Morning… Earlier than I usually post, but this morning is different. See, I hitched a ride out to work with Sarah this morning so her father could teach me how to drive. Funny sounding, I know, but when you can’t drive a manual transmission and your wife’s car happens to be just that? Well, lets just say that I should learn. About darn time…

Its funny, I find myself not playing that much guitar anymore, and folks still know me for it. And I’ve talked about recording one album or another, and well, I just haven’t yet.

Why? Well, its due to a few things.

Whenever I record, I want to take more time to ensure a higher quality. I just haven’t because it involves setting things up, kicking the cats out of the area that my computer is in, and just having the time.

Time is a big thing too. Between classes and the on-going job hunt, well, it wouldn’t be right for me to take an 8 hour day to record 3-4 songs and get them right.

Next up, I just don’t have the drive to do it. I enjoy playing and I do play maybe an hour or two a week, but just not all that much because of homework and trying to keep up with the news and stuff around me.

As a whole, I remember growing up and spending 2-4 hours a day playing guitar, playing sets, practicing techniques, and now? I’ll maybe pick it up for 10 minutes a day for two to three days a week. Not much at all.

The fact of the matter is? Life happens… And soon, I hope to talk more about how I record and what I’ll be doing on a new album that I’m slowly finishing writing and working on…

My apologies. This is just filler today, you could say. There’s a lot of things that are on my plate currently that I’m sorting through.

I’ll have more tomorrow, with a bit more information as to why today is so cryptic. But well wishes are more than welcome, and I’ll reveal all tomorrow.

Believe me, I’d love to say more. Between Edwards endorsement of Obama (which I called on May 9th), Keith Olbermann’s Special Comment last night, President Bush’s Nazi remark against Obama this morning not two hours ago, my classes, and what I’ve got on my plate that Sarah and I are working on now? I have weeks worth of crap for sure.

I promise. Tomorrow.

I nearly forgot that I had responsibilities. All of this week, I found myself watching at least 5 hours of MSNBC a day. Sort of addicting, even if it is the same stories. But I like the personalities that the network has, so I put up with it.

And as they talked about Mother’s Day, I thought I’d throw a question to my audience once again, seeing tomorrow morning marks what I’ve heard is the 100th anniversary of celebrating it as a national holiday or something of that sort…

What are your plans for Mother’s Day?

For me? Well, I can’t talk about that until after the day. You know, in case one of my three mothers stumbles across my blog. Ah, the perks of having an amazing mother and two wonderful mother-in-laws…

And folks who know me know that I’m usually on top of things musically. And here’s why. Yup, every week, I check that site, just to see what new albums might be coming out and I’ll google artists and see what’s what with them. Sarah came to my computer the other day and actually asked me “What the hell is Hercules and Love Affair and why were you searching for it?” I had to explain to her that it was a band name I saw and that because it was dance music, I wasn’t interested. That made for an interesting conversation.

So, I have a sad confession to make. I also find new music from The Hills. Shoot me now. Seriously. Sarah likes to watch it, and because of that, I’ll usually watch with her. I mean, heck, she watches Countdown with Keith Olbermann with me, so I can at least return the favor for half the amount of time. But what I do like that MTV has been doing on that show and other shows is that they (1) pop up the artist name/song name during the episode while it plays and (2) post all of the artists and songs names on their website after/during the show.

Oh, and even though I don’t like the show? Spencer sucks. Well, they all suck, but especially Spencer…

Never ever is easy. While I wasn’t as unfortunate as my lovely wife was to have to return to work, I still have a good long list of stuff to do. Between cleaning things up around our apartment, laundry, and pre-career fair research? Yeah. My list is full…

Before really getting down to things, I’ve been watching the news. I just hit pause at about 8:20 on MSNBC and I took care of some internet stuffs with e-mail, banks, social networking sites, all that fun jazz, and came back to it. And at that point? I’m about an hour behind. As I speak now around 11am, the time on the ticker is about 50 minutes back, so I can fast-forward the commercials, skip sections I don’t want to hear, and all of that fun jazz. Its honestly the best way to get the news in full each morning, and now that Sarah and I are getting up earlier, I get about an hour of my Morning Joe too. Love that show when I have a chance to watch it.

