BowerBlog

Hi All!
It’s Friday night and I’m sitting at home in front of my computers (where I’m usually at when I’m at home).

Actually, I’m printing up Xmas cards to mail. I don’t very often mail out greeting cards, but I just felt like doing this year. Being somewhat of an e-card freak, I have subscriptions to MSN Greetings, Yahoo Greetings, and Blue Mountain. Yeah, I know, it seems a little redundant to have subs to three different e-card sites, all of which are powered (one way or another) by the American Greetings Corporation. However, each one of them have slightly different content. I prefer the MSN version for printing out cards; the content is good and the interface is slick as hell. I prefer the Yahoo version for e-cards; the content is more varied and they even have a few gay e-cards. Last, but not least, I have Blue Mountain for homey-type e-cards and their other printables like calendars and such.

To be honest, I’m not much of a Xmas person. (I gotta quit using that phrase “to be honest”; it makes it sound like everything else I say is a lie.) Somehow the Xmas season has always put me in kind of a funk. Kinda like I’m disconnected from it. It’s been a little different the past few years, though. Maybe it’s because of SR. Maybe it’s because I’m getting older. I dunno. But I’m getting so I really like this holiday. It takes a lot of work to ignore the massive influx of commercialism during the holidays and I’m learning to do that. If I tune it out, it seems to be a really nice thing. Celebrating the birth of a religious icon (if you’re of that religious persuasion, which I am), treating the people you love to gifts that they probably wouldn’t buy for themselves, and just generally showing people that you care. It’s kind of cool, all told.

So here I sit, printing out Xmas cards for my friends and acquaintances, running addresses through SwtichBoard to make sure I have them right, and writing this post. I’ve got a beer in front of me, a fire going in the fireplace, and (of all things), the uncut version of Porky’s playing on my DVD player. Ya know, if this keeps up, I might lose my status as a real sourpuss

Yack at ya’ll later, I’ve got some more cards to print.

Hi All!
It’s a cold Monday evening and I’m relaxing over at T’s after going to Lowe’s and WalMart for him. This was quite a day at work; I damn near walked out. The lot has this Mercury Mountaineer over at the shop; it’s been there for several months. It has the typical 4.0 liter E motor timing chain noise. It’ll need chains and guides on at least the front of the engine and I’d be willing to bet the rear chains and guides are bad too. Well, the service manager has kinda been putting this off because it’s such a big job. All at once this morning, they decide they need this thing fixed right away. What’s their idea of fixing it? Change the oil and load it up with oil additives. Fer Christ’s sake, who in their right mind would think that’s going to help broken chain guides and worn chains??? I’m so sick of being second-guessed at this job that I’m about ready to give up trying completely. I guess I’ll just start asking what they want done rather than actually diagnosing any problems.

I never thought I’d hear myself say this about my job, but now I’m just there to put my time in and that’s about it. I’m not the only one there that feels that way either. Oh well, I guess I’ll just keep blogging and keep my eye out for a new employer.

I’m not really in a bad mood, just kind of fed up I suppose. T is fixing dinner, so I’d better wrap this post up. I’ll write again tomorrow.

As Always,
Chris