When I got home (after smashing an owl on my windshield) I discovered an extra set of keys in my car. I can only guess that the flunky who drove my car out of the repair bay back into the parking lot has to move several cars and accidentally left the keys for another car inside mine.

So now I have this extra set of keys. Of course I'm going to do the right thing and drive back to the dealership today to drop them off. The only catch is when.

Driving down to South Burlington and back will eat an hour and half of my time, not to mention my gasoline. I also plan on driving to Burlington tonight to play games. That makes 2 trips to Burlington and almost 3 hours of driving. Ideally I'd like to combine that into one trip! Unfortunately, gaming is going to be at night, but the service bay in the dealership closes at 5:00.

I could drive down to Burlington, drop the keys off and sit around for 2 hours. Maybe I could grab dinner somewhere. Or I could just drive back and forth from Burlington to my apartment.

It's not clear to me which is better ... sitting for two hours in a restaurant, presumably reading, or driving the extra hour plus.

Aw hell, like I'm going to give up an opportunity to eat out...

I'm really not happy with either choice.

I ducked - not that I was in any danger - but from my perspective the animal was headed directly for my face.

It hit the car with an unremarkable thud, the slide up across the top of my car. What happened to it after that I cannot say. I checked my rear view mirror and saw no sign of the animal.

And then found myself doing some order of magnitude calculations regarding the transfer of kinetic energy between my Passat and that poor owl. There's a lot of mass in a Passat relative to an owl. It probably was killed instantly.

And now I feel horrible about the whole thing. I can't beat myself up too much because I really can't figure out any realistic way I could have avoided the thing, but I'm still feeling just a little ... guilty ... Not really guilty - mostly just plain sad.

Owls are such pretty birds, really - glorious and magnificent.

I believe that Farscape was originally on the Sci-Fi channel, so I never saw it because I never bothered with cable. But the show did catch my interest when it went into syndication on the public airways, shortly after the series ended. Unfortunately, it was one of those shows that only got air time at midnight on Saturdays, or some such. I only managed to watch a handful of episodes - maybe six - in a more or less disjointed fashion.

Since then, I've always wanted to see the first couple episodes to see how the show started and get the full backstory. Plus, I kind of liked the show, so I just wanted to watch more of it.

Behold, the wonder of the internet. Season one is freely available. There are still commercials, but those are about 15 second interruptions - as opposed to the 3 minute ones on broadcast TV. Really, a single 15 second commercial is pretty tolerable. Now I can finally watch this show that I've been missing for almost a decade.

The sad part here is that the entire series doesn't seem to be available. I suppose that makes sense. They give you the first season for free, but force you to pay for the rest - either by buying or renting the DVDs, or some other mechanism that I haven't discovered yet.

I don't think I'm actually ready to spend money on seasons 2-4. At least not a LOT of money. I do know a store that sells used DVD collections at a decent price, so I might look there for a set.

Although I like the show, I'm really not convinced that I'm ever going to want to watch any of the episodes more than once. Buying a DVD just doesn't make sense to me.

However, I am sure I want to watch them once! I'm glad the first year is online.

It was fun meeting new people. It was fun playing new games. It was fun just being able to gab about mutual interests.

I definitely want to try to get there every week, but that will take some small "lifestyle changes" on my part.

I'm really not used to staying up late. Usually I'm in bed at 9:00. It sounds extreme, but some days I need to be at work by 6:00. I've found it much easier to approach every day like I need to be at work by 6:00. Unfortunately, that makes staying up to 11:00 on game night a bit of a task. This week I was lucky enough to have tomorrow off, so I can us caffeine to perk me up, but that's not something I can do regularly without paying a price.

From now on I'm going to have to start staying up until (*gasp*) 10:00. On most days this will mean absolutely nothing. The only difference is that when I do get up to go to work at 6:00, I'm going to pay for it a little bit on that day. The perk is that I will pay for it a little less on Thursday nights (and Friday mornings) when I stay up to play games.

It will be worth it just to get out and be with people someplace other than work. And these seem like decent people too.

