— Not a Cough in a Carload.			The 30th Mmmmm… I thought I would stop salivating but I haven't yet. I bought a 30GB iPod last week and am very, very satisfied with my purchase. The damn thing is just so damn nice that I almost don't want to leave the house with it in fear of breaking it. But so far so good. I've managed to transfer about 2/3 of my CD collection to it so far and will hopefully have the rest on in the next few days. And with the new AAC encoding I've only put a 5GB dent into the 30GB available. It's slick. I can take all of my music wherever I go plus I've got my calendar (sparse but it's there) and my contacts. Plus I can play games, store notes and files on it too. I'm so glad I waited for these to be released instead of buying the first model. Hopefully my big purchases are over for the year. Last year it was my G4 setup and the year before that it was my DV cam. The iPod plus my new SuperDrive and FireWire enclosure for my DVD-RAM drive should last me for a while. But there's always Eye TV.... The 24th My landlord's lawnmower is basically completely fucked unless it can be serviced and resurrected. The Maros' lawnmower may have been killed by me and my tall grass today or maybe it wasn't working because my landlord's outdoor extension cord is also fucked and fell apart. Fell apart, that's right. Because at some point it had been severed and someone just taped it back together. Safe and economical. In any case, I ended up spending over two hours cutting the lawn (and it's not a big yard so 2 hours is a long time) with an old push mower I found in the basement. It wasn't a fun job but it did the trick until I get a newer one to use from now on. The 18th Finally some sun, nice weather, and a long weekend to top it all off. Broke out the barbeque for the first time yesterday and had a backyard picnic with Sharon, Nathan and Shawn. Though I had some crispy burgers it wasn't too bad. I'll get used to the grilling thing soon enough. I've started to have frequent dreams again (at least ones I can remember) and so I should probably start writing them down like I used to. Some are pretty messed up though but it's better than going for a long time without really having any. Gives me something to think about on my way to work at least. The 15th Here's what you do: take some marbled rye bread, sliced honey ham, deli style sliced mozerella, Oktoberfest mustard, and make yourself one kick-ass sandwich. Then call me and thank me that you did. The 14th May is already half fucking over. Seems like I just barely made the mental note to change my calendars and I think it was the 10th before I actually did. So one of the best months of the year is close to being over and most of what I've seen of it so far has been utter shit. Well, the last week or so anyway. Just shitty, wet, cold, rainy, grey weather that feels more like November than May. But there were a few nice days where I put on the shorts and did some yard work. My birthday was good and I got a barbecue which I haven't had a chance to use YET! I shouldn't say that because that's just not true. I mean, I've had ample time to cook up some burgers in the rain wearing my winter coat and gloves. You try working tongs and a lighter with mitts on and let me know how it goes. Saw X-men 2 twice so far and it's way better than the first one. They did an awesome job with Nightcrawler and all of the new characters. I just hope Colossus is in the next one more than he was in this one. He looked pretty cool and will be throwing people through quite a few more walls, I'm hoping. And as ever, Magneto remains the coolest super-villain ever. Wolverine did quite a bit of slash-to-kill which was morbidly nice to see. The first one seemed a little tame compared to this in the violence department. And while I don't like to see violence just for the sake of violence, how can a guy with adamantium claws now end up slashing and slicing his way through at least part of the movie? The good thing about it was the fact that they didn't go overboard with it. It wasn't bloody and gory with severed limbs and decapitated heads flying left and right which made it even better because it didn't focus on the bloodshed. Oh, and all of the shots of Mystique didn't hurt either.