So where was I, ah yes, food...
There was your traditional turkey, basted to melt in your mouth perfection. Bird cooked stuffing, cranberry sauce in its perfect can shape, fruit laced jello, with a marshmellow topping and nut based crust, and home made rolls. There was probably a lot more food I'm forgetting, but it was all good.

Saturday, BZ and I went to best buy and made a big purchase. I swear we shouldn't have credit cards. thought you can probably guess what it is I'll leave you all in suspence until you come over.
Sat night we went to see Harry Potter and the goblet of fire. It was quite good. There were a number of cuts from the book, but that was to be expected and what was cut was hardly missed. for those of you who wish to know I'll do a short list:

house elves: they play a fairly major part in the book, a fairly annoying major part, but they are gone entirly from the film.
S.P.E.W. : with the house elves gone there was no need for this nonsence.
Quidditch: even though we do go to the world cup in the beginning of the film, we don't actually get to see any of it played, which was dissappointing.
School stuff: as with the last film almost all of the classroom time is gone from the movie.
Pigweidgeon: Ron's owl is gone.
Christmas: no presents this year.
Opponants in the maze at the end: in the book Harry confronts a spinx, a skewrat or some kind of weird monster they had in magical creatures class, and I think there were a few more. The maze only has the contestants in it this time.

There were a few more things which aren't comming to mind right now.
If for no reason else I give this film two thumbs up because, no blur face ending.

So after the film we went back to the folks and finished our game of star wars miniatures, then went home. I was almost going to stick it out for a long night of computer gaming, but the old in me was tired and wished for a bed.

Sunday was almost entirly spent assembling the best buy purchase and running out to wall mart for needed components for it.

All in all it was a nice and productive vacation.

Wensday and quite a few days since I have posted.
I was home sick both monday and tuesday doing what I could to work on a paper for class. I hate papers and I hate being sick so it was a double whammy sort of deal.

But lets go back to vacation time and some good news.
The four days off were like a dream. Thursday me and BZ just hung around for a while, did some shopping and had our thanksgivving dinner at the casino's all you can eat buffet. It was fun and good. I broke even on the slots, but that money went to buy dinner and donuts on the way out so it really wasn't breaking even.

Friday we went over to the Fam's for an early dinner and some game playing. The food was excelent as always.......

The calm before the storm.
Well actually the storm is already here. Its Snowing, woo hoo, first one of the year.
Also the calm hasn't really started yet as I'm here at school and thanksgiving break dosen't really start until tomorow.
I'm am all sorts of psyched up for some lazy days of getting stuff at home done and eating turkey, stuffing, mashed potatos, and everything else that goes with it.

I don't think there is any real news.
Just Happy Turket day to all who celebrate it and a good day to all those who don't.

Monday, deleriously sleepy monday.
The weekend was decent, though didn't start that way.
I came home after a long day friday to BZ looking to have one of those relationship conversations, sparked by an email I had forwarded to her. It wasn't a great conversatiion, but we're still together.

In happier news, I came in saturday and spent the rest of the time doing yard work. I can happily say now my yard is leaf free, though we did just rake them all into the street, so the street is now leaf covered. We also made some planting areas in the front and around the side of the house. It should look nice if any of the bulbs come up.

In the small amount of time I wasn't working I saw the film "Madagascar". It was cute and funny as animated films should be and it didn't have any stupid morals being said to you over and over.

Sunday night we went over to our neighbor's place and took a soak in her hot tub. It does wonders for aching and soon to be aching muscles. The only down side is today I feel like I have some sort of chest cold comming on. This is fairly common for me though. When ever I'm about to take some vacation I tend to get sick.

"No you Cunt sucking bitch whore slut!"
"Not up there!"

I'm not exactly sure what this means but it's what woke me up at about 2 in the AM. BZ was sleep talking again, more like sleep yelling.
I guess I'm just never supposed to get a decent night's sleep. If it isn't the dog having bad dreams and whining durring the night, its the cat meowing and plucking the laundry baskets at 3am because he wants food, even though he should know he dosen't get fed until after the dog gets taken out. There is a routine, damnit Kitty, follow the routine!

The last few days have been fairly uneventful. I keep having crazy dreams but can't remember enough of them to recount anything.

I had some more weird dreams that I can't remember this morning. It seems I'm having more and more trouble sleeping through the night. I tend to wake up around 2 or 3 and then again about an hour before the alarm should go off.

Last night I saw the new charlie and the chocolate factory and I must say it was excelent. Johny Depp did an awesome job, as always. And Tim Burton's vision was nothing short of spectatular. I'd love to see him do some more classic novels or any thing else.

I spend my day in lab remaking all of the solutions that I found contaminated yesterday and throwing out all of the work I had in the partially done category. There is no sence in puzzling over more odd results which could be contributed to contamination.

I've survived the weekend aqnd am back to another exciting monday. So far not so good. I woke up with serious back pains and if I hadn't taken a sick day a few weeks ago and wasn't saving up to take some time for thanksgiving, I would still be home in bed.
I woke up to some wacky dreams this morning about people I care to forget and low and behold I have or at least what the dreams were about.

