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Well, this is interesting. The very same day I decide to look into maybe getting an MBA for like the 3rd time in a year and a half, boom (!) along comes a story to remind me of exactly why I didn’t do it the first few times I’ve gotten that urge: Some say MBAs no longer worth extra cash. Thing is, even if I don’t recoup the investment, I really feel like I need a statistics class. And since I sort of got through college on the minimum of math, I’d probably need a math refresher first, and as long as I’m doing that, then really how many more credits would be left? I’m so very, very conflicted.

So it turns out I like artichokes. Believe me, nobody is more surprised than me. I mean they’ve got choke right there in the name. If you’re going to call something choke, shouldn’t it be the worst most vial thing you’ve got? It certainly shouldn’t be artichokes which are really quite good, at least when cooked in lots and lots of olive oil and garlic. Mmmm.. garlic. Sure to cause heartburn, but oh so worth it.

So for those of you playing along at home, Artichoke - yes. Eggplant - not so much. Romaine lettuce - yes. Iceberg lettuce - what’s the point? Broccoli - yes. Onions - not on their own. If you cut it up really really small and incorporate them as an unisolatable flavor amongst a much larger melange of tastes, then OK maybe. I’m the same way with Ginger. There is perhaps nothing worse on the planet that a giant sliver of raw ginger say on a salad or something, but mince it up, and dump it into an orange chicken sauce, and now we’re talking. Particularly something like Panda Express’s orange chicken. Mmmmm… I wonder if an hour is long enough to wait between meals.

Did I wake up on a different planet or something? Within the last 20 hours or so, two separate people have told me to “Smile”. I mean, what the hell is that?

One of those people, the hostess at the restaurant I went to last night was a total stranger. In that case, the command to smile just took me right out of myself. Now, I spend the majority of my time within myself, so coming out of myself is actually an unpleasant experience. It means I’m forced to confront annoyances like small talk and being polite and considerate. I’m not talking about habitual politeness - when I go to a restaurant, I must say thank you like 10 times depending on how often the server visits the table. With the exception of telling them what I want to eat and how many are in my party, it’s pretty much the only thing I typically say, but it’s completely on auto-pilot. I don’t think about it. I’m not even aware of it.

No, I’m talking about the kind of considered polite behavior where you have to actually process what’s going on and make a choice with respect to how you’re going to respond to somebody. For instance I had to stop myself from responding to the command to smile with something like “Hey, why don’t you fuck off? We’re at the table now. Unless you’re going to ask about bringing me a drink, we’re pretty much done at this point. Aren’t we?” No, instead I was forced to mumble something and sit there for the rest of the meal wondering how you’re supposed to respond to something like that.

Then today at lunch, some guy at another table wanted to start chatting with me about ping pong and remote control cars. I mean ping pong and remote control cars for Christ’s sake. And, how are ping pong and remote control cars related? I haven’t a God Damn clue. I wasn’t listening to the guy. I wasn’t even looking at him. Believe me, I was giving him serious I’m not into this conversation vibe. But, no. It was just more of I got an engine for this car, and I need to get gas for it or some crap like that.

And now just a minute or two ago somebody I’ve worked with for months, someone who really must know that I smile pretty much exactly never, this person repeats the refrain from last night. It’s bizarre. It’s like the normal social rules have flip-flopped, and the leave me alone I don’t want to make chit chat cold shoulder has suddenly become some freakishly desperate cry for attention or something. I just don’t get it.

Number 6 on the list of things you don’t ever want to hear - The gasp of pity/surprise when you take off your shirt and turn around so your doctor can examine your back.

I will go ahead and assume that it was due to the giant, bulging, spasming muscle that has been causing me so much pain for the past few weeks and not some of my other potentially surprising physical attributes.

As I suspected, there was nothing they could do for me but prescribe some strong aspirin. I guess the muscle relaxant may actually do something, although I have some doubts. I rarely go to the doctor, but no matter what I go in for, I always seem to leave with a prescription for some pill or other. Do they do anything? I doubt it, but the doctors have to do something I suppose. It’s probably better than being told they have to cut you open at any rate.

I can say that I spent entirely too much time not laying down tonight. Less moving, more laying - that’s what I always say.

Boy I tell you. If it’s not one thing it’s another. A few weeks ago the hard drive on my TiBook decided to develop some weird unrecoverable sector problem. So of course I immediately go off to purchase a new drive. On the plus side, I now have 40 beautiful Gigs of storage which means I can finally fit all of my songs on my lap top. On the down side, it took over a week for the drive to come in.

Well, Tuesday the drive came in, and I go to install it, but of course it requires a Torx screw driver, and of course I don’t have a torx screw driver. I drive around for a few hours: Radio Shack would have this right - No, Maybe K-mark - No. Do you believe I finally found them at Home Depot? (slight diversion - as long as I was in Home Depot, I figured I’d pick up new sink fixtures since mine have been corroded and leaking from the base since … well since I bought my place a few years ago — not even close to being up to trying to install that one yet).

So, I finally get the drive installed and the software restored, and I’m all ready for a session of wireless surfing from my couch. I’ve grown so used to watching TV and surfing wirelessly that it is almost unbearable to have to go into my office in the next room to get on the Internet.

Sadly, my night of blissful surfing was not to be as with my new hard drive ready to go, my Airport Base station (the antenna that lets me surf wirelessly) decided to crap out.

So, off I trundle to the local best buy to pick up a new router/802.11 b access point - a D-link this time. Of course, then I have to call my cable provider to have them provision the MAC address.

And finally, all is right with the world. I am now laying on my couch blogging my week of digital misery.

Now if I could just figure out why my VCR refuses to send audio to my receiver. I finally broke down and picked up one of the Direct TV Tivo boxes (still waiting for the antenna thugs, that my home owners association hired to enforce their special brand of a protection racket, to come cable me up, so it’s as good as useless still). Anyway, some how unplugging my old satellite receiver and plugging in the new one to the exact same wires seems to have crapped out the VCR audio connection, and no amount of jiggling or recabling can seem to bring my sound back.