The New Musings of a Quiet Geek

1. Gave my parents the new Beatles Trivial Pursuit game for Christmas. I thought the 3 of us would have an easy time of it but they added six levels of difficulty to every category. Of course we got a lot of 5 and 6 level questions like where did John go to school or what street he lived on. Yikes! Get this there's a movie category and we watched Hard Days Night . It didn't help. It was good though as my father took an early lead before my mother took over. I ended up winning merely on a dice-roll. 2. Got two big music gifts this year. My parents gave me Tom Petty's Live Anthology which though it's set up as a long concert, it's actually several different concert clips spliced together. You really don't notice. I love it! b. Meanwhile my cousin gave me the John Lennon Anthology which is analogous to The Beatle Anthology as it's a compilation of outtakes, parodies and live tracks selected by Yoko Ono who also wrote the liner notes. This is great too! 3....

My story begins on Friday the 20th. My bus was delayed due to the previous days storm and the inefficiency to get back up and running 100% when shutting down. Later we hear from a father talking to his daughter on his cell. Her bus from Boston, and therefore my bus was broken down in Kennebunk. Alternator was shot or something. Another bus bound for the north finally arrived going a different route but would still get me to Bangor. We had to go through Brunswick instead. OK I was thinking. Fine. First, I have to sit in the very front which, again, is fine. Then the driver asked me my name and tells me though this only the 3rd time he's done this route there is only one place in Brunswick he gets confused and maybe reading the directions out loud will help him. So I do it. I read for him to veer left and he turns left. I will point out here the directions they give their drivers suck ass. No mile markers and very few landmarks. So we drive and drive. I see signs for Bath, ...

I'll write more at a later date but I so had to share the following video:

It's that time again. The Red Sox Hot Stove/Spring Training Rant. And it's always about one player. Yes, the Sox have dumped Doug Mirabelli. Again. They waited longer this time to do so so maybe they were right to do so this time. Doug's production has been down. He apparently batted like .202 this past season. Even for a back-up catcher, that isn't good. So what do they do? They release him and replace him with Kevin Cash who is a career buck-sixty hitter. The official line is Cash's defense has been better than Doug this spring which could very well be true. Cash also did fill in pretty well when Dougie went down in August. I've seen only one spring training game this year which I think Mirabelli was catching and he seemed fine to me but then I think Matsuzaka was pitching not Wakefield...I have to point out they're paying Cash much less than Doug had Mirabelli stayed. Coincidence? Hell, no. Back-up catcher is a tricky position. If their offense and defen...

I figured it was time to update you on what I've been up to this week. On Monday, I started my volunteer job at the seminary library. I've only gone in for a couple hours each day but I went in all week. This week, I did was move books out of the chapel area and other shelving but I was told I might do some cataloging and other tech service stuff so that'll be good. Sure it's been all grunt work but someone has to and I didn't really do any of that when I worked at RCC so this has been good. Yesterday and today the cell phone problem was corrected. Yay! The battery was delivered yesterday and after charging it, it still didn't seem to work. The booklet said I needed to wait until the "battery icon" disappeared. It never went away which concerned me but I pressed the power button today and it worked! Yay again! I also finally got around to setting up my voice mail. Of course, only three people have my number... The last couple days, I've really been...

I promised myself I would no longer rant about the trivial but, well, maybe I blew that already with the "SpongeBob No-Pants" post so allow me a few moments to ask, what the bloody hell was America thinking voting off Melinda Doolittle? Admittedly, I watched American Idol , only sporadically, as usual frankly, but there were at least three women with talent this year. Only Jordin made it to the final. Melinda was the best by far. Now, maybe the audience figured that Melinda needed less help to get an album out which is definitely true but Blake sucked, OK? I was not impressed by his Maroon 5 or his rapping. And he looks like a boy band reject but that not his fault entirely I'm sure... I also realize only 12 year old girls actually vote on these things and they probably thought he was hot. Whether he can sing or not is irrelevant. This statement is backed up by what constitutes as "popular" in today's music... Was it a slam against Simon and the judges? They...

