today is my birthday. i am 22. i am at work. this would be bad except that so far i’m doing some html/css which is my favorite. i hear homemade lasagna is in the forecast for tonight, plus maybe some csi?

a shout out to my fellow september birthdays – mike, adam, riana, ben folds, harry connick jr, fiona apple, sofia loren, roxann dawson, walter koenig, rosalind chao, madeline kahn, baz luhrmann, etc etc

oh man, did you see that the rerun on enterprise on tonight is the one where t’pol is going through pon farr? oh my god!! yeah, i’ll see you there jon.

it is not allowed to rain on national holidays where you get a day off of work to supposedly go to the beach and have a cookout and maybe swim and drink a lot of corona and eat too much chips and salsa. but it is.

what do i want for my birthday (sept 4)? well, i’m glad you asked. in an effort to keep my family from complaining and to get my parents to buy stuff i want instead of just giving me money and telling me to buy it myself (THAT IS NOT A REAL PRESENT IT IS JUST ME SPENDING MY OWN MONEY), i created an amazon.com wishlist. enjoy. don’t give me that look, by now it should be abundantly clear what a nerd i am. just look at what tv shows i picked.

in wisconsin i saw a billboard advertising “Outhouse Spring” bottled water. first of all, i have no idea why you would name your company this. much less if you’re a water company. but it gets weirder: the billboard i saw proclaimed “l – m – n – o – [picture of outhouse spring bottled water, obviously meant to stand in for “p”/pee/whatever].” while this made a lasting impression, it did NOT make me want to purchase the water. neither did the second billboard: “we’re #[picture of outhouse spring bottled water], they’re #2.” what’s next? a picture of a refreshing bubbling spring with, just visible, an outhouse perched over the water upstream?!

why can’t the merchandise mart have a big cool food court? why is it all suburbia? i mean, i really like arby’s and sbarro but….it’s the merchandise mart. shouldn’t they be setting some sort of standard?

the new office is cool except for the fact that a pipe on the ceiling is held up with some telephone wire that’s been tied around it and a bracket that is bolted into the ceiling next to a bunch of gaping holes where it obviously fell or missed a stud at least 3 times. also the brick walls are like 150 years old, and when you look at it you just have a feeling that if you stared really hard the whole thing would crumble into a remarkably small pile of dust. this feeling is exacerbated by the new brick pieces i keep noticing on the floor and the bricks that are sort of falling out of the wall and the big holes and wooden plugs in the wall that sort of imply that many have already hurtled toward an unsuspecting skull.

please don’t squash me.

eric: and they way they tested you to see if you were an adult was this multiple choice test with all of these in-jokes about Jimmy Carter

eric: i mean, i guess that’s a good way to do it

eric: i mean what little kid is going to know that?

[pause.]

kara: well…you knew…

eric: hey, the way i figure, if you’re that big of a nerd you deserve to see some pixelated boobies.

what a shit week. let’s hope it gets better when the rents bring my new bed tomorrow after over a month without one. or when i get to go home this weekend and see my kitty. probably won’t be that great when i’m at the ortho or dentist or the wedding all by myself, but…oh well.

pat: hello, steve? well, i was thinking i’m really tired and i want to get some sleep before this thing tonight so can i come over and like take a nap?….well i know but….i know, but i could sleep on the floor or…couch?…even the kitchen…i can sleep on the stove…

kara: this is the most pathetic conversation i’ve ever overheard.