I was talking to Berta last night about how I need to remake myself.  She said I needed to start making lists.  And yet, while I loathe lists, I need some way to keep track of what I want to do with myself.

• I need to consign to the flame all of those projects which will not receive my full attention.
• I need to choose a project that is meaningful to me and focus on it until it is complete, then start again with something different.
• I need to choose a cause that I can stand for and become involved.
• I need to participate in or attend more events and activities.
• I need to allocate dedicated time to working out at the gym.
• I need a new hobby that is interesting to me but out of the ordinary.

These are just a few of the ideas I had.  I'm sure there is more detail in my head about each of them, but that's about all the energy I have for it right now.

There is a bunch of strange stuff going on in the news today.

Apparently there has been a rash of ATM machines stolen from convenience stores lately.  People are taking the machines at night and opening them at remote locations.  I have seen the security video on TV of the ATM machine that was pulled out of the store on a chain by a truck, but I didn't imagine that this would happen at several locations within this area.

Also, it seems that there is some compound that researchers have used to cut off the flow of blood to fat cells in mice, reducing their body weight by 30%.  They mention that although this all sounds good, they aren't sure if this drug is also cutting off the flow of blood to other areas.  Do you think that some naturally occuring version of this compound may show a correlation between thinness and air-headedness?

I heard an ad that was interesting for Delaware Valley College.  They have a weekend degree program.  You can take classes entirely on the weekends (Friday nights, Saturday, and Sunday) and graduate with a degree in business administration.  Pretty cool.

If you didn't notice, I've been working very hard on my Blog Software Breakdown, a comparison chart of different blogging tools.  I've actually gotten quite a good reaction to it, and it seems like I've finally proven to myself that I can accomplish something on the web if I really set out and put forth the effort to make it work.

People who haven't been reading this blog will not know what a significant thing this is - it validates a lot of what I do online.  Hopefully my next big idea will go over even better, but I dare not reveal the true nature of the secret project.

In spite of people that I talk to getting sick of hearing the word "blog", I'm really excited about this.  It's something that has allowed me to measure my success and be happy with my work.

Other than that, there isn't much immediately happening.  School starts up again next week.  That's pretty much it.

There are other things going on here, I guess, but you all don't want to read about them.  Perhaps I will discuss them with you after the fact, to let you know how they all went wrong.  But today is my day - I'm king of the web in my own mind.

We bought Abby a swingset for her birthday, and I finally got it assembled (mostly) in the back yard.

Dad came down on Wednesday to help me put it together.  He brought all kinds of tools with him.  That's a good thing since I can never find any of the ones we have around the house.  (Note that in my updated wish list there is a request for a tool box with a good set of fundamental tools.)

The instructions said that the assmebly should be allocated 8-12 hours, which we didn't have after I got home from work.  So we worked until it got dark and got most of the wood assembled.  The only wood thing left to attach is the canopy, which seems like I wasn't supplied enough screws for anyway.  Off I go to Home Depot.

Anyway, I thought I'd get the picture online so you can see what a monumental task it was.  There will be more pictures later of the actual construction, which were taken with the film camera since the digital went briefly missing.

I was trying to eat my lunch in peace today and get a little reading done, so I headed over to Burger King.

The Burger King in Thorndale used to be filled with retarded (and I mean this in the literal sense) workers that were always a little oogy to be eating around. I have on at least one occasion been given "the eye" by one of the less attractive girls working there. How do you respond to that? Anyway, Burger King has been a victim of the fast food revolving door, and they seem to have a less deformed staff employed there these days.

You know, all of this sounds pretty harsh, but it's the honest truth. There were retarded people working at Burger King, and they creeped me out by trying to flirt with me, ok? Sheesh.

To get back to my story- I was sitting there trying to read. And now that I'm reviewing this, it sound a whole lot less interesting than the past couple paragraphs, but there's this CD jukebox there that looks like one of those old-time jukeboxes with the bubbles streaming up the sides.

And it's playing Elvis music louder than I've ever heard anything play Elvis.

The music was so loud, that while sitting in a booth on the other side of the dining room I could feel the vibrations of the music shaking through the seat into my butt.

Yeah, I need to stop writing this now before my tongue slips any more.

So, yeah, it's really loud. And this guy sat at the booth behind mine, and I swear to you that he was trying to read my book over my shoulder while I'm eating my fries. What's that all about? Apparently just because the retarded folks don't work at BK any more, that doesn't mean that they don't eat there.

One of the workers was talking about his paroll office being located somewhere that was difficult to get to. He was saying this to a couple of the patrons, who looked like they just got off a construction job.

Besides the construction guys and the psycho in the booth behind me, a couple of teenage couples came in for some fries. Weird that both couples just got fries (a single order) and sodas, both sat at the same table (consecutively), and both arrived with some fuzzy creature attached to the girl's purse straps. Bears in the case of the first couple, and yellow chicks in the case of the second.

Surprisingly, I was able to order my food and observe all of this, and still I managed to read 40 pages of my book before returning to work. I'm amazed.

"One for the money, two for the show..." Stinking jukebox...