I was first relieved to see that our host and his wife are Jewish. Although it sounds odd from an atheist, I really need Jewish people in my life and find comfort in their presence. For one thing, I grew up in a "reasonably Jewish" area. I have always known Jewish people and always had Jewish friends. It just feels right to me to have a Jewish presence nearby.

But, unlike the Christian presence, which often seems stifling and oppressive, the Jewish presence is non-threatening. The Jews are never trying to convert me, or convince me that I'm going to hell, or change my behavior to accommodate what they believe. If anything, the Jews are sympathetic because we're both religious minorities.

I guess the heart of the issue here is that a Jewish person will not freak out when I declare myself an atheist. He will respect my beliefs and allow us to carry on just like before, whereas Christians tend to get offend, and/or freak out, and/or try to convert me, and/or back away from me because I'm actually infested with demons.

In any case, hooray for Jewish gamers!

Tonight there were only a couple of other gamers. The is a big gaming convention in central Vermont this weekend, so the "regular crew" seemed to have bagged tonight. I guess there going to spend their whole weekend gaming, so they needed to do some of their more practical activities tonight.

Tonight I met Craig and Brian.

As near as I can tell Craig is something of a Luddite. He arrived by bicycle, and doesn't own a phone. Apparently he's living without two of the most indispensable pieces of modern technology in existence - the car and the phone. I'm not sure if he has a computer, but I suspect he doesn't. At this point I have to wonder if he uses light bulbs.

I don't hold any of this against him.

Apparently Craig grew up in a family of avid card players. As a result he's developed a habit of blowing on his cards every time he dealt a new hand. I don't believe that it's a matter of superstition for him, just mindless habit. He even blows on his cards when they have absolutely no bearing on anything. For example, in Mission: Red Planet everyone starts out with exactly the same hand of nine cards. There's no way his cards are better or worse than anyone else's - yet he blows on them anyway.

I admit, this habit is a little strange. Then again, Craig is strange. He doesn't even own a phone.

Brian, on the other hand, didn't have an remarkable foibles. He did seem to like to be "in charge" - when pieces needed moving he was the one who needed to move them. I don't think it was a conscious thing on his part, but it does appear to be some kind of inner need. I don't think it's a big deal, but it's certainly a defining personality trait. It's certainly not disturbing like a perpetual nose picker would be, or someone who only speaks in Tom Petty lyrics.

So now it's official. I have friends. I stay up late one night each week hanging out with people. I have a social life outside of work.

Pretty soon I might be able to think of Vermont as my home.

Usually my days off are Wednesday and Thursday, but I volunteered to work for someone today because she had to go to the dentist. Thinking I had to work today, I scurried around yesterday doing all the errands that I normally might have two days to do.

Then I got blindsided. The supervisor called me yesterday afternoon to let tell me that they were having issues with the floor and that the whole restaurant was going to be closed today. So the good news is that I now have an unexpected day off. The bad news is that I have nothing to do.

It's a nice day, so I suppose I could go out and do something, but I really can't think of anything. If it were warmer, I'd go sit by the lake and read, but that's really not a good activity for November.

I suppose I could clean ....

Via boing boing.

For one thing, it really was an easy day ... for me ... for the most part. We generally have two cooks on the line, but for some mysterious reason my partner was getting about 80% of the orders. Everybody wanted eggs today for some reason, instead of French Toast and pancakes. As a result, I spent most of my day taking it easy and watching him work.

I did, however, face two really odd events that I just wasn't able to handle.

We have two griddles at work - one for pancakes and French toast that holds approximately 9 cakes, and another for meats (bacon, sausage patties, etc.) and potatoes (home fries). Usually there's no reason to cook any item anywhere except its designated grill, but occasionally one needs to start cooking pancakes on the meat grill. It's a theoretical no-no, but practical needs outweigh theory here.

So today I got blasted with back-to-back pancake orders. The first order had 6 pancakes and 4 pieces of French toast. The second order had 12 pancakes. I literally had no place to cook. I had no idea how to handle this, got my timing all screwed up, and got buried.

