soundclick stat update

10,334 page hits, 2,626 streams, 651 downloads. total. since like mid-2004, ~3 yrs. averaging 9.437 hits per day, 2.398 streams per day, a download every 1.682 days. with absolutely no promotion. that's it.

since you were dying to know.

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another weekend almost gone

Loren's down for the night. we dug into Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows a bit more this evening, played some darts and chess this afternoon, and went to pick up a C. S. Lewis book (Out of the Silent Planet) which he was assigned to read over the summer, for a 200 question multiple-choice test in store for all the incoming 9th grade advanced-placement English students. we got some laundry done, and the dishes, and ignored some other chores that failed to demand loudly enough for our attention. yesterday we played racquetball in the morning, and followed it up with a short visit to my folks' house, where i took one of their old teak & leather wooden chairs (with its matching footstool) off their hands. it's a nice chair, and quite comfortable, but i don't exactly have a place for it...maybe i'll get to figuring that out this week. we also watched our requisite Star Trek DVDs (8 episodes of Voyager over the course of the week) and squeezed in the newly-released animated Dr. Strange video yesterday, as well as playing some of Loren's newly-exchanged and now-functional Tony Hawk: Project 8 video game. still fun stuff. we got in a few episodes of DBZ (the end of the Frieza or Namek saga...not sure which, but we left off with the episode where Frieza gets diced by his own power disc attack) over broiled chicken with rice and peas for dinner, and this is all- i'm quite certain- terribly fascinating.

so. nothing too out of the ordinary, but you won't find me complaining over having the opportunity to spend two uninterrupted days with m'boy. tomorrow he's back to his mom's and i hunker down for another week of work. the boss suggested i take a day off this week, possibly Friday, which would make for a 3-day weekend upcoming....might be nice. been working a lot of hours lately, and there's no shortage of household business to take care of.

s'pose that's all i got for the moment. PEACE

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i was wrong

Chowder was sleeping on the floor, in what sunlight was afforded Loren's bedroom through mostly grey sky.

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sunday morning, midsummer

a little coffee. a little nicotine. a shower is in order, as well as some food. on tap for the day: a good half day's work. in seattle. which requires driving.

got to bed pretty damn late last night, and woke up fairly early, but i'm not really tired. not bursting with energy, mind, but not tired.

some minor chores are in order, and the same major ones which i've managed to put off far too long. at some point in the immediate future i'm going to have to decide which of today's objectives takes precedence and begin accomplishing them, but for the moment i'll sip my coffee (somewhat thicker and mildly sweeter than normal, with a bit of Carolan's Irish Cream) and type this post.

the dull ache lodged in my head last night persisted throughout the frozen pizza, and the naproxen sodium, but succumbed (as i suspected it might) to a decent, if somewhat abbreviated night's sleep. all in all, any complaints i'd make this morning seem trivial, so i'll forego them and stand pat.

Chowder sleeps still, most likely sprawled on my bed. he invariably lays in his own when we retire for the night, but often, once i'm settled, he'll hop up and avail himself of the majority of the free space. i generally indulge him with some calm scratches when he does, and i'm usually rewarded with the amusing feedback of his satisfied groans in direct proportion to his appreciation of this or that technique. he has a surprisingly large vocabulary of sub-vocal communication, another facet of his remarkably deep personality. he's a smart one, as dogs go, and he's been a good friend. i think we're in about the same head-space, insofar as a middle-aged man and dog can be.

"he sleeps, and i compose a post," types the author, having just drained the remainder of his coffee, which would have been enjoyed more before it completed its descent to room temperature.

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so it's 8 o'clock on a Saturday night

and it's obvious to me that i have nothing better to do than post something...anything, really, just something.

i have a mild headache, most likely brought on by inactivity, or lack of caffeine until a relatively late hour, or the lack of actual nutritional value offered by the scant remains of most of the easily prepared substitutes for real food, through which i've half-heartedly ruminated periodically over the course of the day, or by some other reason which i'm either failing to notice or opting to omit, or some combination thereof.

i could turn to the medicine cabinet, which would require my leaving this chair, negotiating the doubled-back flight of stairs to the 2nd floor hallway, which shortly leads to the upstairs bathroom. there, a few tablets of generic naproxen sodium would likely take the edge off the dull pain in my head within 20-30 minutes, at which point i might feel entirely more motivated than i do presently. whether i ultimately summon the motivation to do so remains beyond the scope of this narrative to this point.

it's likely no coincidence that the pain in my head seems to a fair degree to be exacerbated by smoking cigarettes; after all, nicotine is a well known vasoconstrictor. i suppose it's entirely possible that my cranial discomfort is due to a restriction of blood flow, and further restricting my brain's access to gas exchange might very well increase my discomfort. or maybe it's all in my head.

i have the impression that being more physically active increases blood pressure and circulation and raises the body's metabolic rate. i'm generally quite active, typically, especially on working days, but this morning i made a vague resolution to attempt to "rest" today, as it's necessary for me to work at least a partial day tomorrow, in order to meet the demands of the following day.

despite the fact that smoking cigarettes makes my head hurt worse, i've chosen to light one as i remain seated here, typing, rather than make that journey to the medicine cabinet upstairs.

after all, i made, earlier this afternoon, a special trip to spend around $25 of hard-earned money i've not yet been paid on 100 of these little paper-wrapped tobacco-and-chemical nicotine delivery devices, for the express purpose of ensuring i need not today confront an interruption in their supply- a familiar occurence which periodically occurs to all those who've succumbed, willingly or torturedly, to their addiction. clinging pitifully to their (our, my) short end of the stick, they (we, i) reach that familiar point in their (our, my) often decades-long love/hate relationship with the seductively evil product of American Tobacco and dutifully, resignedly march, head bowed, to renew their (our, my) financial/physical/emotional bludgeoning at the hands of gleeful corporations and perennially thirsty government revenue collectors.