I’ve got a lot of built up rants for when I really start writing this week, but I’d better stop procrastinating on my cleaning now and get that done so I can really enjoy my break before classes start next monday…

The thing about vacations is even when you get back? You’ve got that “jet-lag” where you still want to be on vacation. But now, you need to get food for your place, spend time with your animals, clean off the DVR (which we put a small dent in yesterday) and get ready for work and other mundanes of life from before you left…

I’ll be back with a Sunday Share tomorrow, but I wanted to get in a filler today… I’ve had too many of those recently…

Well folks, I’m just going to make this one brief because Sarah and I just got in about an hourish back, and we’re dead tired and after about 10 hours on the road today? Yeah, I’m just looking forward to a simple night watching the DVD we rented and cuddling. But I’d like to thank the guest writers in my absence, even if they didn’t get around to posting anything. Just putting up with me is a challenge, and next time I’m out of town, you’ll be seeing their faces again if they have the time and such…

Alright, I’d better finish up some internet stuffs and get the heck out of dodge… Back later to usual posting…

With my post yesterday, I realized that I had put off the inevitable long enough.

Starting August, we will have moved. Yes folks, we will finally be leaving Orlando as I’ve wanted for a while. And its right after my graduation and just in time for Sarah to get back to school.

See, I started this blog in late December, weeks after we got the good news. Sarah decided that she wanted to go to law school, so she took an LSAT prep class (Blackstone, which I know she highly recommends) and then took the test in December. And we got a great hanukkah gift this year when she got her score back: 166. For those that don’t know, the LSAT is graded on a bit of a curve, so to put that into perspective, she placed in the 93rd percentile and had 85 out of 100 questions right. That’s damn good. Anything above a 160 or so is pretty much a ticket into any university that you’re looking at, pending your GPA/resumé.

And that being said? We went with Florida State Law School, up in Tallahassee. This, friends, explains that trip that I mentioned a few weeks ago. It was admitted students day up there, so we went up and sat around and listened to them extol everything about the university. We went on a tour of the town. And when all was said and done, we did some apartment hunting on Saturday. Not even two days after returning and our lease was signed for our new place up there, and we’re just letting me finish my semester and then planning on the move. And of course, there’s the laptop hunting, which we find out that XP isn’t as strict a requirement as they make it out to be. Ugh.

So friends, there you go. The reason for me mentioning many times that if you want to see me, you’d better do it before August? Its because I’ll be leaving, still sharing a car with Sarah (because her Dad’s teaching me to drive stick soon), and with a busy work schedule (possibly working two jobs to make ends meet), lord knows that I won’t be able to make it back here much, if at all.

Although, there is a farewell show planned in the works… Details to come…

Well, as I sit here, I’ve played the sales support run-around game for about twenty minutes. You see, Sarah and I are in the market for a laptop computer. She’ll need one come August for Law School (more on that later) and she has specific specifications:

1) Windows XP Pro SP2
2) 2.0Ghz Pentium or AMD processor/1.3GHz Pentium M or Celeron M Processor
3) 512meg ram
4) 802.11g compatible wireless network card
5) 20gig+ hard drive
6) CD/DVD drive
7) 3.5″ drive or USB ports to plug one in
8) 3 year warranty or extended warranty

A fairly standard list of requirements, you know? Mid-level type of system. Well, the biggest problem is that XP is available for sale on so few systems. And for the ones that it is available on, for $100 more after all of the upgrades to it, you could get a Vista Ultimate system with much better specs (NVDIA graphics cards, fingerprint readers, 1-2megs more RAM, 100gigs more on the HD at about 3600rpm faster, .5Ghz faster processor). And why care about Vista Ultimate?

You see, Vista Ultimate is downgradeable to XP Pro. You can transfer your license to a version of XP Pro and use that instead. And trust me, for this laptop and its needs, XP Pro and that warranty are the biggest things.

