Summer of Suck

I am loathe to begin a blog entry this way, because it is such a downer and I am not sure it is really my place.  There is a fine line between saying that which is important and opting to respect someone's privacy and I probably am teetering on it, but though my blog doesn't have the greatest number of hits, or the highest traffic volume, I have come to consider those that come here to be somewhat of a family, whose opinions I have at times sought or just hoped that my prattling didn't annoy you too much.  That being said, this little coterie was diminished by one recently with the passing of Donna.  I will not go into details because that is the fine line I am drawing here, there are some on my friend's list  who knew her far better than I and I am sure are grieving in their own way, there are others who may have only noticed a passing comment she may have made on an entry here.  Whatever the case may be, I just wanted to take a moment to honor the passing of a friend.  I think this sums it up pretty well from my vantage point....
"No one's death comes to pass without making some impression, and those close to the deceased inherit part of the liberated soul and become richer in their humanness." -  Hermann Broch

This really is becoming the "summer of suck" if I do say so myself.  Never thought I would be this thankful to just be working.  Okay, I would be more thankful if I was back doing a radio gig, I have to be honest about that, but anymore it is just a matter of getting out of the house so as not to sit around moping too much.  I have taken to putting in 6 day weeks at work, the boss lets me and there is always something that needs done, one of the perks of my job right now.  Last week it was just putting in the Monday order, this week it was putting away excess inventory from our store closing; whatever the reason I am just glad I have found some things to keep me occupied.  On my one day off last week I went ahead and took in a 5 mile walk under the guise that I would use the opportunity to collect some Coke caps.  After all I do have a blog giveaway coming up if I get to 2000 pts, and the last three weeks I have pulled in 120, 120 and 117pts to add to the number just a little bit.  No plans on a jaunt out this weekend, but still I have the total over 1600 pts now and if I ever get to see Phil again (he broke his leg, more summer of suck funness) I am sure he has another bag of caps waiting for me.  Usually he and I get together once a month or so and have lunch/dinner and just do some catching up, but he has been pretty much copped up indoors with his bum wheel.  Thankfully for him he has air conditioning, because the weather has just added to the overall suckiness of the summer situation. Yesterday I made the mistake after going into work of hopping on weather.com just to see how hot it was.  Mind you, the weather readings are usually taken out at Greater Pittsburgh International Airport, where it is a tad bit more open (the airport is about 20 miles outside the city proper) so the temps are usually off by about 5 degrees or so from the temps in downtown.  Still when I went to check the temp it was 92 with a heat index reading of 97.  For those not into the meteorological terminology, the heat index is sort of summer's version of the wind chill factor, where you take the humidity into account and develop a sense of what the temperature feels like, as opposed to the actual temperature.  Since one thing we are good for is humidity, many of the last few days have had the chance of a severe thunderstorm, though they all seem to be missing me.  We had a couple of brief showers last night, which I went out and played in just because they felt so good compared to the normal buckets of sticky heat we are growing accustomed to this summer.
Of course anytime the weather is like this, leave it to the TV news to try to scare people, especially the weathermen (and women).  Constant updates of a small storm cell here, or a potential shower there, but no long term actual ground soaking rain to speak of.  At one point last week I had gotten home from work and clicked on the TV and during one of the commercial breaks they had pimped the upcoming newscast at 5pm, where they said that they were "tracking storms with our Storm Tracker Radar".  Really?  You're not fucking baking cookies with it?  Good for you, thanks for the update dumbass.
I haven't talked to most of my family since the whole post funeral nonsense took place.  Other than talking to my one aunt (Amy) just to get a vibe on what I should do (truth be told I knew what I was going to do, just checking to see if I was being reasonable enough or not, reason sometimes escapes me when I get too pissed off) and my cousin Melanie, who seems to share most of my feelings about everything, but she at least has more distance from the family, I only leave an hour away, she lives in Dallas, about halfway across the country and right now I think I would trade her places if I could.
Just a note here for those that sometimes pay attention to details.  When this post finally appears on your feed, it will say that it was posted at an earlier time than it actually appears.  That is through no fault of my own, save for the notion that I sometimes save my work and move on to other things.  If I save my work in the media locker here on Multiply, Multiply uses that date as the date the entry was posted, even if it wasn't viewable by the public at that point.  Just wanted to clear up any confusion that my have occurred.
Part of the reason there is a delay is that I am naturally someone who an't seem to bang out a blog entry in one sitting, but part of the blame also lies in the fact that I spent part of my downtime this weekend in a battle with a virus on my computer.  Since I am typing we can all assume that I won.  It was one of those pain in the ass type deals where something pops up claiming to be a virus scanning program but you instantly know it isn't.  Problem was I couldn't get rid of it with Malware, and my first attempt with Ad Aware picked up something, but when I just opted to do the reccommended action (which I sadly assumed would be t remove it) it did "no action taken" instead.  Worse still was that anytime I rebooted my computer I had to be quick on the draw to get a program opened, because if I didn't it would render any .exe program inoperable and instead post a warning about a non existent virus, when the only virus was the program itself.  After firing off a Hijack This and deleting some entries and going back to Ad Aware to see that it didn't remove the offending program I finally got this thing back up and running in not so short order. 
       Of course the delay sucked for you because it kept me from posting this, which I am sure you all have just been waiting for and it sucked for me because it kept me from earning more swagbucks, where I am just 39 away from my next Amazon gift card.   So far I have gotten 27 of them in 8 months, good for $135 over at Amazon.  Right now I still have over $80 in my account, I am thinking of burning off a few CDs with their MP3 collection, just not sure what I want right now. 
      Before I forget, there is an addition to the change meter, another $1.67 and the $170 barrier is now officially eclipsed, with the new total being $171.12.  You know, after only pulling in $39 in the first three years of this project, it has almost started to take off a little bit. 
      I am not sure what the next entry will be about, nor when it will be.  Of course it could always be an Asshat (Andrew Breitbart is looking real good these days) but then again, a little Cuban restaurant has opened around the corner and I am thinking of taking in the cuisine, since I have had very little exposure to Cuban food in my existence (remember my family eats french fries in Mexican restaurants) and it is in the place of the former Wing Pitt, where I used to go to get tasty wings and cajun chicken sandwiches.  But this place actually looks like they spent a few dollars on sprucing up the place, especially the equipment behind the counter (which means more to me than a nice looking dining room) and the menus look enticing.  Then again I have come to learn in the last couple of months, life is more than capable of delivering a shitstorm or three, so far be it from me to promise a blog entry only to have something else happen an change the course of blogging events.  I can say that it probably wll not be an entry to the Neverending Thread though, I am making progress in my most recent book, but not nearly at the pace of previous books.  Anyway I think it is time for me to scoot. 
Sing us out will ya?

The Sundays - Here's Where The Story Ends
Uploaded by UniversalMusicGroup. - Music videos, artist interviews, concerts and more.