Anything banned is on my list to buy. The list does not get updated very often, so I don’t make it a crusade to find things that are banned. But so far, I think I have:

• 2 Live Crew: As Nasty as They Wanna Be
• Rage Against the Machine: Evil Empire

Wait, that’s it? And I never even listened to the Rage Against the Machine CD. I got that back in the late 90’s, and even had to get BMG to ship me a second copy since the first one had a CRACK in it, and I never played it! If I had my big iPod at work (and if I hadn’t erased everything on it in a giant bizarro experiment to backup my laptop) I’d try listening to it RIGHT NOW.

OK, so I also read all the Harry Potter books after they banned it, and I started using Morse code on ham radio after the military “banned” it (obsoleted, really). So I guess there is some more to the banning thing and being odd.

Oh, and I’m not all that sore this morning. Just very, very tired.

Met with a trainer today. When I got to the gym, he’d forgotten and had already left. No biggie, since it didn’t take very long to come back. In any case, he showed me some exercises that were very simple but very difficult. Ever tried pushups with your toes on an exercise ball?

In any case, holding my arms high enough to type on the keyboard is making them very tired. I think he also said, “You have anything against Advil? You may need Advil tomorrow.”

So the mason came by and he thinks the facade on the front of the house is sinking. That means tomorrow I get to talk to “earth anchor” about something-or-another that is going to cost a lot of money. Well, the option is watching the front of the house crumble, and I don’t like that idea. Yar. Home maintenance.

Since it’s in the low 90’s today, I have little else to talk about other than that I can’t wait for the cooling that’s supposed to happen in a couple of days!

OK, I can’t remember what I was going to go on about, so first, some spooky sounds from NASA. Click on the “play sound” link for Halloween-y science-fiction-y sounds.

I finally made an appointment with a trainer so my undirected flopping around at the gym can be more directed flopping around. I really should be saving my money, since we’re having the gutters replaced and the stonework in the front of the house fixed.

And finally, a picture:

My connection has been awfully slow some days so I decided to install some graphing software to show me what’s happening. What’s happening is that so far, this month, my sister’s site has had 1273756 hits. That’s 1 point 3 million. I’ve had 32 thousand. Yar!

So instead of doing the one thing I thought I’d do, go running — well, go running and then mow the lawn — I attended a neighborhood meeting with our neighborhood police officer, helped one neighbor install a new air conditioner, and then helped another neighbor move some furniture. After that it was lazy time. This shows you why my sister gets 40 times more hits than I do. My life is booooring. Ice cream socials for her while I’m watching “The Replacements” on TBS. Well, it’s my life and I miss football.

I was supposed to go to a barbecue tonight, but I was hanging out with Greg and I ended up going out to dinner with his family. That wasn’t so bad, but you know how a cartoon character can eat a bomb and have his body expand due to the internal pressure? I felt like that. Not really sure why, and I’m also not sure why I’m not burping and why the gas production happened quite a ways “south” of my stomach. Anyway, I’m feeling better, but there’s a good chance that a hazmat team could be called in if someone gets near me tonight.

It also looks like a bazillion people are hitting my web server, but I haven’t quite figured out what pages they’re looking at. Time for more graphs.

Most everyone who deals with Key Bank (or has dealt with Key Bank) told me, “Well, duh. Everyone knows they suck ass.” What they do well is to charge my poor mother fees for every little thing she does. She transferred a bunch of money into a Key Bank investment from a Key Bank CD and it just meant a free-for-all on extra added charges. So, usually, we go into the local branch and talk to the local manager. Every stinking month they’d charge her $12 and she’d have it credited back.

But guess what? The branch manager transferred. So I go in there and this new guy is giving me the hard line on the apparently non-refundable $25 fee on all IRAs under $1000. “Call the number on the statement,” he says. I tell him what we usually do and am about to tell him how much I love the voice maze on the phone line. He holds the thing behind his back and says, “I can’t do that.” I ask why. He tells me, “It’s not even your account.”

