it. :)

Happy Birthday, Mom! xoxoxo

Quote of the day:
Life is a long lesson in humility. - James M. Barrie

Well, I thought I was past the worst of it - twice now I've left Chuck's house in a huff.  The irritation builds up until I snap at whoever happens to be the target at the moment.

This sucks, I hope I get past this soon.  Made an ass of myself real good. :/

Trying something to try and lose weight and improve my health.
- Cut out all caffeine
- Almost cut all sugar (got Splenda for coffee, 'diet caffeine free' soda, etc)
- Reducing carb intake by 95%
- Start doing *something* for exercise

So, I had an Atkins shake for breakfast, a bar for lunch, eggs with cheese for a snack, a salad for dinner.

I have a raging headache from the caffeine withdraw, but I know it will subside by tomorrow hopefully.  I've cut out caffeine before, but never in conjunction with sugar and carbs.

Also got the bike fixed up, and will be hitting the river trail again as soon as it stops raining. :(

I'm not going for looking like Mr. Universe or anything like that, I just want to get down to a moderate weight, lose the gut, get back in shape.  Not going to specify a number because I am looking at this as a lifestyle change, not a temporary fix that I can abandon once I hit a magic number.

However, in a month or so if I am feeling more comfortable in my skin I will start re-introducing a SMALL amount of carbs, allow myself to have some bread.

I've become dependant to stimulants to simply function and I've needed to stop for a good 10 years.

So this is day one.  So far, no cheating. :)

Notice I didn't say anything about smoking... that will be tackled later.

Quote of the day:
The trouble with weather forecasting is that it's right too often for us to ignore it and wrong too often for us to rely on it. - Patrick Young

Well, as you can tell by my new avatar, I've gotten hooked on WoW.  My desire to have a character to work on is huge.  But - I am keeping it in perspective as a hobby and haven't joined a guild and will not be raiding.  Mainly, whatever I can accomplish solo or with Gina or a pickup group.  That's it.  It's nice to have it available to play and put down at a moment's notice. :)

What is really interesting to me is how long I avoided WoW because of the thought that since so many people are playing it, and since I've played so many MMOs, I must be an expert and WoW must cater to the lowest common denominator, and therefore I won't like it.  But I find it very enjoyable on a PvE server.  I can join the arena and PvP whenever I want, and I can quest and work on my character whenever I want.  True, the graphics aren't EQ2 - but it doesn't lag.  And the playability is through the roof, unlike EQ2 now.  Or SWG *gak*.

Even though I'm playing WoW, I still make time to play Guitar Hero with my daughter at least once a day.  We both enjoy it, and I think it's great bonding time with her. :)

Anyhow enough about my current addictions.  Got my taxes back so that took a little pressure off.  There is a Little Caesar's opening up right up the block and Gina is going to try to get an evening job.  I am so proud of her.  We can't make it without her working.

Mom gave us her old couch.. oh man it fits right in.  It makes our living room complete.  I love it.  Thanks, Mom!  xoxo

You ever get stressed - even though you don't think you should?  Everything is getting tight financially over here, but there is a budget in place and a plan being worked on - so everything will work out... but I still can't attain that calm, relaxed feeling.  I'm always irritated and hypersensitive.

Then to pile on some guilt.. look how good we have it here.  We aren't being shot at daily, we certainly aren't starving.  What superficial things get me all stressed out.

However, it's still there.  *sigh*  I guess it boils down to this:  I hate waiting.  I really hate it.  And I have to wait for a paycheck to come in to solve some issues, then wait for another paycheck to solve more.  And on and on it goes until I can get caught up.

Sorry for the pointless post, but hey - it's my blog. :P

Quote of the day:
Sometimes the mind, for reasons we don't necessarily understand, just decides to go to the store for a quart of milk. - Diane Frolov and Andrew Schneider

Firefox > Internet Explorer for several reasons.  

