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.