the cigarette i lit when i began that above paragraph has done its damage. its contribution to my (presumably worsening) Pulmonary Obstructive Disease is complete, and having fulfilled its mission it died, predictably, its quiet death with neither comment nor protest. its crushed, lifeless body lies motionless amid the foul-smelling corpses of its brothers, a pile of tar-stained cotton filters in random disarray, sporting charred shocks of tobbaco filaments like haircuts of punk rockers burned in their beds.

and there is still the question, the unresolved issue of whether i'll traverse the staircase to the medicine cabinet.

it's certainly not the only possible course of action. i could light another cigarette, for instance, or put my fist through the monitor before me. i could take off my pants and run screaming around the circular cul-de-sac outside the front door. i could put the 2nd DVD of the evening into the player in the other room, and once more vegetate before a cathode-ray tube, this time in the more-fitting darkness which has accrued in the hour i've taken describing these things. i could opt to tell you which DVD i've already watched today.....which might or might not be entertaining to any with eyes following this narrative. perhaps i'll do exactly that, later. perhaps not.

looking inside the finely engineered, foil-paper-lined, precision-folded, mass-produced utilitarian marvel which is the "pack" box, an apt term for the tightly-packed delivery vehicle in which 20 of the aforementioned cylindrical, smoldering kamikaze soldiers infiltrate our lives, i chose to select the left-most of the two remaining candidates. exhaling the last of the particle-laden exhaust, for which it was conceived and created, and to which it owed both its existence and ultimate destruction, i began this sentence.

the longer i remain in this chair, slouching slightly toward the monitor, the more discomfort i feel in my neck and upper back. this is an ergonomically challenging chair which came to me approximately 15 years ago in what i believe was a random series of events involving a former friend and the redecoration of a bank lobby. it's certainly no chair i'd choose to purchase. in fact, i've never purchased a chair, nor a table for that matter. nor a bed or bed linens of any sort. nor a nightstand, bookcase, entertainment center, or desk, nor any dishes or plants. i could make a very long list indeed of the things i've never purchased. suffice it to say that nearly everything furnishing my residence requiring the expenditure of any significant amount of money had that expenditure provided by others. the furniture manufacturers are simply not winning the competition with the tobacco companies for my business.

my stomach is increasingly attempting to persuade me to follow the "put-the-frozen-pizza-in-the-oven" scenario, while my head concurs, and suggests i make the journey to the medicine cabinet.

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but enough of all that

in the elapsed time between March 2, '07 (when i dropped the blog ball) and the present, i've both been on vacation and worked a lot. vacation was fun. work...not so much.

summer is here and business is booming. everyone's working a ton, and my boss seems to be balking at the OT i'm putting in. most of the people there have a lot more OT than i do; i imagine my wages are somewhat comparable to most of the other guys', but i'm starting to get the impression my boss has the impression i'm spending too much time on things he didn't intend me to spend this much time on....which is another way of wondering if he thinks i'm not getting enough done...? i feel like i'm working pretty hard, and staying plenty busy. i move pretty quickly most of the time. i feel like i'm doing a pretty good job, overall, though i have been late a couple times. it's not unusual for me to feel some anxiety over things that are naturally stressful (like working a lot of hours, always flying by the seat of my pants putting out fires, commuting a lot, trying not to make mistakes when i'm thinking about a lot of things...or forgetting something). overall my job's pretty stressful, and i think i have less authority with the long-timers there than my boss thinks i do (or should? or will exert?), so i'm also trying to work hard enough, to be organized enough, to get on top of everything enough, to get credibility with them.

work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work

i have work on the brain. that's not too surprising since i got home just a little while ago. i guess it's just buggin' me that my boss has actually told me to go home the last couple days in a row- even though everyone's working more hours than me. i bet he didn't expect this position would run into OT, or as much OT during the summer, as it has so far. but he seems to be happy with me, overall, so...i'll just keep working hard and keep my fingers crossed. the last job i had which lasted for a long time (working in Newcastle at Precis Architectural) didn't pay very well, but it was a pretty good place to work. this is a decent job, working with pretty good people; the worst thing about it is the commute (long and expensive). if i'm not at the top of my potential wage scale, i could stick around a while. some paid vacation would be nice- and good benefits are a plus. i guess you can only show up, play your best game, and hope that you make the cut. i suppose that's the extent of my confidence in my ability to hold a job long term.

i suppose that's enough for now. there's actually a lot more to talk about, but maybe i'll be able to catch up on some of that in future posts...considering i've done all the writing about work that i can stomach. PEACE

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ok, ok- i give, already

i cannot use my normal tools to post posts anymore, ever since blogger got swallowed by google. that truly sucks. i hate having to run my post through their form in internet explorer. i used to click very few buttons to post. surely there must be a better way. i may have to switch blog hosting services. i've always wanted to check out Movable Type. i wonder if Macromedia makes a 3rd party blog-posting app that interfaces with any (free) major site? UltraDev pretty much rocks....posting blog posts thru internet explorer via web-based posting tool via external site logon is unnecessarily unwieldy.

so, plenty of stuff has happened since i posted last time, including the composition of the backdated, belatedly-posted previous post (May 10, 2007) which i will now re-create from a saved file, from a time when i was still too stubborn to log on to blogger to post....which, incidentally, is even more hassle than logging on, etc.

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