#1 - Ad Blocking - OMG How have I used the web without this?  It automatically blocks 99% of any banner ads and images from even displaying.  I love it.   Fark recently had the most annoying and disgusting banner ads I've ever seen in my life (not that bad, but being forced to look at them sucked) with some dude with plumber's crack, some 110 year old's cleavage, and some 4 year old two knuckles deep trying to poke their little brain.  I couldn't stand it.  Now - poof - they are all gone.

#2 - Flash plugin doesn't crash the browser 50%  of the time - it doesn't crash at all.  Gotta love portability. Good job, Adobe.  Anyhow, I can actually visit my favorite sites again, NBC, Youtube, Adultswim.. hey what do you know, they don't crash in Firefox.

#3 - Firefox handles downloading better - I got several addins for downloading and oh my lawd it's so much nicer. No more pop up annoying Do you want to save?  Well DUH.. no, I wanted you to ask me if I meant to click before asking me where to save it. Dumbass. Confirmation boxes before an operation that you can cancel piss me off.

#4 - Does everything IE does better - Bookmark syncing, tabs, etc.  Themes.  Remember those? Wow I can actually change how the browser looks to suit my tastes. Heh.

#5 - More and more plugins being made for Firefox.  MS has IE locked down pretty hard it seems like, people are able to make their own plugins for Firefox much easier.

Don't get me wrong, IE is a fine browser.  Better than Opera or Netscape IMHO.  And I use IE daily, not only at home but at work.  Microsoft just needs to fix IE and add these capabilities.  Firefox is what I run at home now.  And I still love Microsoft's Windows Live Writer for writing this blog that no one reads, as well as the Gallery and Hotmail... I like the idea behind live.com and XboxLive.com, hope they merge them even more in the future, can't wait to unlock achievements on PC games and expand my Gamerscore. :P

But Firefox is just so much better right now. :)

Quote of the day:
The best minds are not in government. If any were, business would hire them away. - Ronald Reagan

You would think that with all the vacation time I'd used I would have set some time aside to blog.  Nope.  I'm weird that way.  I also missed great opportunities to use the camera, but ah well.  I guess I went on vacation and my brain shut off.

I've been playing Anarchy Online with Rachel, we are having fun. :)  Not pounding out levels or anything just farting around and having a good time.  So it's become a fun activity we can participate in together, and I like it very much.

Anyhow - that's about it since my last entry.  Spent time with family, relaxed, let my brain cool off.  Spent time at Chuck's and played a lot of CoD4 and Supreme Commander.  Oh yeah and of course nursed a really winner hangover yesterday. :D

You know, the easiest way to force yourself to break an addiction is to have absolutely no way to support it. Man, this week has been rough, next week will be rougher, but then I am sure it will even out again.

I've all but quit playing MMOs.. just don't have the time or money to support that habit.

I've all but quit smoking as well - again, just no money to support it.  Smells nice in my office again, Gina and Rachel can still tell, but at least it's not as overwhelming as it used to be.

So - I've set my profile back to me instead of my MMO character.  I sense a happier time coming in my life.

MMOs are great games.  They are fun, if very time consuming, and you get a sense of accomplishment when your guild tackles something challenging.  But, I just can't do it anymore.  Hopefully soon I will be working nights to catch up on bills, and that won't leave time to play EQ2 or really anything else.  And I always seem to have a better life when I'm not investing half of it into a game.

Anyhow, that's today's update. More in a few days when some of the withdrawals pull back I guess. :)

Rest in Peace, Tanandra.  For now.

Quote of the day:
Whenever I dwell for any length of time on my own shortcomings, they gradually begin to seem mild, harmless, rather engaging little things, not at all like the staring defects in other people's characters. - Margaret Halsey

Heyas, been busy around the house and whatnot, didn't get a chance to plug a warm holiday greeting, so here you go.  Consider yourself warmly holidaily greeted.