I needed rescuing.

When the kitchen staff supervisor game over to dig me out of my pancake hell, she immediately recognized the problem. In her worlds, I "got pancaked." Apparently this happens often enough that we have a term for it. Unfortunately, I did not get an explanation on how to survive this in the future.

Now, I don't really feel bad about this. I was clearly in over my head and just didn't know how to deal. I'm not going to feel bad about something that I didn't know how to cope with and wasn't prepared for. (I do feel bad when I screw things up that I should know how to deal with).

The second strange thing that happened to me today - again, I couldn't deal with it - was when we got slammed with a take-out order for 18. Seriously, think about it. Would you like cooking for 18 people all at once? An order for 18 people is just a really scary magnitude. To add injury to insult, it was a take-out order, meaning that this order was above and beyond the seating capacity of the restaurant. We had to make that order on top of all the orders that were coming in from seated folks!

And some how, even though my partner got 80% of all the other orders that day, that 18 items take out was mostly me: 3 rellenos plates, 3 chicken clubs, 2 BLTS, 2 cold sandwiches, at least 3 grilled sandwiches, and after that I fricken got lost. OK, I know I also had to grill chicken for a salad - that was half him, half me - and somewhere in there was a side of bacon. Counting the 3 chicken clubs and 2 BLTs, that's 6 orders of bacon. Somehow, at LEAST 15 items were mine exclusively, and 2 were shared.

Yeah, I don't know how to prepare 17 meals at once. I probably should, but I don't really feel bad about not be able to handle this one either. Again, I was in waaaaaay over my head and needed to be bailed out. In fact, this time I needed to be bailed out by 2 people - maybe 3. Since that whole order was more or less all me, my partner shifted over as well, so there was basically 4 people all working in my station.

Again, I really don't feel bad about not be able to handle any of this, but ... wow... it's just craziness. A take-out order for 18 is probably a once-per-year event. (At least I hope it is). It needs to be recorded for posterity.

At the moment I'm filled with reserved excitement. I'm very happy that they won, but I really feel like I missed it. I watched exactly zero minutes of playoff baseball this year. Not owning a television certainly contributed, but several other factors prevented me.

Since I get up so early for work, I also go to bed very early. Even though the games were scheduled to start around 8:30, after the requisite hoop-la and crooning of the national anthem (with each and every performance at a slower tempo than the previous), the games pretty much started around my bed time. If I had a TV, or was courageous enough to venture out to a bar or something, I would have only been able to watch maybe the first inning.

So all in all, I feel like I missed it. It all happened while I was asleep. I read about it on the web the next day.

But I'm still happy about it. I really want to go out and celebrate with a cheesesteak. Unfortunately there really isn't anything resembling a cheesesteak for miles around. I can't even make my own because we really lack the ingredients at work.

Maybe I can come up with something though.

UPDATE: I almost forgot. How totally awesome is it that Phil's fans boo-ed the commissioner of baseball? I absolutely love how Philadelphia fans aren't afraid to tell it like it is. First Palin at the Flyers game, and now this!

The world needs more angry mobs to stand up at tell it like it is!

Today near the end of my shift, after working at least 6 hours, I keeled over and started puking into the garbage can. I busted my butt to get through the lunch rush, but after things started to slow down I just felt awful. I spent about 45 minutes thinking that I just needed to get through the day, but I couldn't hold on.

I have no explanation for what happened. I don't think I'm sick .. Ok, I do kind of feel like crap right now, but not a "sick" kind of crap, more like a "I had a rough day at work" kind of crap. I'm going to guess that I overheated or something. Actually, I think that I was overheated, but I cooled to quickly by pouring tons of ice water into my stomach after get so heated up.

The odd side effect here is that I didn't eat lunch, so I haven't really eaten anything since 7:30 this morning. After nine hours of not eating I'm just not hungry. I'm sure that won't last. I should try to force something down my throat or I'm going to be very hungry when I wake up tomorrow.

