Sitting here at work with nothing to do.  Absolutely nothing.  I already shelf-read the entire library last week and I also shelf-shifted to make room for a new set.  The frickin' library is stellar now.  I mean, absolutely on the brink of perfection.  Each of the shelves has about 8-10 inches of open space at the end so that when we get new material it will fit right in.  All of the book spines are as close to the edge as possible making everything look neat and orderly.  There isn't a single book out of place and every book is catalogued properly.  Everytime I go into the library now I pray that nobody has gone in there and mishandled a book.  Its my temporary masterpiece.  So, the reason I have nothing to do now is kind of because the other librarian here went home sick today at noon and before she left she told me to stick around my desk and wait for someone/anyone to request help with anything...and look busy.  Not a problem.  I have taken the occaisional elevator ride to get a change of scenery though.  The elevator bell got me thinking about sound and energy.  Like when the pendulum thingey strikes the bell and transfers energy to it, does the bell create friction with the surrounding air and is that why it slowly stops ringing?  Would a bell in outerspace ring (or vibrate if it didn't make actual sound) forever?  Maybe the sound waves that hit my ear are really the energy getting transferred from the bell to my ear drum making that vibrate as well.  It seems to me that whenever I think of some kind of physical action here on earth, I always try to think of what the effects would be in outer space.  Being an astronaut must be really cool.  I've always wanted to do that but it seems so oddly idiotic.  I'm too tall to be one anyway.  If I were an astronaut, I would obviously do all the requisite experiments that I had been told to do, but I would probably think of a bunch of other things that needed experimenting.  I have to get into outerspace.

Hey, I just found this article on the TV board.  Its about some girl in Dallas who was rollerskating in the street and she got beat up by some cops.  There's a little bit of info on the site as well as some links to other info that I didn't click on.  What'cha all think of this?  Did the thin blue line go all mental beat-upy on a roller-freak or did roller-freak antagonize the rollers?

Scroll down for the pictures...there's blood so consider yourself warned if you're not into the bloody roller-freak deal.

http://nocon.darkflame.net/dallaspoliceabuse/

Yeah, this is a bit creepy.  Its some sort of website for Ewan McGreggor and his wife.  It kind of seems like this is sponsored by them in some ridiculous manner.  What the hell were they thinking? 

http://www.power-of-three.org/fan/ewaneve/

Finally Friday.  Is that a complete sentence?  Probably not...unless you think that the subject-predicate 'It is' is implied.  Anyways, I'm sitting at my desk and the whole office is pretty much empty.  Our 'Winter Gala' is tonight at Avon Old Farms but I'm not going to it.  If I was to attend, I could have gotten out at 4:00, but I'm not so I'm here until 5.  I finished all of my work around 3:00 this afternoon and have been screwing around on the internet for about an hour and a half.  I totally love this job and I'm damn lucky to have it, but I don't know if I really want to do this forever.  The people here are really great, the pay is good and the benefits are amazing.  I get interesting items coming across my desk daily and my position is pretty much fully independent.  I'm definitely going to stay here for at least 2 years because my company will pay for me to get my masters degree after I've been here for one year.  Pretty nice of them to foot the bill, especially since they will essentially be paying for me to get a better job somewhere else unless a position opens up within the firm.  So...what else?  Tonight is shaping up to be good times.  I'm going out with my best friend from K-12 (Kindergarten - 12 grade), his fiance and a bunch of our friends.  Its pretty cool because I hardly ever get to see him anymore because he is a teacher now and he's always grading papers or working on lesson plans.  Whenever we get together we act differently also.  Our mutual friend says that hanging out with us one at a time is normal, but when we get together all hell breaks loose.  Its for that reason that I'm pretty sure his fiance doesn't like me too much.  Heh.  Half an hour left.  I could definitely just get up and leave right now if I was so inclined.  There is really nobody here.  Its just that I don't want to wait outside in the cold for the bus to come.  I'm reading a really good book right now called "Ghost Ship" about the Mary Celeste.  Its based on the accounts written in the Vice Admiralty courts in the 1800's during the salvage hearings.  For those that don't know the story, the Mary Celeste was a merchant brigatine bound for Italy from New York a few years after the American civil war.  After a few weeks at sea, a ship named the Dei Gratia found her abandoned with all her cargo on the open sea.  There were no signs of the crew or any indication of why they left a perfectly seaworthy vessel.  The admiralty court basically tried to convict the crew of the Dei Gratia of stealing the boat or some other method of foul play.  I'm about 3/4 through with it so I guess we'll see.  I was reading 'A Million Little Pieces' but after I heard the guy was full of shit I put that down to read about the ghost ship.  I really like historical stuff a lot better than fiction.  I suppose that historical fiction is ok as long as it is based on historical fact.  One of my favorite books ever was 'The Source' by James Michner.  I didn't want that book to end.  Hey hey, its 4:40.  Dang, that last 10 minutes went by quickly.  This is probably boring the hell out of you so you might as well stop now because it isn't going to get any better.  Hell, its probably not even going to maintain its current entertainment status.  I'm sensing an abrupt nose-dive because whenever I start writing about writing, you know its just going to trail off into mediocrity.  Well, I suppose trailing off into mediocrity kind of implies that this blog post had previously inhabited a stratum of goodness somewhat above mediocrity.  We all know that is a lie and not a very entertaining lie at that.  Oh, this is such a wonderful crash-and-burn.  Flames and debris everywhere.  I can almost smell burning jet fuel as I take off my giant aviator goggles and survey the wreckage.  As I step over a smoking pile of incomplete sentences and poor grammar I hear a voice in the distance.  It sounds like Jennifer Lopez...or its the cleaning lady.  Yep, its the cleaning lady.  Alright, time to go home. 

