No Gnus Is Good Gnus

This post dedicated to Jrbour Jump. (Why is his profile missing from Wikipedia's Great Space Coaster page? Or did I imagine him being on that show when I was a kid?)

I'm putting out a general post on my life even though there's no actual news to report. But as busy as I am at work and school, I know I could easily go without making a blog post until the semester ends in December, and the 3 people out there who read my blog may get worried if I wait that long.

• At home, the animals living above me continue to be on a rampage. A few Saturdays ago I turned on my bathroom light, and I heard a sizzling noise for about 5 seconds followed by a burning smell. It took a while for me to figure out that some water had made its way into the globe that covers my light bulb and the sizzling was the electricity burning off the water from the bulb. If that globe had not been there, the water would have been all over my floor. Apparently they haven't been trained to bathe in the actual bathtub, but rather anywhere in the bathroom will do. Later that night a boy who looked to be about 15 banged on my window and asked me to buzz him in because he had accidentally locked himself out upstairs. Thinking that this wasn't unusual considering who my neighbors are, I buzzed him in. A second later, feeling uneasy about my decision, I called my aunt, who owns this building, to basically ask her if I should have done this. Her son said that she and her husband just left. The reason they just left is because my other first-floor neighbor, a fat white guy who may be even nerdier and more introverted than me (complete with cat), had called my aunt complaining about some menacing-looking young black guy banging on his window. Oh, and he called the cops. My aunt explained to me that no, I shouldn't have buzzed him in because technically no one needs to be in that apartment that late except the two people on the lease, an old woman and her old man. Their kids are the problems, and they're not supposed to be there. But call it a hunch, I don't think they will leave anytime soon. My aunt told me at the beginning of the summer that they were about to move. They're still there. And I bet everyone will know when they actually leave because of the property damage they will cause to the house as a parting gift. Speaking of the house, I will get a little help in keeping cold out as well as (hopefully) hundreds of flies on a random evening invading my kitchen. My place as well as every other apartment in the house will be getting brand new windows. This was supposed to happen last Saturday, but instead it will happen this Saturday. But I won't be home to oversee it because...

• At work, The Powers That Be decided to move my off days from Friday and Saturday back to Tuesday and Wednesday. The explanation I was given was that they need more people working from Thursday through Monday because that's when most of the mail we process arrives, and since I have hardly any seniority, I had to go. I'm not happy about this at all because Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays just feel like off days more than the other days of the week, and it seemed to have a negative effect on my attitude to have to come to work on weekends. The streets are desolate, the other people I commute with seem to have dead souls like me, and the people I work with aren't happy either. No one, not even a homebound grump like me, wants to work weekends. I had already conceded missing most of the football season working Sundays. But now by working Saturdays, I can't watch college football either, nor can I watch the handful of Saturday night NFL games at the end of the season. Plus, my girlfriend was using her free weekend minutes to talk to me on Saturday mornings, when we're both alert and awake, as an alternative to talking when I get home from work at 11:15 every night. But now we will have to cut off our Saturday conversations because I have to get up around noon and get ready to go to work. Sigh. Life ain't fair. The only positives I can take is the fact that now Tuesday and Wednesday after class, instead of hustling to work, I can come home, chill, study (if I feel like it) and talk to my girlfriend that evening at a much earlier time than usual. The folks at work are also on my ass about my productivity numbers, but I feel that since I'm error free and don't waste time yapping with other co-workers, they should take it easy on me. It's not like I'm trying to be slow, but I am trying to be meticulous. I will not screw up trying to go faster thanks to their pressure. If they hate how slow I work, they need to stop giving me bonus money for being error-free. Also at work, they had to send several people down to the Dallas office a couple of weeks ago because for some reason they were backed up. It was a 2-week stint, all expenses paid, hotel, 3 square meals, and I believe a $70 per diem. I would have loved to go just for the adventure aspect. Alas, I am in the middle of classes. And speaking of classes...

• At school, I'm performing better than I hoped I would. The biology class is where I thought I would really get creamed, but the 2 major tests we've had, I've pulled a B out of both of them. If the teacher hadn't posted an online study guide for those tests, I would have gotten Cs at best. The lecture with this teacher is just dreadfully boring, and the teacher is kinda hot, so it must really be bad for me to be nodding off every single class. She's really thin and likes to wear shirts that are short-sleeved to show off her guns and are too small for her so that they raise up a little at the slightest movement, showing off a peek at her abs. And she just had a kid, so she's really anxious to show off her abs. Even when it's been chilly, she just happens to have a shirt on a size too small. And I'm still one step away from snoring during this class. The computer class is a breeze for now because we haven't gotten to the real hard stuff yet, like Excel and lite Web design. That teacher doesn't care about anything, man. He starts his lesson on time, he ends it on time, and if you missed something, tough shit. But that's cool for me, because I can go in there and study biology and surf the net and do whatever I want. The speech class has been fun, not because I like standing in front of a room full of people I don't know and speaking, but because the teacher in that class is a world-class goofball and she keeps things light. It's scary sometimes how much she reminds me of "Sarah" because she's also from Kentucky (Sarah spent a lot of time in Kentucky as a child) and has that same accent and off-the-wall sense of humor. On top of that, she drifted off one day talking about a good-looking black guy she saw on a TV program, so just like Sarah, I bet nothing gets her off like a big black cock up her ass. But since I'm pulling an A in that class, I won't have to resort to that to get a good grade. Oh yeah, and I'm taken. Speaking of my girlfriend...

• She has wondered why I haven't made any posts about us lately, and I was proud to tell her that it was because since she's not psychotic and I'm not nearly was whacko as I was, there's just nothing to make a post about. It's not like we have a big issue to resolve and I need to post and figure out which way to go. (I mean, besides the possibility that we'll decide to get married next year. But that's a little issue, not a big deal at all.) Everything's going well with us, as well as a long-distance relationship can go where we sometimes don't find time to talk to each other until midnight or 1 in the morning. The next big deal on our horizon is Thanksgiving, when I travel down south and meet...her family!!! (Cue screams of horror.) And speaking of horror...

• My football picks against the spread so far this year: 38-43. That's under .500, and that's pathetic. If I were still gambling, I'd be crying in my cream soda. And speaking of sports, I don't know whether to be impressed by the Colorado Rockies making the World Series by winning 21 of their last 22 games (or something like that) or sickened that they happened to get hot at the right time and win a very weak and winnable National League. One thing I do have to chuckle at: that's somewhere around 50 years now that the Cubs haven't won a National League pennant, and now the Rockies join the Padres, Diamondbacks, and Marlins as expansion teams since then that have won a NL pennant, and I might even be missing a team or 2. And next year will be 100 years without a World title for the fuzzy Cubbies. Lovable losers? Well, that's half right.