For those readers that wanted a bit more detail about my job search, let me give you this little tidbit: I've recently spent a bit of time trying to get letters of reference for a library job at a private school here in town. At first, it seemed like a bitch frankly but once I, at my mother's urging, decided to take the fact they didn't specifically ask for professional references literally, it went much smoother; as it was, two were professional anyway... My college really needs money for expansion as they've been inundating me with mail and phone calls. Once they started calling, I gave in and gave them a small donation as it's really the right thing to do. I joked with my cousin that it was the closest I'll ever get to talking to a young college co-ed... Meanwhile, while this fund push is going on, the school president resigned. Apparently not because of a scandal but it still kind of irks me I had to read about it in the newspaper. Some department, whether i...

Ok, lately I've been addicted to the Internet Checkers game that comes with Windows. As you know, I've had broadband access for awhile but something about my new life makes me want to play this game. I certainly can't be more bored than I was in Connecticut so that can't be it. Any ideas? Anyway, I'm not that good at it. I severely beat some French-speaking person once and, another time, I was losing badly then the guy, or gal, made one stupid move allowing me to triple jump him causing the game to end in a draw but otherwise it's been not good at all. And yet, I'm compelled to play. Did I tell everyone we finally figured out how to access the network printer so there will be no repeat of that Tuesday morning fiasco. (Well, the boots thing will probably happen again knowing the PCA help around here but...) Can I get a "Woo Hoo?" I went to church this morning. I still church shopping but I think I'll try this church again. Probably through the m...

1. We took Susie for her annual check-up yesterday. She did very well but may need dental work in February. 2. I damaged the toenail on my right big toe during that April mailroom job. (You know. The one that I wasn't paid for the second week of for another month.) The nail finally fell off yesterday. 3. My mother gave me two library job ads yesterday. Thinking I had time to apply I put it off until today. I call human resources today to see if they still had my information on file as I had recently applied for another job there. The good news is they did but the bad news is the deadline for the suckier of the two jobs but the one I had a better shot of getting was yesterday. Did it ever occur to me my mother would tell me of a job that was about to expire? No. In reality, by the time she came home with the ad, the office would have been closed anyway but I'm still kind of irritated. 4. I was kind of irritated to discover the new online game Gold Rush was forcing me ...

Happy New Year. I'm back. I just spent a week up in Maine helping my cousin as I mentioned I was going to. It was a good time although most of what we did doesn't translate into good blog reading. I didn't really see any movies this time except for walking down to see Narnia again but, now that I think about it, I guess the straight to DVD "movie" Stewie Griffin: The Untold Story also counts. That was so good. We watched it once then we watched it again later in the week with the audio commentary on and it was just as funny. I also got the chance to watch a bootleg copy of the new Doctor Who series which was very good as well. They've done a good job speeding up the action and dialogue. I left there Friday afternoon. My father arranged to stay at my mother's step-mother's before driving back down here. My cousin who just turned six was there unbeknownst to me. If I had known I would have stayed downtown. I ended up playing a lot of rather bor...

I'm not sure where to begin since I have a jumble of things to say. I think it was either Christmas morning or the morning of Christmas Eve that I finished reading Prince Caspian, Book 2 of The Chronicles of Narnia . The edition I read was almost as old as I am so the binding is coming loose. I had read the book, or at least had it read to me, decades ago but I was inspired to read it now. It's not as good as the first book but second books never seem to be, do they? I think, given how the book is set up, it'll be much better in movie form. The night before last, my parents and I watched The Lady and the Highwayman which my mother received as a gift from my aunt and was billed as one of Hugh Grants earliest appearances. It supposedly came out in 1989 but has a real seventies feel to it. It also seemed it was originally made for TV which, you can see, it was. And now for the "hard" news: My Yahoo account was apparently shut down without much warning. I remember ge...

No, my aunt will not have her surgery so, despite the suggestion by my cousin that I come up anyway, I'm still here in CT. No, my reasons were not in fact including the one I mentioned earlier but perhaps the overly optimistic chance something employment-wise will happen, I haven't even started my Christmas shopping, there could be something wrong with the brakes of one of the cars and frankly, I'm tired. No, I haven't heard from the two matches I referred to in awhile but another match I had thought was gone for good contacted me today so...I don't know. I'm just saying... More eventful things did actually occur, however. On Friday, I helped my mother with a "Parents Night Out" child care thing at her church. I was The Bank during a game of Cat-in-the-Hat-opoly and I pressed play on The Polar Express , which was very boring actually, and I also met the returning parents at the door. They didn't need me really and I was told I'd be paid whic...