Today was a weird day.  It probably wouldn't register as a weird day for most people, but it was something different for me.  Pretty much the whole first part of the day was crappy, per usual lately.  Around four o'clock I had a weird thought.  Somehow I rationalized that I have been treating the people around me the wrong way.  I don't know why this hadn't dawned on me sooner, and it seems so damn illogical, but I have been holding people up to my own expectations.  Like expecting people to be just like me...and if they weren't (which is always the case) I would find fault with them.  It was weird when I thought of this and then ran down a list of people I know.  Take my mother, for instance.  I had always assumed that she was absolutely crazy.  I took that thought into account whenever I interracted with her.  Now I realize that she is just 'her'.  That's it.  She has different wants than I do and its not that crazy after all.  The tables have turned and now I feel like I was crazy all along for not accepting this.  Likewise, I had always thought that my brother was an idiot.  Now I see that I was holding him up to my expectations for myself and he's just not smart in the same areas as me.  I pretty much ran all my friends through this new mental formula and I figured out that some of what I percieved as their faults were really my own faults. 

It felt pretty darn bad at first.  Thinking about all the crappy ways I had thought about people and sometimes treated them because of it.  Then I realized that there was a good side to this.  I could fix this and be a better friend, son and brother. 

So, I was walking up to the bus stop, happy in a way because it felt like I had solved a math problem or something.  At the stop, on Central Row in Hartford, there is this guy on crutches with one leg.  Everyday he works his way up and down the street asking for change.  My lunch costs $4.85 a day so I give him the fifteen left-over cents everyday.  Today he came up to me as usual and this time I was feeling so good I decided I would give him a five spot just to see him smile.  I reached into my pocket to get what I thought was a $5, but turned out to be a $10.  Totally gave it to him and it seemed to me like it made his day.  Then he told me I had pretty eyes and I knocked him over.  (Just kidding)

We went out to see 'Hostel' tonight.  I promise no "spoilers".  The first half-hour is gratuitous nudity...just blatant nudity for nudity's sake.  The scary parts were scary and it was pretty sickitating.  All in all, it was a 45% nudity, 45% gore and 10% plot.  I'd really recommend it if you're into the first two

Well, its official!  My car is dead and its wearing a 'Do Not Resuscitate' wristband.  Rest in peace you piece of shit.  The plates are off, the title is signed and the doors are unlocked.    I'm so freakin' happy because that car was a total junker.  I just got off the phone with the guy at the Honda dealership and I'm heading over there this weekend to work something out.  What a frickin' relief.  Even the downside isn't even that down.  I get to ride the bus again tomorrow which is sorta cool in itself.  I don't have to drive in traffic, the bus stop is actually closer than my parking garage was and there's people to talk to on the bus.  I was talking with some insurance auditor from Travellers today and it was cool because she went to college at UConn the same years that I was at Eastern.  She used to go to the bar that was across the street from my apartment.  How weird is that!?!  So, I'm riding the bus again tomorrow and since I have a 10-day pass, I might as well keep riding it until it expires. 

Muahahahahaha!  