Of course, forgot to take pictures of the festive day.  Oh well, spent most of it asleep anyhow since I've been exhausted lately.  Trying to quit smoking.  Gina found some awesome advice on how to quit on the net, and basically it is to take half a teaspoon of cream of tartar in a glass of OJ before bed.  I will try it tonight.  Another suggestion was to replace your cigarettes with a brand/flavor you don't like. So I did that too. Ugh, it's working.   I have about half a cigarette every couple of hours or so as opposed to what I was doing before, more than a pack a day (but less than two).  Hopefully this new pack of nasties will last me a week.  I think it will.  I went almost all day yesterday without a smoke at all, but again, I spent most of it asleep.

I'm starting to get the withdrawals a little; getting frisky a little bit but it's manageable.  What has really helped has been not smoking in the house.  In the garage only.  Not in the front yard, but standing (uncomfortable) and not enjoying it.   We went through my office and cleaned like mad.  Gina vacuumed for what seemed like an hour, and then shampooed the carpet for another hour.  Not really, but it seemed like it.   A lot of stains on the carpet were from cigarette smoke.  I feel so stupid for bringing this into the house.  Anyhow, at least I am finally trying to put them down for good.

Even if I don't quit 100%, the reduced amount of smoking will help the pocketbook if not my health. Although, I already am able to smell better, and smell better too.  Oh my God my office was nasty.  I am also not coughing nearly as much and haven't had the dry-mouth that I usually get in the mornings. 

One day at a time, eventually I will get to the point that I don't need to have cigarettes ever.

Fun for the whole family!! Rosemont High School was evacuated, but not Einstein Middle School it would seem.  Rachel came home before getting to school because a friend told her about the leak. I didn't hear anything about the leak, and the school didn't call. So I sent her back to school to see if they would send her back home.  She's not come back a couple hours later so I'm guessing all is well.

News on the leak from KCRA here: http://www.kcra.com/news/14592614/detail.html

I've been having fun in the EQ2 expansion that came out yesterday.  It seems a lot tougher to level by grinding.  We spent a couple hours in Karnor's Castle and I barley got 10% - but I got 50% from doing easy quests in the area in a much shorter timeframe.  Oh well, it's called EverQuest for a reason. :)

So far so good on the plumbing job I did over the weekend. Got the flow cranked back up and now it seems the bathroom sink has developed a leak - the water pressure wasn't this high before. hahahah  Oh well, I care less about the bathroom sink than the front of the house flooding.  It's just a tiny little drip once every 10 seconds or so.  I'll get it fixed when I have cash to do so.

So a couple of weeks ago I noticed this little leak coming from the spigot next to the front door.  This also happens to be the pipe that feeds the house.  Important to fix soon, but not serious to the point that I was worried - I could just shut off water to the house from a valve below that spigot, cut out the offending PVC part and glue in a new one.  No big deal.

Well, I goofed up and turned it into a big deal when I discovered that the pipe feeding the valve was weak - now I couldn't turn off the water gushing from below the valve.  Yay!  So, we had the water folks come out, shut it off, and then it was off to Ace Hardware to grab all the parts I needed.  Three times.  I put everything together and realized a little too late that one of the pipes I had put in was a hair too small. *sigh*

Chuck came over and lent a foot to hold everything together while I got it all buttoned up - we both took whacks at it, took a few tries to get it just right.

And that was my fun filled Saturday.  The water pressure is low now - hoping that when we have them come out again to investigate  they can turn it up.

And I found a great quote for you, Alicia!

Quote of the day:
No matter how rich you become, how famous or powerful, when you die the size of your funeral will still pretty much depend on the weather. - Michael Pritchard

Ugh.  I love the weekend, hate trying to get back into the swing of working after being off a few days.  I guess I take decent notes as to where I was and what I need to do as a priority, I just am not a morning person. At all.

Went to Celia's again this weekend with Mom and Grandma, was fun. :)  Got some pics uploaded of it.