And therein the problem lies. You see, when you get a $1,500ish laptop, that warranty is damn well important. Especially because you’re upgrading it to a three year warranty in our case. So with that all said, why not just find one of the few XP laptops left and use that? Because you’ll pay about the same money in purchasing it, AND if something goes wrong, you have the rights to Vista and XP.

So Sarah called up Dell because they were the preferred vendor in this transaction. Earlier in the day yesterday, around midday or so. The woman tells her yes, no problem at all, no warranties messed up. Sarah waits to talk to me that night and to hear from her dad. With no call back from him, we call about 20 minutes before Dell closes and then the sales rep tells her on the phone that if you downgrade, you void all of your warranties. Really? Well, that’s funny seeing you still have a EULA with Microsoft and you own the software. Huh. After keeping the guy about 20 minutes after he’s supposed to have left for the night, we pass on it and lose out on a deal that would have made a $2,300 laptop into a $1,400 laptop. A one day deal. Ah well.

We call after them HP. And the HP guy tells me that everything would be fine. It’d all be right as rain with no worries at all and no problems. But as I press him, because we need to be absolutely sure of this, he slowly reveals that if they were to take back a computer and find out that there’s a software issue and not a hardware issue? It’d be on our hands, not on theirs. So we wouldn’t be voiding the warranty but we’d be walking it across a tightrope and hoping that if we fall and land in the net below us, that we land in the net and don’t slip through the rope? Sounds about right.

And then I recalled Gateway.

You see, the junker computer that I use was originally a Gateway. A Celeron 1.3Ghz with a 40 gig HD and 512meg of RAM running XP Pro, I’ve since had a 150 gig HD slaved on for my music/data backup and upgraded to 2gigs of RAM. It still runs slow, but half of that is the internet speed of where it is.

And when I spoke with a guy from Gateway a night or two back about XP, he was extremely helpful in pointing me in the direction of a few that they carried, but that the warranties wouldn’t work right for us. Nice guy, and they’ve always been straightforward with me. So I tried them again and I spoke with someone in sales, and in his own words, “You purchased it with a Microsoft operating system and because you’d be returning it with a Microsoft operating system, you’re covered. Now, if you tried to change to Linux, then you might have problems.” Cool. Finally someone who understands. So we thank him and sleep on it.

This morning, I call up Dell to just check and confirm that what the second guy said is true. And after calling in, dealing with one of those “voice response” systems (which I completely hate, more later), getting transfered to a real live person who transfered me to someone who they said would be able to help me, who ended up being a second operator who transferred to someone who really was supposed to be able to help me? Well, I got a confirmation alright. If we were to downgrade to XP, we’d void our warranties. So obviously, the guy tries to sell me one of the XP systems. My response was simple as I’ve said it before about the capabilities and the specs, and at a $100-200 difference.

As a whole? It looks like dude, we’re not getting a Dell. Gateway’s an option, but if anyone has any suggestions for companies or brands, we’re open to suggestions…

I’m quite honestly surprised that I don’t have more of a headache than I do. Good morning everyone, or afternoon I should say seeing its 12:17ish now as I type this sucker up.

Last night, like any good Jew, I found myself fulfilling one of my duties other than fasting on Yom Kippur and that little thing about 8 days after childbirth. Yup, I’m talking about a Passover Seder. If you’ve ever been to one, you’ll know that it sometimes gets quite dull and you find yourself counting ahead to the next page you get to eat something on, but sometimes if you read it with a political spin, well, it can get quite interesting. You see, I read a passage in it about G-D’s outstretched arm as if it were W speaking about invading Iraq. Ahhh… Religion and politics.

And yes, I know you’re not supposed to talk about those things. But for me? I’m all for it. Matter of fact, the two things I don’t talk about are weight and haircuts. Yup. I’m one of those guys.

So needless to say, the amusing moment of the evening for me was when we had finished dinner (a beautifully cooked lamb by my mother-in-law, with some potatoes, matzoh ball soup, succotash, and asparagus) and the conversation had turned from nutty smelling pee to politics, my sister-in-law and mother-in-law left to prepare dessert plates, my wife headed off to the bathroom, and it left my father-in-law, myself, and Lew (my sister-in-law’s boyfriend, my old friend, and hopefully my future brother-in-law) there discussing McCain, Obama, racism, the economy, and whatever else crossed our paths.

