All Done!

Here I am holding some gauze on my arm because I just got my last blood-draw---also got my paycheck!!! Tomorrow at noon I pick up a rental car and I'm making my way back to NYC!

I LOVE YOU, COVANCE CLINICAL RESEARCH UNIT!!!

CSI: Astico

My wonderful five-disc changing Sony DVD player has been murdered. I left it with my dad here in Astico when I moved to NYC thinking he could use it while I was away, especially since he was so nice to let me store all the rest of my stuff at his house. When I came back for the holidays it wouldn't play any movies at all. None of them, not even "Charlie the Lonesome Cougar!" Supposedly, he didn't do anything to it. But, then I found out he had tried to watch a picture CD some out-of-state guy made of a truck he was trying to sell to my dad. It wouldn't work so he tried a bunch of various discs in it. I noticed a CD-rom of Adobe Photopage in the stack of discs next to the player and I ask him if he used that. He didn't think so, but, I had a feeling that he did.
A month later, and finally, he remembers trying that disc while I'm on the phone with a service-tech. Damn! He thought it was an advertisement (?) and thought it would fix the player when he couldn't get the photo-cd to work. What???? That disc ended up frying the microprocessor. Ah, crud, it's my fault. He didn't even know the difference between the terms "DVD" and "DVD player" and I let him have access to it. However, I'm not sure how he got a hold of that CD-rom. It was in a box of cords and accessories for my old IMac which was stored in another room. The IMac is a whole nother story. My dad took it when I got my laptop, but he said he never used it. So, my sister and her family took it up with them when they moved up to Michigan. Guess what? It's broken!!! I keep getting this picture in my head of my dad huddled over it with a power drill or a hammer or something staring at it with this vaguely confused look. My dad and technology just don't mix.

No Armpit Stench Clouds Reported

This morning after a quick blood draw at Covance, I headed on over to the annual Madison Comic-Book Convention! Once again I found myself in a tiny room (former broom closet?) in the basement of the Roadway (formerly "Quality") Inn off of an unplowed road here in lovely "air freezes in your frickin' mouth before you can even breath that shit out" Madison, Wisconsin. Yeah, winter is awesome...
Anyway, I went because I received a postcard that said, "Hey Kids!!! It's the Annual Madison Comic Book Convention blah...blah...blah!" and if you brought the postcard with you, you would get both free entrance and a free item! I was hoping for prizes like the complete set of "Sky Captain" posters I got last time, but all they were giving out were ratty old copies of promotional comics from a couple years ago. Boo. Aw, heck, why am I complaining??? After scouring the dollar boxes I ended up with a cool few old comics (one where Supergirl has Medusa-hair and unintentionally attacks the Justice League, and a few Walt Disney Comics and Stories issues featuring Scamp, one of Lady and the Tramps's puppies, by Al Hubbard). And behold! There was an overwhelming lack of nerd sweat. Last time I attended, the B.O. situation had gone nuclear. If there was a time for a hero like Green Lantern to show up, it was then. He could have used his power ring, like he does in the comics, and whipped up some magic-super deoderant for all those hygeine-lacking nerds! Ugh, that was one stinky room.

Covance Tour of Duty Done With

Thirty-five days later and fifteen pounds heavier I have left the confines of the Covance Clinical Research Unit. Two more out-patient visits and I will recieve the rest of my big, fat juicy stipend. Hopefully, now that I'm out, I'll be able to update my posts on a timelier basis. No more dealing with a clogged-up network jammed up by Terra-Byte Guy downloading enitre seasons of "Stargate", "24", "Maude" and every other teevee show ever created. Now I'll just be depending on my visits to the wonderful Wisconsin public library system for my internet use until I head back to NYC around March 1.