For the most part the weekend was relaxing. Came in to school on sat as usual, then went shopping for a bit with BZ and her sis. And dinner at the outback.

Woke up late sunday, made some homemade mcgriddle sandwiches, which weren't as good as I had hoped. Then went over to the folks place for some gaming and fun. By fun I mean helping them cut large branches from a tree, which is where I'm pretty sure I pulled my back.

We played Ninja burger there, which is a great and fun game, which pokes fun at both ninja, japanese business culture, and fast food resturants.

I survived the second presentation, now I just need to read 5ish papers tonight in order to talk with the boss tomorow.
The presentation went well enough. When you aren't presenting any data it feels kind of funny to me. It went something like this:
I had done a very detailed and critical review of the data in this paper, then the professor decided we would go over it in class, so I'll be skipping through some of the data.
*first slide*
some background info anf their hypothesis "We think it works this way"
*slide two*
conclusion, so they were right.

That got some laughs.

At least it is done. Oh and aparently I didn't do as badly yesterday as I had thought. I spoke to one of the profs, he said I did ok and it was just a hard paper. One of the other student's said that the professer who kind of dug into me durring it was taking it to personally. So I feel better about that.

Now just a bit of lab work to do before I head home.

On to presentation number two and probably the third or fourth night I'm running on little to no sleep and a mess of chemicals, caffiene, and suggar. Strangly its not all that different than normal.
Hopefully this presentation will go better. I've read the paper through a few times, but since I'm not going to present the data I'm not as confident as to what I'm going to say. The slide show is all bullet points, with only one real figure, so the word dull's ville comes to mind.

I had a weird dream this morning. I was at my parent's house or some other place with a hall way and a small table. I had my comuter on and I was trying to sign up for worlds of warcraft. For some reason the first screen I came to in the character generation phase told me to pick out a weapon and I couldn't figure out what weapon was best. Usually these sort of games make you design what your character will look like first and then just give you a crappy weapon. I remember going through screen after screen of swords, looking for a rapier, which is usualy a crappy weapon. I think I finally decided on some sort of glave, after looking through the book.

I've never actually played WoW and really don't have the time for it, so this was an odd dream.
Maybe I should sign up when I finish this presentation.

Well check off one more presentation, though I would probably use the word train wreck to describe it rather than presentation. At least it is done.

I had a long dream this morning about running around some sort of camp or something like that. I know there was a large lake, which had ...not even sure how to describe it.
Mary claire, a chich I went to college with was in it. Not really sure what else to say. It didn't make much sence.

My foresight is 20/20.
Its always interesting to look back at secific decisions you have made in life to determine if you made the right decision at the time. Since I came to schoolI have often wondered what would have happened if I stayed at Pfizer and along with that I have wondered what it would be like if I stayed connected to pfizer. There was a chance that the group I was working with would have paid for my education and I would probably getting more money on top of that.
Well I found out this morning that what ever choices I made, those being that I was going to leave Pfe and sever all real ties, was the right one.

The group I was going to work for was all laid off. Its a stupid move on the compagny's part, but at least I don't have to pay for it. I feel sorry for those guys. They were just a few years away from retirment and had just barly dodged lay offs that followed a transiton of their department to St. Louis, one of the country's many arm pits.
I'm just glad I'm out. I'm glad I don't have to worry now about what would happe to me if Pfizer stoped paying the bills for school, how I would get someone else to pay for it, ect.

Now I have to get off my ass and get this presentation I'm giving at 1pm ish done.

Just rememebred, I think I had some sort of dream last night about paintball guns. I remember this because I was just looking at some markers on ebay and got a strong sence of deja-vu. I was looking at palmer guns and thinking that I wanted to get a blazer and shorten it down to be a pistol. In the dream I was arguing with Eithor BZ or Alicia, this chick in my lab, about how long to cut the barrel down to.
I'm deffinatly starting to lose it again.
There is only a small difference between dream life and real life and its usually that real life just isn't quite as cool.
I still wonder some days how long it will be until I completly lose it. My biggest saving grace is my body knows how to work in the world with little thought to control it. Meaning as long as I don't over think I can pass for normal.
Work finally done time to head home and work on presentations.

Ugh, feeling like crap and on serious work overload.
I have two presentations to give this week, neithor of which is very done yet. The boss wants to discuss with me the next project I'm going to be doing, which means I need to read about 6 papers and know them pretty well by then. Also one of the guys I asked to be on my advisory comittee wants to meet and discuss the work I'm going to be doing to se if he is a good fit for my comittee, double ugh.
Also its a game week and I don't have much of an adventure worked up yet. Maybe I'll just toss some annoying NPCs at them and let them spend the rest of the night chasing them around. Nah.....

Most things seem to be going from bad to worse.
I just want to get out of here and try to get some presentation work done but I have class in 30 minutes I should be there for and my expreiments are still running.

