Baby Finances

The tomato plants are getting absolutely enormous. They are probably close to 3' right now. My main concern is that they have yet to have any flowers. If there aren't any flowers then I get no tomatoes. I want me some tomatoes. I don't know how to get them to flower. It's probably still to early and I'm worrying about nothing. All those anti-feminists should take a look at t his article . I have to agree with most of the article - but I think that there is a largely un-investigated area as to the social and economic reasons for low birth rates. Largely untouched was the fact that the higher your education the less children you are likely to have. So I think it is a little short sighted only siting familial structure and government sanctioned policies surrounding child bearing. It would be an interesting look to contrast this investigation with another one noting the numbers of people in the 30's and 50's who had a college education and how many chil...

Not the girl - the PR guy . Freaking awesome way to get some good PR, not free PR, but just downright good PR. There is no way people would think worse of the brand.

Thursdays 'run' went okay. I jogged parts - I walked parts. I should take up running again and get back into shape. Though walking to work I have lost a couple of pounds already. This has been a bit of a crazy week at work. I found out that the CEO is going to convert the office of the CTO to my office - and apparently is going to move the CTO somewhere else. It's unbelieveable the wasted space in the building and just piss poor planning. But I've also learned that I'm litterally working with a bunch of kids. Most of them this is their first real job out of college. They have no idea what they are doing or how things are done in the industry. Just absolutely clueless. I did get approval for my budget request. Part of the problem is that We still haven't really narrowed down our market focus and who we want to work with. Which in my mind is a major problem. I also think it's a huge problem that we are waiting for people to come to us rather than go...

A friend recently suggested I watch that Morgan Freeman movie... or was that Samuel L Jackson? - Bucketlist. Essentially one guy is going to die and he tries to accomplish his top 100 list or whatever before he dies. Naturally, I figured that I should have one too. So that I can start accomplishing before I'm old and decrepit and in a hospital with terminal cancer or whatever shit Samuel L had. When I started looking online for ideas of stuff to put on mine - I was a little amazed that a lot of people's lists I had already accomplished, or it was really really travel related - like I want to see Macchu Pichui, the pyramids, the eifel tower, the great wall of china, the statue of liberty, and on and on. Dear god people, if you want to travel go do it. Stop fucking around. It's really not that hard to travel - just go buy a plane ticket, then when your flight is scheduled - SHOW UP! So what would be on my list other than pissing off everyone else that I can think of in ...

I know in my mind - that failure can be a good thing. Other people tell us that failure can lead to good thing eventually (think JK Rowlings harvard grad speech.) However, I am still afraid of not measuring up to my own expectations. Generally my expectations of myself are much higher than others expectations of me. This does not lead to goodness as I often disappoint myself. At work today, I got roped into running a 3.5 mile road race... on Thursday. This should be interesting. No one else has really trained though - so I think we will all be equally embarrassing. I don't know what I want out of life. Maybe I should stop worrying and just start living. Everything seems to go better with life when I just don't think about stuff and just do. I guess it's the whole 'go with the gut' thing, it seems to work for me.

Apparently I've got nothing wrong with me. At least nothing that they tested for came back positive. No mono - no nothing. I do feel a bit better - some of the symptoms are lingering - but not like what I would expect if I had mono. Weird virus I guess. It was like the flu - but without any respiratory crap going on. Work has been crazy busy. It's good. I've just got a lot to get done in a short period of time. I really need to move it move it. Being sick has made me catch up with some movie watching. Or rather, just a good excuse to watch some of my favorite movies. I've realized that much of the comedy that I really enjoy is rather awkward uncomfortable humor. Think 'The Office.' Even the movies that I like tend to be the same way. I mean who doesn't love stuff like Superbad, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, or Monty Python.

Can we just talk about the shit that I learn at work? How about let's have everyone start purchasing LED light bulbs. That's right - light bulbs for your house that are made from LED's instead of incadescent bulbs. The upfront cost is something that you will almost want to choke on ($60/bulb). In terms of energy savings - it can save you around $350-400 during its lifetime. The real savings is that you don't have to replace it. Like ever. If you ran an LED bulb for 12 hours a day - it would last about 11.5 years. If you are more realistic with your indoor lighting use - if you ran the bulb say 8 hours a day - that's right - 17 years before you'd have to replace it. LED LIGHT BULBS!

I went to the doctor today. The vampires took my blood there. They suspect mono or some other strange virus (translation: it's mono or I have no fucking clue what you've got.) So no contact sports :-( or heavy lifting :-) I was told I can't even rollerblade. WTF? Apparently you can make your spleen burst open. Whatever. Who needs a spleen anyways? Not like I feel like doing much other than lying down - but I'm really fucking bored lying down. I guess I could go sit outside and watch the tomatoes grow... BORING! I'm trying to figure out where I was 4-8 weeks ago and who I potentially caught this shit from. Non of my friends have it. It was like Edmonton CA, marathon, Dayton, Florida, NJ? I made out with no one (not that I can remember) during that time. WTF people? Who gave this shit to me, fess up? So that you can come over here and entertain me while I lie in bed, tired of watching movies and reading books. Anyone want to pick me up a national geog...

I've been crazily sick since about last Thursday. By crazily sick I don't mean that I've been so horribly sick that I can't move - but rather - a very odd illness that I can't seem to figure out what the fuck I have. So I'm leaving it up to you readers to fucking figure it out for me. So here's what's been going on. I think this all started about 2 weeks ago with a sore throat and slightly swollen glands. It came on slowly and I just thought it was caused by allergies. Last weekend I had glands so swollen that my ears hurt and I was getting dizzy (think pressure on the inner/middle ear causing the dizziness.) By Monday and lots of rest over the weekend it seemed to get a little better. I still had a slightly sore throat all week - still with the swollen glands. By Thursday night it started getting bad. I was freaking exhausted by the end of the day (it was a really long day at work.) My throat really hurt and my glands were swollen. I felt a l...