Food just doesn't seem appealing right now.

Damn, that game is good.

I sat down and played it for about 12 hours more or less straight yesterday. Ok, that's probably an exaggeration. I did manage to go shopping and do some cooking yesterday, so it was more like 11 hours with interruptions. Still, I player a LOT of KotOR.

In fact, I managed to get further into the game in one day than I had previously done in all my other attempts. For some reason I just couldn't get through that game before, despite how much I enjoyed it. I know I'm playing it a little differently this time, but I can't really put my finger on what I was doing those other times that made me give up on the game.

On this attempt through the game, I decide to play it "old school". Instead of worry about completing quests and following the story, I set my character out to open up every part of the map, obtain every piece of loot, and kill every enemy. Usually when one follows that approach the rest of the game takes care of itself. (And it seems to be working so far). And for some reason the game just seems much more fun that way.

Since I'm really into Star Wars games right now, I went out and bought Knights of the Old Republic 2 (for a whopping $15) on-line. All the reviews I've read pretty much say that KotOR 2 is just a "more of the same" game, so I shouldn't be disappointed. In the mean time, I've got plenty of gaming to keep me going until I get around to grabbing Fallout 3.

Yay!

The funny thing is, that I have a couple of contacts that I have no idea who they are. I assumed some of them are job-search related, but one is a real puzzle. Who the hell is "Bill" with a @nyse.com e-mail address? I don't think I really know many Bill's to begin with ... but @nyse.com? Where would I know such a person from?

And for some reason, I have Wil Wheaton's e-mail address in my contacts. Ok, I've never, ever, ever, gotten an e-mail from Wil Wheaton, so don't go thinking we're buds or anything. But still, I added Wil Wheaton to my contacts list - how totally geeky.

Why him and not Portia de Rossi or Alyssa Milano? I mean, Wil is cool and all, but he doesn't have Portia's hair, say.

I suppose if I wanted to be really cool I'd get a MySpace page and invite all these celebrities to be my friend... that would make me cool, right?

Ok, that's not completely true. I don't have that much free time on my hands at all. What I really have is no idea what to do with my free time. I'm really hoping some great computer games will come my way to serve as time killers, especially during the holidays and winter months in general.

I'm not trying to throw myself a pity party here, but the holidays are going to be a bit of a drag for me. I have no family to speak of; my only friends in Vermont are work friends. I'm going to be in for some serious loneliness if I can't find something to do with myself.

My hopes is that I will find a good computer game or two (and maybe some books) to just eat up those lonely times. I'm really looking forward to Fallout 3, which is due out on October 28, but in the mean time the gaming scene doesn't look to hot.

I'm trying a 14-day trial of Star Wars Gallaxies. I'm really ambivalent about the game so far. Playing any game in the Star Wars universe has a whole lot of appeal. Star Wars is just plain cool! Being able to create a character and become part of Star Wars is very satisfying for my inner 9-year-old who stared up at the movie screen in 1977 and was just blown away.

On the other hand, the interface to this game drives me nuts. When you scroll the mouse one direction or another, the cursor stays right smack dab in the middle of screen, while the scenery slides and spins around. I personally find it very hard to actually click on anything I want because this interface is counter-intuitive. The problem is that every single computer application in the universe - not just games, but spreadsheets, word processors, web browsers ... EVERYTHING - uses an interface where the cursor slides with the mouse. Perhaps I am an old dog, but I am so trained in how a mouse interface works that the alternate system in Star Wars Galaxies is a real challenge for me.

And that makes combat suck, big time.

I have crawled up the gun turret in the Millenium Falcon to fight Tie fighters, and been hopelessly awful at it. I can barely hit anything!

I've gotten into gun fights with Hutt Mercenaries and got my ass kicked because I just couldn't target any of them.

Ok, it's really cool to shoot Tie fighters from the gun turret in the Millenium Falcon, but it is so NOT fun to always miss.

Sooner or later (like 13 days from now when my trial account runs out) I'm going to abandon Start Wars Galaxies just because I can't handle the interface.