I happened to catch the first part of a really cool two part documentary on PBS last night called "Country Boys".  Its documents the high school trials and tribulations of two boys growing up in VERY rural Kentucky.  They both go to the same school, but they aren't friends or anything.  One of them is a Christian metal-head kinda guy who's band writes such awe-inspiring lyrics as "People can be nice, but not as nice as Christ".  The other boy is very socially awkward and has a bunch of family issues to boot.  He invented an imaginary superhero called 'Xavior' whom he tries to emmulate whenever he gets anxiety. 

Anyways, the kids are both about 16 or 17 and it is really interesting to see what goes on in coal mining country.  At least I think its coal mining country.  There are a lot of cut scenes of coal trains.  It starts at 9pm EST and goes until 11 with no commercial interruptions.  I feel bad saying this, but I laughed my ass off at most of it...even though I felt bad for them, it was too funny watching them talk about stuff. 

So, I'm thinking about getting a new car.  I went and test drove a 2006 Honda Civic EX last night.  It was super cool!  I'm really thinking about signing my life over to the dealership in a few weeks.  I don't know if you guys have seen the redesigned 2006 model, but it is frickin' way cool.  Plus I need a new car really bad because: a) my 1990 Geo Metro has 215,000 miles and is going to break any day now and b) I need to get a brand spankin' new frickin' whip to make me somewhat happy about my life.  :)  Mostly A, but a little B in all honesty.  So, I was wondering if any of you guys have heard anything bad/good about the 06 Civic.  I've mostly heard all good things so far, but the car has only been available for about a month now so I don't know how many bad things there could be yet.  Anyways, here are some pictures from last night.

I drove that white one in the background.  It was a 5 speed manual and compared to my 16 year old 3-cylinder, it was a frickin' race car.  I definitely fell for it. 

The Yankees signed Johnny Damon to a four-year, $52 million contract to become their new center fielder. 

Time for a haircut buddy!

So I just had a really good time at work today.  Like a genuinely good time, unlike what is normally considered par for good times at work. 

At around 3 o'clock today there was a retirement party for one of the partners.  She had been there for 32 years.  It was pretty amazing that she was an attorney there when the firm first started with Hebb & Gitlin back in 1969.  At that time there were only 4 attorneys in the firm.  It was really nice to see Mr. Hebb and Mr. Gitlin talk about all the added stuff she took on way back when, like part-time secretary, receptionist, librarian and human resources...all on top of her lawyer duties.

Anyways, we went down there at 3.  I'm considered 'staff' because anyone who isn't an attorney is 'staff'.  Most of the staff is female.  This includes secretaries, the marketing department, human resources and the library.  There are only two staff members in the library, which is my department.  Maggie and myself pretty much run the show, which is very cool because we are both 25 (which is very young in the library profession, let alone to be running a department at a big corporate law firm) and we get along pretty well.

So, down at the retirement party everyone was there.  Most of the staff congregate together and the attorneys congregate with each other, but its pretty well segregated.  Of course, that means that I'm drinking my Heineken and staring at my shoes while the women gossip about their husbands.  Boring as hell.  There is a pretty big percentage of female attorneys, but I only offer that tidbit so it doesn't sound like the attorneys have some kind of 'boys club' or something.

So I'm standing there drinking and not much else.  I happen to look around and I see one of the younger attorneys motion for me to come over.  At first I was a little hesitant because I figured the group of them were talking law or something.  I walked over and he asks, "Hey, I hope you're not over there talking about libraries."  I wish the Dewey decimal system was that intriguing.  Then he asks me if I like baseball.  Shwing!

Turns out I'm a huge baseball nut.  Him (Steve) and a few other younger attorneys were talking about the Red Sox.  Well, I'm a big Yankees fan so naturally the conversation picked up a few notches.  Its not really important what points were discussed, but it felt damn good right then to be talking baseball with a beer in hand.  I usually leave work at 5, but I volunteered to stay a little longer tonight and shmooze with the male employees for a while.  

Its not like its hard to talk to the attorneys or anything, but during work, they talk in legalese and it is a foreign language to me.  When you throw 80 of them into an office, it can be a little intimidating.  It all turned out awesome though and I got the feeling that I broke through some kind of imaginary barrier because now we have some kind of social relatioship and I know there will be baseball talks whenever they pass by my desk this spring.  Woot!

Yesterday I had to go to the Connecticut State Library to get some Legislative history stuff.  Took some pictures on the walk to and from.  Here they be.