Journal Entry: January 15, 2009

I had a busy lunch break yesterday. Called Sprint, TiVo, Blockbuster, Pikepass, and AAA Fire & Casualty Insurance, mostly doing account maintenance. I also picked up some text messages for my cell phone, so I can send and receive without worrying how much it’s costing me.

After work we met D– and K– and N–, along with N–‘s mom and step-dad at Taco Cabana. We also had my niece Sophy, who T– was babysitting for the night, so it was quite a crowd.

Dinner was fun, then afterward K– and D– and I went home to play Rock Band while the rest went a-churching. I also showed off my new media center setup (it’s some slick software on a cheap computer), which is pretty sweet.

We played through about half the No Doubt songs that D– had gotten. I’m working on transitioning to Lefty mode, which is surprisingly challenging. The biggest problem I have is sight-reading. There’s all these standard patterns that I’ve memorized on normal mode, and they look just enough different reversed that I can’t automatically recognize them anymore. So I’m stuck thinking through every single beat again, like when I first started playing.

There’s a few things I was doing wrong, that I can see clearly now with this transition, though. So that’s good. I just need to get back up to speed.

Once T– got home from church K– went home (picked up by N–), and D– headed to his place to make a raid. T– and I watched an old episode of Numb3rs through Boxee’s internet browser (CBS now has a well-stocked web channel, along with Comedy Central and everybody on Hulu). Meanwhile I played some WoW, messed with remote settings, and subscribed to some shows on Hulu. It was fun.

And over too soon. I went to bed around 11:30, and had trouble getting up this morning. Luckily tomorrow’s RDO and Monday’s a Federal Holiday. I was this close to taking a day of vacation today, and making it a five-day weekend, but I gave in at the last minute. Four days should be good enough.

Other than that, it’s just things and stuff.