I get up this morning with a happy song in my head ready to face another exciting, exacting day of life at the Rapier-Kinne Kompound. I grab my Arabica mug and head over to my favorite coffe shop and fill up on some delicious French Roast (not as much caffine as the Kenya AA but so much more body). I take a few minutes to talk with everyone there (is it lame if yer friends with everyone that works at your coffeeshop? I mean real friends outside of their workplace as well?) and head out the door to start this days fun.

First task is to install the new (well, at least its new to me. It was probably new to everyone back in 1979) AC I just bought. Its pretty cool and weighs around 7 tons. It should be enough to easily cool the entier apartment down (which will automatically enter me into the swelling ranks of 'people tom will attack for being booosh-wah'). I got some wood to build a support out of and I only have to cut it into the proper lengths. All goes well, until I get distracted and end up ripping a nice thick tear in my thumb. Oh well, I say and wrap it up in 101 Dalmations band-ids and go back to work. I get it installed and I go onto the next task.

I found a really good deal on some fishtanks. For $90 I'll get a 20 gallon tank and a 29 gallon tank, both wih flourescent hoods with full spectrum lamps. Included in that price is undergravel filter plates, a 3 way gang valve, lift tubes and a powerhead (a water ppump for the undergravel filters). I book on up to Squill to give them a once over before I sign the check. I make arrangements to comeback tomorrow and pick them up and a boogie on home. The ride back is pretty cool but I missedthe GLB pride march completely. Which sucks. However, I'm down on Walnut street and I can see the tail end of it a couple blocks down. I power down on the pedal when my boot completely slips off the pedal (no tread on the boots and no toe clips uh-duh). I end up planting the foot very firmly on the ground whereupon physics takes over. A porton of my forward momentum is converted into angular momentum and I start to pivot around my foot. This rips my off the bike however both the bike and I still have considerable forward momentum that isn't too keen on just being ignored. Suddenly phsyiology decided to show up and demand some attention. It basically told the forward momentum to sod off and it just wasn't going to keep going forward or keep twisting around. Now, seeing the wonderful commontion going on gravity butts in and decides to take over. Me, my bike, phsyiology, forward momentum and angular momentum are introduced to the street by that devious matchmaker, gravity. With introductions out of the way physiology starts hogging the show and I begin to bleed from a number of places. Specifically my right leg, left knee, my previously injured thumb. Not to be outdone by these showoffs my brain, which was feeling neglected, decides to slam itself into the right side of my skull. I should also mention that my right hip and left shoulder have also been making themselves known by bruising quite nicely. After a few minutes rest/greying out on the corner I manfully remount the bike errant and head home. I am slightly annoyed to discover that I can no longer shift.

After taking a few hours out to let my body make peace with itself I decide to go back out into the big wide wonderful world and see how much sympathy I can get for my injuries. Which is not that much, so I buy a whole lot of neat stuff for the tanks I'll be getting tomorrow. I feel better know and think that all the bad things that could happen to me for at least a week are out of the way.

I sit down at the computer and start switching my compressed drive over to the new version of stacker. Whereupon several unfortuante things happen and the compressed volume is rendered useless. Well, it only had all of Mandy's work on it from today and yesterday (around 6 hours) and a few hundered meg of software I recently installed (ergo not backed). After some teeth gnashing I say, well, lets get on with it and I forge ahead only to find that I have completed wasted my time being that the Stacker volume will simply not mount. At some point during all of this my file partition information got into a frenzy and my computer lost track of my OS/2 drive. I have been able to get the information off of it onto a secondary drive (SCSI so I can't boot from it with an IDE drive in there as well). However, my attempts at repartitioning and reformating the OS/2 drive have failed due to some error which I do not have the time energy or inclination to currently figure out.

Now, it should be noted that I was able to rip myself away from the computer in order to inflict more damage upon myself and those I love. While cleaning up in the bathroom I notice the plunger. I always remembered those cartoons where they were able to use a plumber's helper to act like a giant suction cup. So I take it and with a flip of the wrist I am able to affix it to the ceiling. NEAT! I think. However, it is not good form to leave a plunger stuck to one's ceiling so I reach up and pull it down - which takes a small, yet significant portion of the ceiling with it.

The tally for the day?

• 1 nasty cut on the thumb
• Very painful damage to the rest of my body
• Some sort of sure to be expensive damage to my bike
• 2 nuked partitions on my hard drive
• 1 nice sized hole in the ceiling

Currently Mandy has me strapped into a chair for my own protection and I am typing this with my toes.

What an exciting day!

chris