Tonight is going to suck.

Its another wonderful monday, not sure why but feeling down today. Its probably that same old, I'm tired and doing repetitative lab work, which requires me to stand around and not think, which gives me lots of time to think about all that stuff I usually push to the back of my brain.

Its a day of reminiscing and regretting the past. At one time I could almost see the future. I was connected, tapped in to something greater than myself, it just wasn't good enough. There are very few times I actually regret anything about my past. Its all learning experiences and I wouldn't be who I am now without it. Of cource that only works if you're happy now. Can't seem to put a coherent thought together eithor. Everything is fleeting.

Its days like this that I question the universe and my place in it. I question feelings and comittments, what is, what was, what could be or could have been, what other oppertunities exist.

I'm not sure if I'll ever find a happy stability again, or if I had actually ever found one. I'm not the kind of person meant to exist in this world. I'm not going to toe the line just because everyone else is doing it. Slowly but surely I will find myself all alone, but thats ok. I knew it was going to happen, know it is going to happen.
When you can look at the world, but can't see your own reflection then you will truly
understand.

Not sure where this is all going, maybe I'll just go to lunch.

Today is a sad day. I got an email this morning letting me know that Mr. Opus, my childhood dog died last night. Opus was a west highland white terrier, a little dog with an over abundance of courage. I can remember a time when he and our other dog chased a bull off my parent's property. He was a good dog, loyal, obidient, and loving. We had spent many good years running around in the woods outside my parents house, playing games, or just snuggled up on the couch. He lived to a ripe dog age of 15 1/2 years, which is a long time. I'm going to miss him a lot. I don't think going to visit my parents will be the same for quite a while.
Even when you know the end is comming, it always seems like a bit of a shock.

Last night went well. I got home early enough, and found doggie waiting to get out of her cage to go outside and run around for a bit. She was still a bit lethargic, compaired to normal, but she ate some food drank some water and there were no barfing eppisodes in the night. Whew!

We had a decent amount of Trick or Treaters and unlike last year only a few of them were costumeless older teans. Some people are just jerks. Lots of cute kids in cute costumes. Possibly the best was some kid dressed up as darth vader. As he was walking back off the porch, doggie lets out this big bark. I've never seen darth vader jump so high, dark lord of the scardie cats, heheheh.

While the kids were ringing the door bell, me and BZ watched "Land of the Dead", the new one. It was pretty good, possible the best horror/gore fest I've seen in a while. I did have a few problems with it though.
The basic premise of the movie seems to be that america has become over run by zombies. Yes I know what you are thinking how is that different that now. Well these zombies don't vote and they eat human flesh. Ok so zombies over run america and there are just a few cities of normal folk left. So far I like the concept. Its an interesting realm to exist in. Now the dumb thing about this is first off most of the people still alive are just normal folk who are split into the normal sort of rich people in a tall tower and poor people living off the streets. I would think that if zombies started to take over america, it would be the strong who would survive. Navy seals, army rangers, people who are trained to kick ass. Instead we have a bunch of defenseless regular folk, who for the life of me I can't understand what their purpose in this city was. The city is guarded by a piss poor army, which seems to be made up of rent-a-cops and some weekend warrior national guard type. They can't shoot for shit. They have no hand to hand combat skills. Even their weapons suck. The city's defence is mainly a big chain link fence.

For these reasons the film gets a "D" in terms of beleivability. As with all horror movies, most deaths could be prevented byutilizing skills I learned playing D&D.
1. Hack first, ask questions later. As soon as you know the world is over run by zombies, any who dosne't answer simple questions like "Who goes there?" should be wasted on the spot. Also if their answer is any sort of grunt, moan, or repetition of something like "Mmmm, Brains" waste them too.
2. Use your spot, and listen skills. Zombies are dumb and clumsy. They tend to stumble into stuff and make niose. Do not wear headphones when you are on watch duty or some place which is not secure.
3. Ranged weapons are good, but expendable. Always have a good Meele back up.
4. Zombies have damage reduction all over except for their heads. A single shot to the head usually kills them, so shoot for the head!!! More people in this film have full auto weapons and open up with body shots on the zombies, who just keep comming.
5. Just because its lying down dosen't mean its dead. Double check those who lay there, and don't double check by steping on them or poking them with your pistol, get a long stick.
6. Don't give up the high ground. If you are in a tower with a machine gun and the Zombies are on the ground, don't climb out of the tower. Zombies don't climb well and you can shoot down at them. They can't eat you if they can't reach you.
7. Don't expect a beat all trick which has worked to keep working. Monsters learn, even if it is slowly.
8. Bring the fight to them. If you know where the zombies are, go there and kill them. Don't expect your pathetic defenses to hold them off if they decide to come for you in mass. Many times in this film the zombie hunters just walk away leaving the living dead to go on eating people and doing their zombie things. If they had done clean sweaps to start all of the trouble could have been averted.

Two things I could not stress enough in this film are greteuous waste of ammo and lack of head shots.