Who’s Gonna Work for the Working Man?

What an exciting last few weeks. I am falling into a routine that means a lot fewer depressing couch and beer marathon weekends.

I sold my old POS Chrysler Sebring convertible (aka Big Red). After owning both an American car, and a Japanese car its pretty clear to me why we lost that race. Its also clear to me why the Chrysler company is just treading water. They are going to have to start subletting the Chrysler building at this rate. In my experiences, there is just very little quality in their products. Next we are selling the wifes truck, and getting a nice compact SUV. We have already been sneaking peaks at the Mazda CX9, and the Toyota RAV4 and 4Runner, and surprisingly the Scion. What a beautiful bastard that car is.

On a related note, we are ditching State Farm. I think their new slogan should be “Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there…to collect your premiums”. Then its back into the darkness. Insurance is getting out out of control. My accident has been resolved, and the strongest statement I can make is to drop them.

Kristin has gotten me hooked on the Harry Potter series – which has become my reading of choice on the Red Line. Like many other things including Legos and video games, I don’t feel like I should be enjoying these books as much as I do as an adult. I am almost finished with the “Goblet of Fire“, and it definitely has taken a darker turn. Kristin says that the book series was meant to mature with the kids that were reading them. True or not, its an entertaining read for anyone sitting on the fence about it. No one has even beaten me up, or given me an atomic wedgie for reading it on the train!

When I am not reading, I am putting some time in on the PS3. I just beat Drakes Uncharted (the first one), and it was excellent. I enjoyed it as much as Uncharted 2. I popped in God of War 2 next, and I was immediately sucked in by the epicness of it all. Once I finish this, then I can see what the world is talking about with God of War 3. Final Fantasy XI?? is on its way. Some Uncharted 2 co-op with Mr. Templeman to be announced, and some Alien Breed with my brother should satisfy my gaming needs. One of my co-workers has given me a tough decision of whether to buy a PSP for $50. There are some really cool games on it, and it would be a nice train companion. The question is do I really need to play more games?

Fall semester resumes with my enrollment in four more classes at Clayton State. The graduation countdown should begin next semester. I was on track to graduate in the Fall until the move to Boston happened. That’s life I guess. You can either give up, or you can get back up. Economics with LaBreque should be awesome. Our textbook is “Freakonomics“. He really does have a lot to contribute to teaching. Why can’t he teach all our courses? It sure would have made Biology more fun.

Speaking of Clayton State, I will be joining some folks from the ol’ HUB in Las Vegas to celebrate with them what is sure to be an awesome bachelor party. You only live once, but my budget for the trip is $1000. Let’s see how much fun I can have with that. Also from Clayton State’s world-renowned help desk, Brian Hursey is coming up to Boston for some job training. He will be one of the few to see our new house in Braintree. Knowing his photography skills, perhaps he can share with folks some of the beautiful sites from our new home. Look forward to seeing you Brian!

Work continues to improve. I have been allocated to another project on a different contract. This means a big change in the work. I am working with different people, and I get a wider range of things to contribute to. I get to put my CSS hat back on for a while, and do some design work. Its a fun challenge to take a composition and turn it into a mirror image in HTML/CSS – its an art to do it in Internet Explorer (die, die die!). This new project is also a lot less mature than the project I was working on. It is nice to see the projects evolve from the lessons learned on the older codebases. I strong-armed some of my co-workers to take a nice lunch this Friday instead of inhaling our food over our nasty keyboards in silence. We went to Pizza Dough’s in Harvard Square. Its always fun to go up there and hipster-watch.

Kristin and I went to the Gillette stadium last night and watch Bon Jovi through the bars of the venue gates. The view wasn’t bad considering we didn’t pay anything for it. I revisited my arch nemesis “Red Robin” and got the burger burned to hell this time. It was decent, but not as good as I remember. Its hard to ignore the fries, and skip the beers because of the diet. I have lost a few pounds, but nothing major yet. I seem to be hovering at 186, despite religiously sticking to my 1600 calories / day diet plan. I suppose I need to just work out harder and keep that cardio up to burn the love handles I am holding onto. I have also “tweaked” my left shoulder and am unable to look over my left shoulder without some pain. I guess I am getting old.