A quick entry before I have to buckle down and get some damn work done. I promise not to linger over-long on the Cheese Subject.

Speaking of which, are you people all cheese-haters or something? My guestbook has been *rather* lonely lately, with the exception of some heroes that have stepped up and made their undying love for me known, which is something I am always interested in hearing...

Hrm. Seems I'm in a punchy mood today. You know what I just sort of realized? See, I didn't notice aforementioned punchy mood until I started writing. THAT is the kind of life I live. In the hour or so since I have woken up, I have had little to no opportunity to do or say anything that would indicate my OWN mood to mySELF.

I've never been great at identifying my state of mind before things start coming out of my mouth or hands at enough volume to be a solid statistical sample.

Is it me, or is that weird? Maybe is has something to do with the not thinking.

And for those of you who also read MG's diary, please don't all of you start begging for stuff. I'm a big sucker, I really am. I LOVE buying stuff for people. Haven't bought my own ass so much as socks since I don't know when (which is why I have NO socks and have been reduced to stealing the Boy's to go to Jersey just because they match and the holes aren't as big as in my socks even though they are men's dress socks which not only look funny but are also made out of fake things that I hate on my feet), but there is a certain diarylander with a pile of amusing socks from me. Those wishlist things people have on their pages? I've bought at least 3 people stuff from those lists on whims. I'm really terrible that way.

At least I don't typically go randomly select presents for people I've never met. They have to be requested in some fashion. Of course, this may also have to do with the fact that without a wishlist or similar thing, I have no particular means to find out where to send a package.

It's a disease, it really is. I used to buy myself presents a lot more than I do now. Partly it's because I don't have that much money, but then I never really have. Mostly it's because my gadget-fever has subsided substantially (how's that for alliteration??). Couple years ago I always wanted the best phone, the newest Mac, the latest Palm...etc. Now -- eh. Don't know why. Well, probably yeah I do. The excitement of opening up the new Mac box has worn off to such an extent that I have been known to leave brand-new G4s in my house in their boxes for days before I decided it was worth the effort to open the thing up and deal with all the file-moving etc. I have a G4 desktop in the other room with a gig of ram, something like a 60-gig hard drive, and a very fast processor, a giant 21" flat-screen monitor, and...

...and I sit here with my reasonably crappy Titanium laptop because I like working in the living room better.

I have had every damn Palm and after the initial excitement about the Shiny New Thing where my ambitions to keep all useful information in one place, I invariably wind up writing stuff on tiny scraps of paper which I then, just as invariably, lose approximately 6.47 seconds after writing the thing down, and the Palm sits around collecting four-hundred-dollar dust.

None of the cell phones Sprint has is calling out to me. Plus it just seems like a royal pain in the ass to go to the Sprint store and deal with the big long lines and the largely retarded staff members.

I really, really, really need some new clothes but I just don't feel much like going shopping. I hate shopping. I REALLY hate shopping. As a result of this I am the World's Fastest Shopper. I am the only person in the known universe who made it in and out of Macy's (the real one, on 34th St.) on a SATURDAY one week before Christmas in under seven minutes WITH a purchase. For those of you who haven't been there, on any Saturday within the month before Christmas, there are more goddamn people in Macy's than in the entire nation-state of Yemen.

Yemen's probably not a nation-state, come to think of it, but it sounds better.

I was born with some kind of innate shopping talent. I can go into a store, scope everything out, and within moments be walking out the door with the three out of 4,527 items in the store that a. I (or gift recipient) will like, and b., fit same. The companion talent to that one is that while I am utterly incapable of doing basic math in my head, I immediately know within a 5 - 10% plus or minus range *exactly* how much I will be spending. Same with groceries. I'm like the idiot savant of shopping, except I hate it. All of these talents are very useful, though, for someone who hates shopping as much as I do.

Well, mostly I hate people. I hate lines, I hate salespeople, I hate, REALLY hate, trying things on (which I actually will not do unless the item I am purchasing costs more than $100). I also don't think I have ever returned anything in my entire life. I've given stuff away or let it rot in closets, but I just don't care enough to go through the trouble of returning an item.

I'm probably going to have to deal with shopping soon, though, or I'm going to be reduced to wearing the overalls I am currently wearing all the time. This is a problem beyond that of just looking like a slob. They are about 12 times too large for me, with the result that if I am not wearing anything over them, looking at me from the side you can see pretty much my entire ass. I don't care much about this in general, but I would feel sort of odd walking around Large Unnamed Client with my ass clearly visible.

Boy and I did have a date last night. We have to relearn how to have conversations about things other than work, I think. We talked for an awfully long time about whether or not Boy should order some empanadas. Seriously, we are like 87-year-old married people. Jeez.

And yesterday he cleaned the house so it's nice and clean. I had a very, very bad headache most of the day so I didn't do diddly. Not like I was going to anyway but at least I had an excuse. Cheese did not get made because I was supposed to go to my parents' this morning but didn't because of scheduling conflicts with the Baby Sister. With luck she'll come out with me tonight. This is related to cheese because I was going to bring the new cheese with me, but now instead I'm gonna make it tonight for the office tomorrow.

Again pretty boring, sorry. But at least I kept my cheese-related narrative to a bare minimum. Nothing much else to relate.

ennui-inducingly,
- onehanded