His demeanor and his lack of helpfulness made me want to call him a runty little pile of crap, but instead I said, “Call the police. If you think I stole this account information, call the police. I’ll wait for them.” He refused so I asked for something more reasonable, the number for the old branch manager and his name. Hector Martinez. I was expecting something else, something more Middle Eastern, but what do I know?

Later, I spent a half-an-hour in voice maze hell and had my questions answered. The general answer that Key Bank gave me is: withdraw all your money and put it somewhere else. The penalties for closing out a less-than-$1000 IRA are less than the $25 yearly fee and there’s no reason to keep a small checking account at such an annoying bank.

Not much new today. Peter was supposed to be away for dinner, so I was going to go to the gym. He ended up coming back to my parents’ house, so I was supposed ot skip the gym and head home.

Not a whole lot to report after that. I ended up in the basement trying to get some electronic gadgetry to work. Unfortunately, everything I touched went to hell today. The morse code gadget I was playing with the other day now has a fine display on it, but it no longer makes any sound. The PIC programmer I bought no longer connects to the computer.

Plus, all sorts of mysterious knit bloggers are leaving me comments. I BLAME MY SISTER.

No, not me, but my sister. My brother-in-law is here and he’s a weird old man. I’m a spoiled kid in this house, I admit it, but my ma was trying to save 2 pieces of pizza, one for me, one for Peter. He ate them both. He almost did the same thing with a large bottle of beer. And today we went to a movie (The March of the Penguins — it put me to sleep at one point) and while we were sitting on a bench in the theatre waiting for friends to arrive he said, “OH! LESBIANS!” Not that I think he has anything against lesbians, he just seems to talk like an old man, too.

He is a nice guy, though. Just sorta like pa.

CLARIFICATION: Peter is only a few months older than I am, and I’m only 16 months older than my sister. So he’s almost a couple years older than her. He only ACTS like an old man. Not that we’re spring chickens or anything. (This clarification is for the few people who read this for whatever unknown reason, and who haven’t actually met Peter.)

I should have gone to sleep early yesterday but I stayed up and finished the Harry Potter book. I had to return it to the library for the next person to read. The only disappointment I have is that it kind of seems like it’s just setup for the next book. Oh, well. Can’t win them all.

Way to tired today to do much of anything. Was a bit crankier than usual, but most everyone probably thinks I’m cranky all the time. I was so tired that I was thinking of going to the gym. Fortunately, I thought better of it because when I got home I had a hard time trying to strip the packing foam off of cardboard I wanted to recycle.

So, sorry for the dullness, but I’m busy reading the Harry Potter book.

Well, I was going to take it easy and read Harry Potter all day, especially since we have an out-of-town visitor and it was supposed to be 90°F. Instead I was up at my friend Greg’s house, on top of his tower, until it started to get very dark around 9PM. I had turned down my answering machine since it’s in the room my brother-in-law is staying in and I didn’t notice I had messages until 10AM. Well, at 10AM I was told to be at Greg’s at 10AM. Luckily I wasn’t the only one who was late. We were up there a long time, but we did get a dinner break around 4PM.

The part I was interested in, getting the antenna working that is used to talk around the world, is finished. I am also very tired and need to get some sleep, I expect. I bet I’ll stay up a bit and read the Harry Potter book, though.

Oh, and I remembered to wear a long sleeved t-shirt, but my hands and my neck are a bit sunburned (in case you wondered about the title of this post.)

I bought a roll-around air conditioner today and it barely fits between my desk and my bed. In fact, the bed covers up some of the air vents which could be a very bad thing indeed. It’s a 9,000 BTU Frigidaire, whatever that means. It should make lots of noise and, if I’m lucky, will cool down the room the next couple of days when it’s supposed to be in the 90’s. The receipt was stamped with a “no return” notice. I guess people pull the “SuperBowl trick” and buy the things when it’s hot and try to return them when it cools off. It also doubles as a dehumidifier so it has other uses.

I finally had to clean up the room I mentioned several days ago. What a mess that was. I think I can throw away some of my phone bills from 2000, but I figured I’d better do everything a little bit at a time. Mostly I moved everything around but I ended up with a two-foot stack of paper recycling.

And fortunately I was finished before my brother-in-law arrived.