Exactly 6 months and 20 posts later...

Two milestones are better than one, they say. Well, actually I think I'm the only one who says it, but what the hell. Maybe if I'd actually put some effort into this blog I could get 50 by Christmas. Moving on...

- I've been getting the feeling lately that all is not right with Muriel. She's always been fickle and spoiled and sort of a brat, but a lot of her less pleasant tendencies have become exacerbated of late. Whenever she's with Victoria, sooner or later Muriel is going to scare her little buddy, but while before I thought Muriel was just being a bully trying to put the smaller pig in her place, the other day I actually sat and watched them together for a while. Eventually, the strangest thing happened- without warning, Muriel started running around and around in the cage, paying no mind to where Victoria was, and even at one point actually running over Victoria's butt, causing her to start squealing. The really odd thing was that Muriel didn't seem to be angry or annoyed with Victoria, but rather did it without knowing any better. So I'm wondering whether something might actually be wrong with Muriel- could it be an eye problem, perhaps, or is it simply possible that Muriel just isn't very smart, even by guinea pig standards?

- Ever since I've started doing my own tax returns, I've gotten used to the idea of getting a fairly healthy return. To wit, I paid for the computer I'm currently typing this on with my tax return from three years ago. So you can imagine how surprised I was when I completed my tax return this afternoon and discovered that not only was I only getting back $150 from the federal government, I actually OWE the State $125 dollars. Wow, a whole $25 overall. Big whoopdie doo fuckin' ding. I re-ran all the figures, and the result was the same. I really wish I would've known that the temp agency for whom I worked for the last six months of 2006 (a) didn't take out state tax, and (b) withheld less federal tax. Now, I'm not the sort of person who plans his spring expenditures around the money he anticipates getting back from Uncle Sam, but I always liked getting a nice big tax return. It always made me feel like I was getting something back for the taxes I paid, and besides, it's not like I ever saw the money that got withheld, much less missed it. Oh well... at least next year's will be better. Right?

- After the worrying over Muriel and annoyance over my tax return, you'd think that a punctured tire would just be the king of all pissers for the day. Well, actually... you'd be wrong. Under the circumstances, this is more or less the least inconvenient flat tire I could conceivably have had. This evening I made too tight a turn and ended up clipping a curb with my right rear tire a block from my apartment. I didn't even realize that anything was wrong until I pulled in, parked, and was walking away. It was that unmistakable whistling hiss that inevitably comes from air leaking out. So I was a little anxious about it, and I contemplated whether the local Goodyear store was open on Sunday (dad and mom are both employees, and they can get me a discount). However, after a few minutes I remembered that I have a full-sized spare in the trunk that was actually one of my old tires, replaced about two years ago. I made sure that it wasn't flat (it wasn't) and then came back inside at ease with the situation, resolved to change the tire tomorrow morning, when it'll be easier to see what I'm doing. See what happens when you heed the Boy Scout motto to "Be Prepared"?

Grab Bag

- So I'm at my folks' place for the weekend. Wasn't sure I'd be able to make it, given the weather this past week, but it's let up somewhat these past few days, so here I am. The only thing that worries me is how Muriel and Victoria are doing on their own. I dropped them off with a co-worker, so they're not alone, but this will be the first time they've been in the same cage for more than a few hours at a time. My big concern is that they've developed a big sister/little sister dynamic, with Muriel taking the dominant role and picking on the smaller Victoria, and given her relative lack of experience with guinea pigs, I hope my co-worker is OK with them. Then again, she has two daughters, plus some pets, so that should aid her somewhat. What am I saying- she'll be fine.

- I had a dude knock on my door this past week selling something or other. I guess I'm spoiled in that I don't have this happen to me all that often, since my apartment building is kept locked. But it worked out in an unexpected way. I opened the door and saw him there, and he gave me a kind of confused look and asked me, "uh, did I talk to you already?" And of course I responded that he had, and he moved along to the next victim. As characters are prone to saying on ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT, "that was a freebie."

- And speaking of (quasi-)mistaken identity, I was at the Jack Smith program at the Wexner Center last weekend when a loud, vocal guy (who smelled a little like an old candle) sat behind me. It would be bad enough if he was talking to the people around him, but no- this guy actually seemed to be talking to the screen. He would offer commentary on nude bodies, and at one point he actually responded to a question asked by an onscreen character. It was pretty bizarre, perhaps even more bizarre than the mentally-deficient dude who stood in front of the screen during MOULIN ROUGE and conducted the entire time. Anyway, this guy came up to me afterward and I got a little nervous. To begin with, this guy was obviously nuts, and my friends and I were sitting pretty close to him and occasionally remarking to each other about the crazy shit he was saying. Did he want to start something? But all he did was ask me if me first name was Dave. The best part is that I didn't even have to lie to make him go away. Another freebie.

Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr...

For those of you who don't know, I work in the offices of a bank here in Columbus. Not a bad job- I'd much rather do this than be a teller, dealing with people face to face all day. But even behind the scenes, we're still at the mercy of our customers, and on a cold, snowy, sloppy day like today, the bank turns into a ghost town.

Consequently, they decided to close the bank early, what with the lack of business and all. But when I walked out to my car I noticed that something even less pleasant than snow had begun to fall- freezing rain. Normally, I don't mind snow or freezing rain by themselves, but freezing rain on top of snow is a pain in the ass. Seriously, it took me nearly 20 minutes to scrape the ice and snow off my windows enough for it to be drivable. And all the while being pelted from above with even more freezing rain- boy howdy, once I got home and went in, I was in for good. And in I've stayed all night, treating myself to a rare two-movie weeknight. I can only imagine how much it'll suck tomorrow morning...

Oh well- at least we're out of single digits for the time being. I just hope we've cleared up by the weekend.

(OK, maybe that was kind of a lame post. I think I just wanted an excuse to post the above pic. Got a problem with that?)

Edited 2/17 to add: The morning after I posted this entry, I actually had a morning that made me feel like the Frozen Jack seen above. The freezing rain had fallen all night, and when I walked out to my car the ice was caked on it. It took me nearly five minutes just to open the driver's side door, and then another hour to scrape off the driver's and passenger's windows, the windshield, and the back window so that I could see well enough to drive. By the time I got to work (late, obv.), I wasn't in the best of moods. Trying to amuse myself, I sent the Jack pic to some of my co-workers, saying that it was a snapshot someone had taken of me that morning. A few of them actually believed me, which just made it funnier.