Opening Day, baby! Whoooooooooo!!I am going to the Cardinals opening day game on Sunday, against the "pond scum" Mets of some little back water called New York City. It should be a great time, even though most of my coworkers who I am going to the game with will be three sheets to the wind before the game even starts. I will put up with drunks for this, though, as I have never been to an Opening Day game for any sport, ever.
I bought my car 5 years ago, next month. In that time, slightly shy of 60,000 miles traveled, I have never put new tires on the car. Realizing that most tires don't really last much longer than 60,000 miles, I had the guys at the auto shop check the tread wear on my tires when I had the car in for an oil change this morning. The man was surprised that those were the original tires, because they probably still have another 20,000 miles worth of tread on them. It could be that the tires are simply the most awesome tires ever made (they are UniRoyal Tiger Paws, if you like details), or maybe my practice of rotating the tires roughly every 7000 miles or so is making a big difference. Or maybe the way I drive just puts less wear on tires than normal. Whatever the reason, I have $500 that I set aside months ago to buy new tires with, and it looks like I won't be spending that money on tires any time soon. And those of you you who know me understand how much I enjoy not spending money when i don't have to.
I got my car back from the shop yesterday evening, transportation courtesy of my brother Mark, who is in town from Iowa on his spring break. Some people go to Mexico and engage in drunken debauchery for spring break, but my brother comes to Missouri and eats cookies. While cookies are good, they don't rate very high on the debauchery scale. Anyway, my bro took me to the body shop, and I now have my own car back. They fixed the dent, so all is good. The only thing that didn't go as planned was the fact that the repair work took three days, instead of the two that I had been told over the phone. I had gotten permission to work from home for two days, so that I would not have to rent a car. I was never going to get permission for a third day, however, so I had to rent a car for one day so I could get to work. I will hand it to Hertz; they made it very easy. They drove the car to my house and just checked my drivers' license and left me the keys. Ah, the joys of being #1 club Gold. So I ended up with an extra $40 expense, but it could have been a lot worse.
New comic reviews are up at my website.
Not exactly, but I could be. I am working from home today and tomorrow while my car is in the shop for body repairs. Fun! I am lucky enough to be working from home on perhaps the nicest days in St. Louis over the last few months, so I will have to abuse the situation somehow.My younger brother, Mark, is coming in to town today from Iowa. He is here on spring break. The man is 29 years old, and is still in school, so he still gets sprint break. Crazy. We are going to try to get together on Saturday morning to go hiking, which will be cool, as I haven't been hiking since autumn last year. Mark will go hiking when it is freezing, but I won't. The good weather looks like it won't stick with us into the weekend, but it shouldn't be too bad.And, finally, I would like to give a giant raspberry to the NCAA tournament selection committee. They are just a bunch of haters. Granted, I knew that they wouldn't give Missouri State an at-large bid, because they showed last year that they have no respect for the Bears at all. That being said, all of the mid-majors conferences got rocked this year, and it's not right! Pitchforks and torches, people! We're off to storm the castle!
In case you are wondering why there hasn't been much blogging the last couple weeks, that would be because there just hasn't been much going on the last couple of weeks. Work, more work, beginning to study for the CIA exam, missing sleep, working out, eating food, working out some more, projects at church, projects at work. Yeah, that pretty much sums it up. Oh! I forgot the vacumming and laundry and stuff. Very important.
On the plus side of things, I got my first tax refund check back. Getting checks in the mail feels like winning the lottery, even when it is my own money that my company overpaid to the state in the first place. It isn't every day that you get your tax refund in a four-day turnaround, though, so I'm not complaining. To balance out the universe, I probably won't see my Fed refund until May.
In other news, my brother Christopher will be moving to Florida (Orlando, I think) next month. Now who will get my mail for me when I am out of town!? Problems. I am also having my car worked on this coming week, so I will be without wheels for a couple days. On the downside, this will keep me from getting to the gym on my regular schedule. On the plus side, it provides me a great reason to telecommute for a couple days, which should save me a good 2 1/2 to 3 hours of driving time over a couple days. Yes, I'm trying to focus on the positive. For those of you who don't know, my car is actually fine; I am getting a dent fixed that my friend Tony put in the left rear door back in December.
If anything exciting happens, I'll be sure to let you know about it.
This is one of the more interesting uses for economic analysis that I have come across. I must admit, the general theory (which I have too much experience with) seems pretty accurate. I must admit that I find the comments even better than the article, though. Indeed, there is no calculable Nash equilibrium for cute brunettes.
Opening Day, baby! Whoooooooooo!!