This is kind of a rebirth edition. With pictures / graphics. Enjoy.

• The Phoenix: So Hilly decided to reinvent herself. I can’t wait to see what she’ll do next. Just so you know, I’m totally stealing the Hilly Sundays and making them Mikey Sundays. I kid, I kid. I never blog on Sundays anymore.

• The Dark Phoenix: I’m thinking about this. Again. I already did this and that, so I’m thinking about making it official. Again. Feel free to gimme your thoughts, opinions and assvice.

• The Wheel of Time turns, and Ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend. Legend fades to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth comes again. In one Age, called the Third Age by some, an Age yet to come, an Age long past, a wind rose. The wind was not the beginning. There are neither beginnings nor endings to the turning of the Wheel of Time. But it was a beginning. So I completely missed the release of Gathering Storm, the 12th (and final) book in the Wheel of time series. Well, true to the Robert Jordan experience, the final book has now become a three book saga. So the ending is really a beginning. As it should be, I guess.

• Galaxies are Colliding: I look good in black.

In a slightly modified Call of Cthulhu tradition, I’ll keep the last two bullets for myself – the madness is here and I’m not going down without a fight.

That is not dead which can eternal lie.
And with strange aeons even death may die.

Oh yeah, it’s Monday all right.

This is “Disintegration” from Luke Chueng.

I gotta keep it together. I might kill someone before the day is over*. Stay tuned.

*Of course I won’t. But if I did, wouldn’t this be messed up?

There’s this joke in French. It goes like this:

Je m’entraîne pour avoir un corps d’athlète. J’ai déjà commencé par avoir le pied d’athlète.

It translates something like this:

I’m training to get an athlete body. I already started with athlete’s foot.

Not that funny I know.

In my case I would trade my ripped left calf muscle for athlete’s foot.

According to Doctor Google, I tore my Plantaris tendon, pretty much right where you could draw a line between the two Soleus muscles lines in that graphic.

The result is intense pain, kinda like your calf is in a constant state of cramping. You know the feeling some people experience in the middle of the night when they wake up rolling on the floor clutching their calf and crying? Well, I have that exact pain all the time.

Doctor Google told me that I should compress, ice and elevate the leg. Doctor Google also said that Tylenol or something similar to Tylenol would help with the pain.

On my way back from work yesterday, I bought two massive Tylenol buckets – one “Extra Strength” and one “Muscle Aches & Body Pain” – and one giant elastic bandage similar to this one:

Of course, within minutes of putting the bandage on, one of the fasteners broke. I also took 2 pills and elevated the leg.

Well, Doctor Google was right. I feel much better today. I won’t be running anytime soon, but at least I’m not whimpering and rolling around on the floor in my office anymore.

Doctor Google: The only true universal health care.

I posted this same image last year.

I’m reposting it again this year, because quite frankly, I have absolutely nothing to say about 9/11.

But…

I feel that publishing something about my kids, my work or my Wii would be disrespectful.

Peace.

Well lookadat.

I finally make a graphic, and Kidless Week is cancelled? WTF?

Actually, it’s not really cancelled. It’s just put on hold on account of bacterial tonsillitis. At this point it’s only LovelyWife’s issue, but I am told by my Favorite Nurse that odds are not in my favor: It turns out that Bacterial tonsillitis is highly transmissible by saliva, and since this is a kidless week, we had the chance to do a lot of saliva exchanging activities. By that of course, I mean that we ate using each other’s fork at the restaurant. I was told that odds that I’ll get infected are 80-20. Those are not good odds.

So Kidless Week is not over, but we didn’t feel like going out yesterday night. We stayed in and ordered pizza – pepperoni / cheese / bacon. Hey Becky, I think that qualifies as regular food, yes? Unfortunately, it’s nothing to blog about.

Oh, I also had a whole post about how Crocs sucks, after spending half an hour on the phone with them trying to find out what happened to my order, only to be told that they lost the manifest that said my order was really shipped, but I was assured that it had been shipped and that I should get it tomorrow if not today, and to call back next week if my order didn’t come in.

Oh I’m a king at multitasking, so half an hour on the phone equals this:

Of course, I’m not going to use it now, but no sense letting my hard work go to waste.

Now if you’ll excuse me I’ll go try to better my odds at beating this bacteria by having one or twenty more Scotches. This MacAllan is medecine to me right now.

One last thing: I think I’m addicted to those smileys. Thanks BluePaintRed!

Oh, and I agree, it’s not a really good graphic.

My home computer is dead.

My seven year-old AMDK6 1.3GHz with 1G of RAM and 80G main HDD (second 320G HDD) just stopped working.

Actually, it’s the main HDD that died.

So now the question is: Do I get a new HDD for 200$ 80$, and reinstall XP (my computer is too old for Vista) and basically spend a few days trying to prolong it’s useful life – which would be much easier achieved by installing Ubuntu like I planned on doing about a month ago –  do I get a new Windows-based computer for about 1500$ 1000$ or do I finally get a Mac for 2500?

Here’s another option: Do I live without a home computer for a bit?

And as a corollary: what will I do with all the extra space?

Decisions decisions.

+++++

In other less gloomy news today marks my parent’s 38th wedding anniversary.

EDIT: I adjusted some of the prices I quoted originally.