It used to be at this hour that I'd get paid a lousy amount of money to...

say "3:22 on your Saturday morning, and if there's a song on your mind, something you're just dying to hear, pick up the phone and dial 796-1100 and I'll do my best to get it on for you on the desert's music radio, Klassy 100 FM."

Now I'm up at 3:22 and I'm not being paid poorly to play music on the FM dial, and there's no good reason to be awake.  Except that I am awake, thanks to the fact that the sleeping pills I'm taking are not working well.  They are great at helping to fall asleep, but they aren't working well at keeping me asleep.  That's what the doctor said on Thursday.  The new pills, which hopefully in combination with the old pills will help me fall asleep and stay asleep, are somewhere in the process of being shipped to me and I may get them by the time I've spent a week or ten days doing this more and more often.  Apparently getting up earlier and earlier judging by the past few days.  I would have waited to pick them up, but then I'd have missed the lunch served here at Happy Valley on Thursday and been forced to eat out yet again.  So, as part of my effort to eat here more often and eat out less, I told them to mail me the pills and got here in time for lunch. Which upset my stomach and make the rest of the day one of those days where you don't wander far from a restroom.

The district manager for H&R Block is supposedly going to finally show up at the class next week.  Maybe Monday, maybe Wednesday.  So that means today or tomorrow I have to go out and buy some clothes so I can wear something other than shorts and a t-shirt or sweatpants and a t-shirt to class so I look at least semi-human.  That should be fun.  I love clothes shopping with the same fervor that I love having an incompetent lab tech try to draw blood or maybe the same passion with which I just adore sitting in rush hour traffic watching idiots watch an accident that's on the side of the road.

I missed one question on Friday's quiz.  Because it was the last question and unlike the previous 15, I didn't keep going slowly and just wanted to get it done.  Had I gone back and re-checked it like I had the other 15, I'd have noticed I'd fallen right into the trap set by the test question's author.  I facepalmed myself gently when I saw what I'd done.  Interesting how we forgive silly mistakes made by others and are far less forgiving of them in ourselves, eh?

I actually enjoy listening to the radio talk show host that is on today from 4 to 6, and on again at the same time tomorrow, so I'm arranging my weekend around being able to sit in front of the computer and listen to her during those times.  Not sure if it's her sense of humor, the topics she brings to the table to discuss or just my own missing radio altogether that has me glomming on to at least some radio. 

The bad news is that I don't want what's for lunch here today.  The good news is that the movie I want to see would have kept me from having lunch here anyway.  The really bad news is that the situation is the same tomorrow if I decide to go see the only other movie under consideration for a weekend viewing.  Considering I'm seeing 2 movies on Tuesday at AFI press screenings, I may not be up for a film on both Saturday and Sunday.  I'll have to see.

I'm a fan of Star Trek, almost all of its incarnations (not a big fan of the "Enterprise" show with Scott Bakula as the captain), but I wouldn't fly to London to go to a  fan convention just because Captain's Kirk, Picard, Brooks, Janeway and whatever Bakula's character was named were sharing one stage. But I bet a lot of hard-core Trekkers did.  Why they did is beyond me?  It's one thing to enjoy a show and immerse yourself in its minutiae.  It's another to don pointy ears, wear uniforms and learn to speak Klingon.  Talk about going where no one else has gone before.....

Which is why it isn't surprising that in Britain, where this "reunion" was going on, we saw the world's first wedding ceremony performed in Klingon, by two people made up to look like Klingons.  Folks, the only real klingons in this world come from when you don't wipe your ass properly.

There's a battery making plant in Michigan built with tens of millions in government subsidies that sits idle, as there is no demand for the batteries it could build.  I'm not blaming the President or anyone in his administration, there are growing pains when you move in the direction of new technology.  But to be paying people to sit and play Monopoly all day is almost enough to make one think about moving to Michigan to take one of those do-nothing jobs.  Oh well, there are plenty of do-nothing jobs in government almost anywhere that one could get.

Maybe this why the economic future of the U.S. is in doubt.  The obsession of women with getting their hair "blown out".  I just read about a 23 year old in New York City who spends 15% of her annual salary having her hair blown out twice a week.  15%!!!  Beauty is expensive.  I remember taking my first wife to the beauty shop and it cost me $300 just to get an estimate.  The choice was fix her or fix the car.  Easy choice.  Fix her or sleep in the car.

Residents of Southern California would be so up in arms if Rupert Murdoch were to buy the L.A. Times and take the newspaper on a more conservative slant.  I can see their chief liberal apologist,  James Rainey suddenly looking for work elsewhere.  But I doubt it will happen.  The paper will likely be sold, but to someone other than Murdoch who has his own problems at the moments.