Until dessert came. And at the very second that lemon angel food cake with lemon icing and blackberry dressing came around the corner? In mid-sentence that conversation ended.

I seriously love my family. Politics was taken by the cake.

So to everyone eating matzoh over the course of the next week? I feel your pain. Even if I can’t join you. It wouldn’t exactly do me the best to be eating kosher for Passover when I can barely afford to eat three balanced meals a day. Heck, my average meal? A bowl of ramen and an energy drink.

As I wrote my entry from yesterday, I started to think about the fact that this semester will very shortly be over. And with 17 credit hours–the most I’ve ever taken in one shot–I feel a bit relieved. Its been stressful juggling 5 classes for me. I haven’t juggled this many since I took 14 credit hours my freshman semester, and then it was Comp I, Intro to Engineering, LEAD Lab, Chemistry, and Calculus. Then again, as a freshman, Calculus and Chemistry wasn’t a combination that I should have taken.

But just something for y’all to follow me with next week as I sporatically post, here’s my final exam schedule:

MONDAY: Studying all day, taking my Ethics final when I feel comfortable enough.
TUESDAY: Studying all day, taking my International Business final when I feel comfortable enough. Tuesday night, I would have a Recruitment and Selection final, but I took that early as allowed.
WEDNESDAY: “Free Day.” Not really, but I’ll be studying all day for my Compensation Final on Thursday.
THURSDAY: 1pm seated Compensation final.
FRIDAY: Whenever I’ve read it and am done, I have a Training & Development final.

And with that all said and done? I’ll be done for the semester… Of course, Monday I also register for my final class at UCF, and then classes start back up second week of May, but that’s a post for another time…

Yesterday, I picked up my guitar for the first time in a few weeks and played about half an hour. And it was interesting because as much as I used to love doing it, it was just work for me then. I didn’t derive anything from it. I was “going through the motions.” Playing guitar used to be such a release and something I enjoyed beyond everything, and to have it just feel so “blah”? What’s happening to me?

I think, quite honestly, its the stress. Its the atmosphere I was in.

I used it as a study break and I didn’t feel like it really. I had a small tickle for it, but not the urge to pick up that guitar and let it loose. And I’m hoping that when finals and this semester are all over, I’ll have a little less pressure when I’m on the job hunt that it can go back to being that relaxation. Heck, I’m even hoping that when I’ve got that job secured and I’m working after graduation that I can let it be that relaxation that it used to be.

Because, as I was telling a friend last night, there’s no greater release than playing. There’s a feeling that I cannot put into words at all about being on that stage or just being somewhere with a guitar in hands and knowing that what I’m doing isn’t just putting a smile on my face, but I’m impacting those around me. Even if its just barely hearing me through a wall or the next room over, or its someone blasting one of my songs as they’re away from home and hearing the words and feeling not so alone? There’s something to that that’s just plain amazing…

I’m debating heading to campus a little earlier than my class tonight and spending an hour or so at the fountain on campus, seeing I won’t have much longer to do that…

Last night when I was eating dinner, I grabbed a V8. Seriously. Not because of all of the commercials but because Sarah and I bought a flat of the small 8oz cans from Costco a while back and we’ve been eat drinking them like there’s no tomorrow. And it just so happens that we had out some crunchy baked Cheetos too. If you haven’t tried it yet? Trust me on this one. Cheetos and V8. Combination of champions.

And it sounds weird, I know, but just think of how there are combinations exactly like that in slightly different forms… Its no different than eating a pizza (sauce and cheese) or having some goldfish crackers in your tomato soup. Why, there are dozens of foods like this that we have in the same combination in different forms. Ever think that trail mix which is simply usually nuts and raisins is the same thing as eating a peanut butter and grape jelly sandwich?

We think we’re inventive folks with these combinations, but I’d bet if we really looked at some of these foods simplified, we’d realize we’re eating the same thing, in different combinations.

But, who cares. I’m all about V8 and Cheetos. I could live off of that. Throw in some ice cream for my fats, dairy, and protein? There’s a fully balanced diet right there…