In the mean time ... can anyone recommend a good game? I don't want to put all my eggs into the single basket of Fallout 3.

I'm trying to keep the wound bandaged and cleaned. I suppose it's healing, but it looks and feels absolutely awful. There's literally no skin on it. There's just a hole in my finger, with the flesh looking out from the inside. And of course it hurts ... a lot. Especially when my it gets in contact with salt.

Now I truly understand the meaning of the expression "rubbing salt in a wound."

I have a day off tomorrow, so hopefully it will heal a bit.

I woke up today at 6 in the morning, pretty much the same as I do every day. Despite refusing to get out from under the covers, I could not get back to sleep. Eventually I dragged myself across the apartment to feed the dog and go the bathroom.

I just opened the door to let the dog out. I had no interest in going outside this morning. She could wander all she wanted - although that really wasn't very long.

I was about to give up on my planned trip to the in-laws. For about 10 days now I'd been trying to get over there to drop off some of my wife's stuff and pick up some of my own. Last week I had gotten called into work, derailing my plans; I'd rather have spent the day at work anyway. Today I was about to abandon them for crappy weather.

But my wife called just before 8 AM to tell me she left some things out for me. It was enough to get me going. Twenty minutes later I was out the door with a few piles of her belongings - just enough to be considered a decent gesture. I was going for quality not quantity.

Thirty minutes later I was cursing myself for not eating breakfast before I left. I didn't want to pilfer the in-laws fridge, but there's really no place to eat on the islands. I settled on a convenience store breakfast sandwich that had been sitting under a heat lamp for way too long.

Thirty minutes after that, the deed was done. My car had been unpacked of her junk and repacked with my junk. I wiped the floor down with a paper towel because I didn't want to hear about leaving muddy footprints before I left.

I really didn't feel particularly awkward or uncomfortable about being in my in-laws house, despite the fact that there was no one home. The whole event went by rather mechanically: carrying her stuff down the stairs, my stuff up the stairs, and finally loading up the car. It was an emotionless task.

The weather was about the only thing preying on my emotions today.

At least now I'm done for the day and don't have to go back outside.

I want to cancel my Bally's gym membership. For starters, I've moved a state that has absolutely no Bally's in it anywhere; the nearest gym seems to be in Albany - a mere 3 hour drive from here. Besides that, I haven't actually been to the gym for years ... I'm just sitting here giving Bally's my $21 every month because I'm too lazy to cancel my membership.

Of course that's what they want. It's almost impossible to cancel a Bally's gym membership. It can't be done by phone. It has to be done in writing, where the onus is the customer to prove that he has moved. Is that insane? Since when did the customer need to prove that he has a good reason for not wanting to pay something?

Conclusion: Bally's is a parasite on society. It should be eliminated like any other harmful plague.

In any case, THAT's not getting done today ... the bastards.

I'm also trying to get a new power cord for my external hard drive. I was smart enough to keep all my truly important files backed up on an external drive, so when my computer melted down I didn't lose much. Unfortunately, the power cord on the external drive has failed, so I need a replacement.

I tried contacted the manufacturer of the drive through their "tech support" e-mail address, but haven't gotten a reply after a week. I've decided to try the "customer service" e-mail address this week. If I don't hear back soon I might have to break down and call them. I'm not looking forward to that since the company is Canadian and doesn't seem to have a toll-free number. I'm pretty sure that I'm only going to get trapped in endless, useless phone menus when it does happen.

I made marginal progress today trying to get all my bills to get charged to my new bank account. The web page I was using wouldn't accept my routing and account numbers even though I was typing them in exactly as they appeared on my checks. Eventually I had to break down and call my bank up and ask for assistance. I think everything got straightened out, but I still need to wait for the confirmation process to complete.

Even if everything turned out ok there, it still was much more of a hassle than it needed to be. I should have been able to set up electronic bill pay in less than 5 minutes and without a call to my bank.

It's a good thing I had the whole day off or I would have gotten nothing done.