I cherish my luck.

I am on one of my mood highs the last few days. I think it is a combination of the end of my period, getting my hockey tickets (GO WINGS!) and a long trip to Houghton, Detroit and Chicago coming up in 2 weeks. Even getting my car towed for expired tabs and unpaid parking tickets Friday (Yeah I know, I'm a lazy irresponsible bum, but at least I recognize that it is entirely my fault.) can't ruin my mood.

I have the best friends. Really, I can't express how completely captivated I am with all of you. You are the most amazing, caring, fun, outragous, inspiring, intelligent, wonderful people. How I get to be lucky enough to have the honor I don't know, but I wouldn't trade my friends for anything.
Moving so far away, and I have great friends, some I hadn't talked to in years, or only knew casually, that include me and invite me out all the time, help me when I need it, give me crap when I need to be straightened out. Even their friends are great, treat me like one of the group and like they've known me forever.
Friends that I moved away from or moved away from me, they keep me included, come out when I'm in town, open their homes to me without a second thought, stay in touch although I am terrible at it myself. I miss you all so much.
People I haven't seen in years, we pick right back up like there was no time in between. I marvel at that every time. Some of them I haven't seen in ten or more years, but as soon as we say hello, it's like that time apart never exisited. How does that happen? We've all changed, but at the core, we are still friends. It is remarkable.

Follow my thoughts...Houghton to Orange Roughy.

I was trying to explain how far Houghton is from Milwaukee. So I was looking at Michigan on Google maps. And Mackinaw caught my eye...

My Wisconsin-native coworker is adamant that Mackinaw and Mackinac are pronounced differently. Which is irritating for 2 reasons.
1. They aren't. Both are pronounced "naw".
2. I'm from Michigan. She's from Wisconsin. Mackinaw is in my state so it is pronounced the way I say. I'm not even getting into the proper spelling of Cheboygan...

So I then went to http://www.m-w.com/. Which also has the handy tool of pronouncing words for you. Which proves the correct pronunciation is naw" Listen here yourself: http://www.merriam-webster.com/cgi-bin/audio.pl?ggmack02.wav=Mackinac It's silly I have to prove this, but...

I also searched Mackinaw. And found out there is such a thing as a Mackinaw Trout. Which is described as 'a large dark North American char '. Char? They just aired an episode of Iron Chef where they were cooking Arctic Char, I wonder if they are related...

So I search Arctic Char. Same genus, different species. But the wiki entry also refers to 'the Monterey Bay Aquarium "Seafood Watch" program. So I look that up...

And find this very cool Seafood choice guide. http://www.mbayaq.org/cr/SeafoodWatch/web/sfw_regional.aspx Which makes me very happy as I can remember a few eat/don't eat fish rules, I can rarely keep them straight and this comes as a printable pocket guide too. Did you know...

Orange Roughy is on the avoid list. See the notes from the site below.

Orange Roughy
This deep sea fish, once known as the “slimehead,” grows very slowly and doesn’t reproduce until it’s 20 years old.

Consumer Note: Orange roughy live 100 years or more—so the fillet in your freezer might be from a fish older than your grandmother!

Health Alert: Environmental Defense Fund has issued a health advisory for orange roughy due to high levels of mercury.

Summary: Unfortunately, years of heavy fishing have decimated orange roughy populations. Although fishery management plans are now in place, it’ll take decades for this slow-growing fish to recover. Another concern with orange roughy is the way it’s caught—by bottom trawling. This fishing method can damage the seafloor habitat, and we don’t know what impacts that damage might have on fragile deep sea ecosystems.

Have a nice day.

I had to ruin another person's day today. She was sure the qwerty in the qwerty keyboard was the inventor's last name. Because her 3rd grade teacher said so. I think teachers get bored and make crap up all the time. Or maybe it's just this: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2008/09/03/state/n182420D74.DTL&type=science Actually my Mom used to have fun doing that to me. The inventor is C.L. Slope by the way and he invented in in Milwaukee.

Boys are bad drinking buddies.

...and by bad I mean I feel like crap for at least a day after, and feel disgusted about the amount of money I just paid to feel like crap. I try telling them I'm not drinking, then I get strange looks and exclamations of complete disbelief. I try and have managed not to drink or drink in moderation (2 per evening) but that has not been consistant.

It is either go out with them or languish in my house, what am I to do?

What other activities can I entice them into that does not involve drinking, or at least is limited? And at a reasonable price?

A month of no internet, yikes!

I finally have my computer functioning after nearly a month of issues. My video driver was being a brat, so I got the IT manager at work to fix it for me. It's strange not to be able to read my email and look things up, I mean really, am I supposed to use the phone book to find things instead of go0gle maps, are you kidding me?!

I'm watch Pr0ject Runw@y so I'll make this short.

1. My old house in Berkley is now listed at $149,000. When I bought it just over 2 years ago, it was listed for $234,900. It makes me happy work bought it from me, but sad that no one loves it as I did.

2. I got digits from a guy on Match, right before my computer crashed. A month ago. Too late to call? Yeah probably, but a poor excuse on my part... if I had really wanted I could have gone to an Internet cafe and looked up his number.

Later!