Finally Friday has gotten here in one piece. It took all week to get here and felt even longer since the payoff was a three day weekend. Bill was at his folks last night so I was a solo act. I chilled out last night, dropping in at some point on Julio and Stine to borrow their can opener and to be abused and to abuse Julio. It was quite like the situation in the apartment with Bill. Stine at the table in her kitchen on her laptop, Julio in the next room on his laptop. I thought Bill and I were the only ones to do that.

I watched Scrubs and 30 Rock, then I watched Ugly Betty at 10:00 since I had dvr’d it. After the daily show I was off to bed. Usually Bill is in bed before me and he gives off a lot of heat. Not last night. He was out of town, out of state. I did the best I could do by myself. I wound up digging out an old green blanket that my mother used to have for some warmth and perhaps some security. Soon I was deep in sleep, not waking up until I absolutely had to, 6:30.

Not enough milk for cereal, but I had enough for coffee which was nice and strong. I had plugged in the iPod last night and as I drank my coffee and checked my email I thought I’d see if it would work, not having been exposed to the elements. Of course it didn’t work. After two songs, it froze up again. Bill has the exact iPod as I do, so does Juan and they don’t have the problems that I do. Maybe I give it a little too much importance, too much power.

I made a reservation at the iPod store for 6:10PM. Work was ok. Surfed a bit, did some data entry. Not many applicants in today. Wally was out due to his ear problem but he phoned a few times and was quite funny. He’s on Tylenol with Codeine which makes him quite agreeable. I mentioned to avoid going to the Valley of the Dolls and he started yelling, ‘I’m Neely! I’m Neely’. Yep, Wally is gay that’s for sure. If he can quite lines from Valley of the Dolls, that’s proof enough for me. I was also able to finish the Word document I worked on yesterday and got good comments about it. That was cool.

Work dragged of course, for this was a three day weekend. After work I legged it up to the Apple store again where I waited for about 20 minutes before I met up with Genius Jason Ferguson who was sympathetic and took my iPod and restored the factory settings, erasing everything of course. Once again, I’ll be loading thousands of tracks into the iPod over the weekend while doing laundry. I don’t mind, it’s too cold and icy outside and I’d rather be inside. I have dvd’s, and things I’ve recorded and Juan is coming up tomorrow and you know that can’t be bad.

Well I finally had a shitty day. First of the year, not bad for a month and a half into it. And it was mostly my doing. Partial credit or blame goes to Mother Nature and the snow which is now wet cold puddles of slush and whoever designed or approved the new sidewalks in the city. They sure look nice when it’s dry our, all smooth and shiny but as soon as it gets cold and there’s snow or frozen rain you are walking on thin ice literally and figuratively. The day didn’t start out on the best note either.

Got up at 4:00(!) thinking it was 6:30. That royally sucked though I was able to go back to sleep with no real problem. Woke up at 6:30, groggy of course. Bill made some coffee with what he could since the can opener was broken he wasn’t able to open the can of fresh coffee. Of course I thought he was doing it wrong, but no, somehow the can opener was kaput. The coffee Bill made resembled brown water but I drank it. It was very sweet. The gesture, not the coffee. He was soon off and I was in the shower.

I wore my work boots today since I messed up the pair of shoes I was wearing yesterday and will have to bring them to the shoe makers on Saturday. I looked like a well dressed Frankenstein monster as I clomped my way down the stairs. The sidewalks were occasionally shoveled but it was the crosswalks were where the hazards lay in wait. Huge puddles, perfect for playing Titanic with small boats. I gingerly stepped over and made it to the bus stop and hopped on a waiting bus. It soon filled up and I read the New Yorker instead of I, Claudius, trying to keep up with the current issue.

The iPod started acting up again, it would play two or three songs then suddenly stop. It did have the courtesy to wait for the last song to end before it stopped playing. I would have to reset it and start all over again and once again, two or three songs then it would freeze up. I think it was because of the weather, or rather, I hope it’s because of the cold weather. I decided to go to the Apple store on Fifth Avenue after work.

And after work would never seem to arrive. I was stuck rewriting some paperwork and I kept stressing out on how to format it properly as a Word document. I couldn’t figure it out and I was going crazy trying to figure it out. I sent a copy of it to Bill who knows Word programs inside and out and could probably do it in his sleep. But in sending it to his work email it was now in the system of the Really Big Law Firm which Bill didn’t realize until he tried to send it back to me. It was nothing terrible, just a sheet of words taken from a thesaurus.

No confidentiality clauses were broken or anything like that. I got it back and was able to make whatever revisions that were needed. I had a larger document that had to be retyped and was wrestling with that. I left it unfinished. I’ll be able to finish it tomorrow. I did have a date with Brenda from Wanker Banker. I went there after the Apple store visit, where I talked to a floor person named Christopher Duff who told me that more than likely it was because of the weather. I could always restore the iPod to the original settings and lose everything there, 6900 tracks.

I’m betting on the temperature. Rand sent me a link for SharePod which is a program that could take all the tracks on the iPod and put it into my computer, which means everything, not just the songs on the iPod that I had lifted from other sources. Argh. That and laundry seem to be the agenda for the weekend. Juan will be here though. He’d better be entertaining and hopefully jazzy. Or else. No foolin’.