Gina might will be in a new line of work shortly - working for Floyd and company on optics.  I hope it works out for her.  Babies'R'Us has been screwing her on hours.  They tell her when they were interviewing that they can guarantee 20 hours a week.  Then give her 30 which was awesome, and then subsequently give her three weeks with only 8 hours.  Unbelievable.  The things I forget since I've been salaried for so long.

No idea who the gaucho stormtrooper is, just thought it was funny. :P

Quote of the day:
Money frees you from doing things you dislike. Since I dislike doing nearly everything, money is handy. - Groucho Marx

Thank GOD I never thought the weekend would get here, and at the same time I've been so busy every day it also seems that the week has flown by... little bit of a conundrum if you will.. a paradox of perceived time.. uhm.. elapsation? Elapsing? Whatever.

Ten days to the new EQ2 expansion! Wewt! Boy oh boy I can't wait until I get to grind up ten more levels and more AAs and all my master spells becoming worthless and.. feh. Shoot me now.

The last couple of weeks of not playing EQ very often has been kinda nice.. but I do miss it when we don't play.  I love raiding, but I detest pickup raids and unorganized raids.  I like it when we knock it out of the park, but I also like it when we try new stuff.  I just hate failing on raids that we should be able to grind into the dirt.  It makes me feel like we took a step backward.  Ah well, such is life.  We will have new raids to go forth and conquer. :)

Quote of the day:
The one serious conviction that a man should have is that nothing is to be taken too seriously. - Nicholas Butler

It's no fun when I can't toss in a stupid or related image. (Edit: I can now! Yay!)

Oh well, had a blast over the weekend at the Union Hotel.  Met a lot of great folks from the guild, and it's nice to now be able to put a face to those voices.  Plus, I think we all have some form of blackmail on each other now.. muwhahahah

Bills and finances been getting me down lately - as well as the lack of raiding due to the expansion coming out shortly.  Can't wait.  Thanks for the help Mom! Love ya! xoxoxo

Ah well, lame post.  Like I said in my first post, for the time being this is for me to get thoughts out in writing. :)

Edit: I think I spoke too soon - they must count the physical month, not 30 days from when I started! Yay!  Uploading more pics now.

Quote of the day:
A man's silence is wonderful to listen to. - Thomas Hardy

The last tie I had to the domain believe it or not had to do with the URL of my blog.  UGH.  So now I'm in cleanup mode, re-posting the few entries I had and re-inviting everyone on my lists.  My apologies for the spam.

The new URL is http://tanandrasdungeon.spaces.live.com if you care, which you probably do not.  Forwarded SGC1.com to that URL until the domain expires.

I also had to create a NEW gamertag for XboxLive since they specifically do not allow the Windows Live ID to be changed - great, there goes all my saves, and all the crap I had downloaded. *sigh*  Oh well, I will play what I play.  I'm not too terribly worried about it.  It gives me something to look forward to as a long term goal, getting back to where I was.  How sad is that, I have a long term goal based on video games.  LOL  Actually, it's not new if you look at all the time I spend playing MMOs.  I'm a boring person.  Well, that's not true I guess.  I have fun.  Which really brings me to the philosophical thought for the month. (Too many, and your brain will burn out.)

The old adage holds true: 
I'm not what I think I am.
I'm not what you think I am.
I am.. what I think you think I am.

Always trying to meet the non-communicated societal expectation of what a 'normal' person would do with their life.  Well, I guess it is communicated through the media, but I'm highly suggestable.  Screw that, I need my epic weapons, class armor, and to grind out level 80.

On a different note - Windows Live Writer (which I use to publish my blog) amuses me continually with what has been chosen for the spell checking database - XboxLive and gamertag which are in common use on the inter net now-a-days were not found.  However, in a previous post I had the temerity to type out hotmail not Hotmail. *eyeroll*

Quote of the day:
Only the shallow know themselves. - Oscar Wilde