What’s Wrong With Me?!?

I’m leaving for work the other day, and as I hear the door click shut behind me, I look down the driveway and notice that the garbage truck hasn’t been by yet. Deciding to go back upstairs and retrieve the kitchen trash, I reach into my pocket to get my keys. At almost the same moment, I realize that I forgot to put my keys in my pocket. Ugh!!

The next day, as I’m driving to work and mentally planning my day, I realize that not only did I forget to bring my lunch, I also forgot to pack a lunch. Suddenly I’m painfully aware that I have only one American dollar. Dang it! No lunch and no money!!

What the heck is wrong with me?!? Early onset Alzheimer’s? First I forget my . . . uh . . . my keys then . . . what am I talking about? Where am I? What the . . .

Screed

One of the inspirations for this spleen blog is James “The Bleat” Lileks’ Screedblog. His recent entry of excerpts from a letter to President Bush is more onion than screed, but I love it nonetheless. (For true screed, see his entry on “the so-called ‘Ports Deal’ flap.”)

So I’m not really venting my spleen in this post. Ugh! Hold on a minute, how many freakin’ links does one paragraph (see above) need?!? I’m an idiot!

My Achin’ DVD Player

My DVD player has quit working. I looked online and followed the instructions for my problem (Error: NO DISC, DISC ERROR, or INSERT DISC) in the eSupport Knowledge Base. (It was the second item under “Hot Topics” for my model — surprise, surprise.) The final diagnosis: service will be required.

My player is covered under some sort of exchange program. For $131.75 I can mail it in and receive a refurbished model. I couldn’t remember how much it cost new, so I looked to see what a comparable model by the same manufacturer would cost. Turns out the brand spankin’ new model — same brand with similar features, plus newer features like HD Upconversion — is $139.00. They cannot be serious.

Well, I don’t have an HD TV, so that new feature doesn’t mean much to me (today anyway). And I hate to simply throw out my DVD player. So I’m going to try and find a repair place nearby and see what they’ll charge to take a look at it. I should start a pool on how close to $139 I’m going to spend trying to avoid leaving this thing by the curb. And did I mention gas it $3 a gallon?

Pump #08

GALLONS:   13.303
PRICE/G:  $ 2.999
FUEL SALE $ 39.90

No Particular Focus

I'm feeling vaguely irritated today. I can't point to any one thing, nor am I really angry. I'm just kind of miffed at the world. While working on a writing assignment today, I found it necessary to consult a thesaurus wherein I came across lists of words for how I was feeling about everything:

befoul, belittle, besmear, besmirch, bespatter, blacken, cloud, decry, denigrate, deprecate, depreciate, derogate, detract, dirty, discount, disparage, downgrade, minimize, run down, slight, smear, smudge, smut, soil, spatter, stain, sully, taint, talk down, tarnish

Yeah, that feels about right.