I had to go to home-depot to pick up some stuff for work. I totally picked up some tomato and pepper plants along with a huge pot and a tomato ladder. HUGE tomato ladder. Hopefully in 63-80 days from now I can start harvesting some delicious veggies. I had to put in a huge bag of dirt and I tried to give it a lot of water. I'm just not sure that it was enough water. How much water does a bag of dirt need? I guess I'll just have to check it tomorrow morning and add some more water if necessary. I put it on the sunniest spot on the porch, but I'm not sure that it will get enough sunlight to really make the plants get huge. I'm totally going to rock this growing thing. I did it with the African Violets and I'll do it with the tomatoes and peppers too. I think the major battles that I will have are that the plants are really too close together, and the second thing is that getting direct sunlight on a covered porch is a little difficult. I put it on the sunn...

I went out to dinner with some friends tonight. Yea Jess is finally back in town! One of her husbands work colleague was there. He's really freaking amusing. I just kept thinking to myself a) is he just like this or is he trying to prove something to someone? Don't get me wrong, the guy is hilarious, and fun to be around, and he's not annoying or over the top, but there's just a slight hint of trying too hard in the air. The second question that I really really want to ask, but don't have the guts to "is she mail order?" I wouldn't put it past the guy. Nor would I think he was creepy or weird or whatever. I think she's Ukrainian, and just not the same type of person that he chooses for his friends, so I'm a little confused why he chose her for his wife. They seem happy together, so it's not like I think she's gold digging or something. As long as he's happy it's all good. I'm just curious. I have a lot of balls...

It's just too freaking hot to be 'green' and leave the air conditioner in the trunk for another day. When it's 10:30am and already it's 95degF out - I'm done. There's no point in torturing myself anymore. Why not just give in and finally plug it in. Really what it comes down to is that I had a really hard freaking time yesterday falling asleep at night then work up relatively early this morning because it was so hot. Not cool at all (pun intended.) My little brother came up with/used a weird idea to try to cool down his bedroom. Aluminum foil on the windows. Scientifically it seems like it could work - I'm not sure in practice how well it works. He said that it did seem to cool down the room a little. I'm wondering if he would have implimented this solution before the room got really hot if it would have worked better. In the end - he did the same thing I did - window air conditioner. It really is so much better. I just walked outside of m...

with soft serve ice cream. I know that it's supposed to be horrible an full of chemicals and bad stuff. Whatever, it's freaking delicious. I love that shit. I would eat it every day if I thought that it wouldn't make me really freaking fat. I love it with toppings, I love it with jimmies, I love it with stuff mixed into it. There is no form of soft serve that I don't like. I had a huge craving for it for the past week. I kept ignoring it and saying it would go away. It didn't. So last night I went out and got some. Mmmm mmmm mmm Delicious. It was just as good as I wanted it to be. I devoured that delicious white creamy stuff. Mmmm mmm Three days at the new job so far - and its still going well. I feel like there is a lot to learn yet. They've given me some projects to do and pretty much left me to my own devices to complete them. It's really rocking. It's like here's the high level of what I need you to accomplish ... go! It's ...

It was really awesome today. The first day in a very very long time where I thought "What happened to today? Time really flew by!" So enthused & amused.

It's the last day at work and I am incredibly enthused to be done with it. If I've accomplished nothing else in the time since I put in my letter of resignation, I have helped to answer the phone and ship some boxes. The end has been as weird as the begining. The first day of work they did not take me out to lunch. There were only four of us in the office, the big boss, the secretary, another guy and me. What did we do for lunch you ask (seeing as it's pretty standard to take a new collegue out for lunch)? Oh that's right, we took a trip to Subway, where I paid for my own meal. Then we (big boss & me - no mention of other collegue or the secretary) proceeded to go back to the office were we both ate our sandwiches separately - in our own offices - by ourselves. The last day was much the same. I again went to subway - this time with a collegue - the big boss only talked to me today about switching over my phone to my own plan instead of the company plan. We ...

Coming in to work this morning was aweful. I had a bit too much to drink last night while it took way too long to get our food. Though we did get our food a lot faster than the girls sitting next to us. Those girls were hilarious too. One was from CA the other from the Hamptons. Typical bitchy poser girls. Absolutely hilarious though. We were sitting inside while they were at a picnic table outside waiting for their food. We watched as one "stealthily" took a picture of a guy's butt. We later ended up getting seated next to them at the same picnic table. We of course being obnoxious and having had a few beers already asked them about the butt picture. She explained to us that she wasn't taking a picture of his butt - but how badly he was dressing. (This after Scott tells the guy that the girl was taking a picture of his butt.) It created a very amusing dinner. Then I saw one of the guys I went to school with and found out that he's living only a coupl...

I know that everyone it bitching about how high gas prices are right now. I fully think that it will get quite a bit worse before the end of the year. People are actually starting to drive less. I know that I am trying to minimize my driving. I will walk to the closest grocery store - which costs a bit more, but its an all organic store - to get food instead of driving a few miles. I think the biggest change in my behavior will result from this new job. It is 1.4 miles away from my house. That's right. It's a freaking mile away from my house. Which of course means that it would be rather silly to drive to work every day - especially now that it's warm. So I'll essentially have a 25 min commute instead of the 35-45 min commute there, and then 25 minutes back instead of the 45-60 min that I was having. So the minimal time savings that I'll have is 30 minutes. That compounded with the fact that there will be fiscal savings in terms of reducing my round trip...