Notes from the Cave

This must be the sort of day Axl Rose was experiencing when he wrote "November Rain."

It's November, it's cold, and it's pissing with rain.

Had a good Halloween with the kids this year.  In fact, I think I can say it was my favorite Halloween as an adult.  I dressed up as an undead Druid, using a black hoodie and my Buddhist meditation robe, along with a bit of carefully applied face paint.  I scared the crap out of a bunch of kids, which always makes for a fantastic time.  This picture pretty much says it all.

My brother-in-law handed out the candy and provided comic relief, while I just sat there silently, staring menacingly at people.  When kids would get squirrelly, and start touching me and asking if I was real, I would jump suddenly at them.  Good times.

I have had the last two days off, but work again tomorrow morning at 5 a.m., then Saturday night and Sunday night.  This will be the second year in a row I have worked third shift on the night we switch the clocks back.  That means an extra hour of work.  In addition, my hospital will be updating its systems starting at 1 a.m., which means we will not only work an extra hour, but also have our computers down.  This always makes for an enormous pain in the ass.

My debit card expired on November 1st (Tuesday) without my knowledge.  I went to buy a soft drink at the gas station that day and discovered it was expired.  A computer glitch evidently kept the new card from arriving on time.  As such, I have no access to cash at the moment.  I was going to grab something for lunch today, planning on using a credit card.  Without my knowledge, my wife had removed the credit card from my wallet.  Fortunately, I checked my wallet before going inside and ordering food.  Why she took the card is a mystery, but I assume she took it to use it, then forgot to give it back to me.  

I am working on my next e-book publication.  It is a short historical narrative on the Donner Party - the group of California emigrants who got trapped in the Sierra Nevada Mountains in the 1840's and had to eat each other.  This was originally published here on my blog in a series.  I am going to e-publish it as a short book for 99 cents on Amazon.  Obviously, I will post a link to it once it is available.  Even if you have read it already here on my blog, and even though you could right now find the links for the series on the sidebar, I sure would appreciate my loyal readers ponying up the 99 cents to support me on Amazon :)  

For all you gmail users out there, have you started using the "new look"?  Right now you can choose to use the old look or the new look, but eventually the old look will go away.  I hate to sound like all the crybabies who whine every time Facebook gets updated, but I really hate this new gmail thing.  It's taking a lot of time for me to get used to.  Like the recent changes to Facebook, these changes are pretty dramatic, much more than they have been in the past. 

I'm planing a blog post soon discussing the Occupy Wall Street protests.  I figure this is only fair considering all my posts about the Tea Party.  The gist of the discussion will center on income inequality, which is the primary impetus of the OWS demonstrations.  I hope to make it readable and politically centrist, so I hope you will read it. 

I really would love to have wings and beer right now.  Wish I had access to my bank account.  I guess I'll just end up walking in the cold November rain.