Another long old day, it was. I think that I'm gonna have to quit bitching about how busy it is at work, 'cause it's just always busy... it's not unusual at all. What id unusual is the fact that I met a guy who I went through boot camp with, umpteen years ago. He was fatter'n me, and he even looked older'n me. The last time that I saw him we were both in much better shape and we both still had some hair, too. It's kinda fun to see old buddies, but we weren't really buddies, just thrown together in boot camp for ten weeks or so... we were the only ones from Kansas in the company, so we kinda stuck together, but I have to confess that I never thought about him again until I saw him at the hospital, and he was the one who recognized me... I had seen his name and it was vaguely familiar, but what the hell, I've x-rayed damned near everybody in Topeka at some time or another, I think... almost everybody's name sounds familiar. Anyway, today I went in early and met with the financial planner guy, the jackass was a half-hour late, he was supposed to be there at 08:00, 'cause that when he said he'd be there. And I'm trusting him to help me make financial decisions? I don't think so.... All I really wanted to do was get my savings that are matched by the hospital to the maximum, which was only $30 more a pay period. Karen's work has had a matching plan for about 15 years, so we've been using that as our main savings. Karen's mother is not doing well, she'll be going down there this weekend. Evidently the stent in her brachial artery has broken loose or something, it's bleeding inside the shoulder again, even worse than before. She's going into the hospital tomorrow night or Friday and they'll try to fix it, I have no idea what they have in mind to do. They told Debbie that the prognosis was pretty poor, which really has me baffled. They seem to be afraid to touch her, I know that she's rather fragile, but dammit, they've got to do something! If it was a fractured hip, something that regularly happens to fragile people, they go in and fix it, because if they don't the patient will suffer a painful death... and this is about the same thing. Or maybe they don't consider bleeding to death painful... I suppose that it's not, technically. Speaking of painful... I accidentally opened up about 118 files in winamp, so I had to shut the computer down, it's been up since the time I reloaded WIN2K on it, about six weeks. Pretty good for a MS machine, eh? WHo knows how long I could have kept it up in winamp would've played nice.... I think that I figgered it out, though... you can load a number of files into winamp, and it'll play them one at a time... unless there is a skipped file in the directory, in which case it loads every file into a separate instance, and then it tried to play them all at once... on the same speakers. Terrible sound. So I've learned something today... in fact, you learned something too, if you were paying attention. Speaking of learning stuff... sometimes I think that I'm pretty smart, and then I find someone who thinks circles around me. And I don't have to look very far, either. When I was younger, this contributed greatly to my inferiority complex, then I figgered out that these people weren't really all that smart all of the time, just when they were around me. I brought out the best in them, I guess. Or they were showing off to impress me. Lately, though, I've been re-thinking that idea, and I've decided that I was right the first time. So I'm getting all depressed, until I realize that I'm still better-looking than most people. Then I look in the mirror and, well, just blow that idea out of the water too. So, OK, I'm average, Nothing the matter with average, after all. And I am taller than most people, that makes up for something. Well, no, short people ask me to do things that they can't do, that's a disadvantage. I should just make them go get a ladder, but I'm too kindly for that. Yeah. That's it... I'm kinder than most people. Yeah, that and $1.50 will buy me a cuppa coffee. Hell with it, I don't have to prove anything to anybody... I'm who I am, always have been. Always will be, until I'm dead, then I'll just be a memory, and in a century or two, not even that.