Day 17 (Wednesday)

Got up, lifted, got pissed at the bike because some idiot broke the headphone jack. Cleaned the bathroom and the counter. Took a call from my Dad where he couldn’t reproduce a computer issue he was having. Ate lunch. Did the food shopping. Paid the bills. Went to the tiny little Hull library and sat in a big, leather chair reading about the history of Hull. It was the best part of my day.

Sent Brian this video for his T-shirt challenge and he ordered it.

Day 18 (Thursday)

Spent the morning reading about the history of Hull for a dumb little project I’m trying to put together. It ended up eating the whole day.

Day 19 (Friday)

Tried to get an ancient scanner working, and like any five minute technical project, it ended up taking half the day. The scanner software not only wiped out my Firefox settings, but somehow blew up my Thunderbird profile. This, of course, led to paranoid virus scanning and spyware checks which ate even more time. After a good three hours, I had it working satisfactorily, so I shut it all down without making a single scan.

Luckily for my sanity, #1GF! and I were invited to a turkey dinner at her friend’s house. During the course of the dinner, the conversation was varied and amusing, and eventually drifted into the topic of video games (as it tends to do when you have two teenagers and a nerd at the table). The younger of #1GF!’s friend’s daughters said rather confidently that she would “own” me at a particular video game. In most situations, it would be a reasonable statement for a teenager to say to someone who is twice their age. I thought it was priceless to watch the look of confidence fade into confusion when the 35 year old senior citizen across the table replied, “Not only will you not own me, but if you play me, you’ll probably end up getting pwned.” I can’t be sure if anyone else at the table had a clue what pwn even means, but they all burst out laughing. If I can get one person laughing, I’m happy. If I can get them laughing so hard that they can’t really breathe, I’m psyched. Luckily, I was able to do this several times to several people during the course of the dinner, which more than wiped out any of the computer based frustrations from earlier in the day.

Day 20 (Saturday)

Went to “Hull of a Day”, which was a local event heavy in both community spirit and lameness. Part of it was a parade that was mostly made up of kids riding bikes and random adults waving from cars. I couldn’t understand why any of them were even in the parade, but hey, small town, new rules, I suppose. While I was standing waiting for something exciting to happen, an older woman from the library foundation randomly started talking to me (as older people tend to do to me). She introduced me to a couple of other library ladies, and #1GF! introduced me to a networking guy from her company who happens to run the library’s website. From there, it got rip-roaring exiting when I saw a few of the town councilors that I see on TV every week. #1GF! corrected me that they were not actually famous just because I see them on community cable. I disagreed.

Later on, we attended the country’s second largest bonfire with the same fine folks that fed us turkey the night before. Although you can’t read it in the first photo, the sign on the top of the pile read “Hanover: Call Fire Dept”. In the photos below, check out the scope of the fire. The light that it gave off at 10 PM was nothing in comparison to the heat. At a good distance you had to turn away to avoid burning your face. In the third photo, the tree you see is far enough in the foreground that it actually deceives you into seeing the fire as smaller than it was. In that photo, the tree line that the fire department was constantly hosing down was about halfway up the fire. After the pile fell over, the fire was still pretty big, as you can see by the tiny little fireman in the left hand side of the fourth photo.

Week In Review: What I Learned

• I still think I made the right decision in leaving my company.
• I still can’t sit still long enough to watch TV unless #1GF! is there.
• I think playing video games means that I’m not only unemployed, but I’m screwing off. I am screwing off, so I don’t know why this is an issue.
• Make regular backups of your Thunderbird profile.
• I feel guilty that #1GF! still goes to a corporate job.
• I like figuring out where things used to be from old photographs.
• Doing nothing takes a lot of time. I reach bed time long before I feel like I’ve finished everything I want to during the day.
• Even though I’m one of them, I still wonder why working age men in the grocery store aren’t at work
• Getting up early and showering are still a daily occurrence, but shaving every other day seems to be sufficient.
• I no longer look at slashdot or dealnews.
• A good tan is impossible for the unemployed to avoid, even if it’s a garbage man tan.
• If you’re not ashamed of being unemployed, a lot of people will immediately tell people that fact when they introduce you. It invariably leads to me shrugging.

Posted in Leisure