It’s really been one of those days.

I got up this morning to find the mouse trap had been moved and all of the peanut butter was gone. That means I still have a mouse left somewhere. It wasn’t a good way to start my day.

When I got to work this morning, I had a nice, long talk with my boss about where we’re going in terms of technology over the next year. That was actually quite cool.

A little later, my boss tells me that a new application (written in Microsoft Access, of course)  wasn’t working for the key business user yet it worked for him. This is the part where I really want to scream at him because this isn’t the first time our rouge VB developer has written something without asking his DBA about the security implications. He just assumed that since it worked for him it would work for everybody else. Oh, yeah, and he’s on an island right now on vacation. That’s right, he rolled out something and then went on vacation. AGAIN. Fortunately, we had some ample warning and got him to only release it to one person instead of the entire executive team like he had planned.

Shortly after that another one of our lovely Microsoft Access applications blew up. I’m willing to bet money that somebody made changes to the application right before he went on vacation. AGAIN.

It was just a long day at work. Our Halloween potluck luncheon was fun and we had a ton of food.

I tried to sneak out early so I could come home and take a nap. When I walked in the door, it wasn’t a pretty sight. Reggie had gotten into the trash and it was all over the kitchen floor. My bad batch of lemon bars were in that trash bag and made the floor all sticky as well as Reggie’s fur. The mess was awful and I had to scrub the kitchen floor. Not just mop, but scrub.  Then I found the pile and puddle he left for me on the bathroom floor.

I went to get my haircut. Of the four barbers in the shop, this one dude doesn’t seem to understand me. Last time, I told him that I wanted to leave the top grow out, and he buzzed it. Tonight, I told him to leave the top alone and he took it down to a #2. I know this is a risk I take for going to a hispanic barber shop. Most of the guys are pretty decent with their English, though, and they do a mean fade. I won’t let this guy touch my head again.

When I went to rebait the mouse trap, I intentionally dropped it on the floor to make it snap. It didn’t. It’s no wonder the mouse got away. I threw that one away and got another one out of the drawer. (I’ve been buying them in bulk these days.) The first one I went to set broke and snapped shut on my thumb. I have a lovely bruise under the fingernail now It won’t surprise me if I lose the nail on my right thumb, and it’s a bitch to type with it.

After all of the Tricker Treaters were done (and I had run out of the candy I was willing to give away), Reggie got a bath. This is never my idea of a good time. In fact, we’re both miserable with this, and now I have a damp Pug sitting on me.

It’s really been a rough day. The highlight has been getting my car insurance renewal notice and learning that my car insurance will be going down by $70 a month. When that’s the highlight of your day, you know it wasn’t good.

I haven’t been blogging much. The fact of the matter is that I’ve just been insanely busy at work. I’d rather be busy than bored, and busy it has been.

I got a new laptop today at work. It’s a Lenovo T61. I will only have this thing a week or two, though. The machine I have now is a single core processor. We just got the dual core machines and Timmy hasn’t gotten the image ready yet. My T60 was giving me trouble, and I wanted to swap it out before I left for Chicago on Friday. The single core T61 is rather nice.

Anyway, I’m still on the planet.

It’s been a weekend of doing absolutely nothing.

Friday night, I had to work late, upgrading our HR system to SQL 2005.  It went okay.  After work, a friend of mine called me in a panic, and I had to talk him down off the proverbial cliff. It’s a story worth its own blog entry at some point.

Saturday, I got up and took Reggie for a walk. Then I went back to bed and ended up sleeping until 12:30. I did a few things around the house (including watching several episodes of America’s Next Top Model) before heading to the South Shore Mall to get a new pair of jeans. I wanted a darker pair of jeans to go with my jacket that I’ll be wearing to the conference. I ended up at the Gap and found a pair that are just about perfect. I’ve never spent $50 on a pair of jeans before. Still, they look pretty good.

I also went into Crate and Barrel where my office crush works on weekends, or so I’m told. I didn’t actually see him there. I did gawk at some awesome stemless champagne flutes.  I should have bought them since they were pretty inexpensive. I have so many flutes as it is, though. But the stemless ones are pretty damn cool.

A trip to Barnes and Noble was in store as well. I picked up the latest in the Star Trek: The Next Generation series. You can call me a geek if you wish. I will wear that label with pride. The book wasn’t too bad, and I finished it in less than 24 hours.

Today, I did some cooking, including my first attempt at lemon bars. I used Ina Garten’s recipe from the Food Network website. They were okay, but I don’t think I did something right, as the filling had a light crust on top. I’m wondering if I should have just used the egg yolks instead of the whole eggs. They taste good, though.

Tonight, I made soup. Specifically, I made cauliflower My soups almost always start with bacon fat, but I thought I’d make something vegetarian. Instead of bacon fat, I used butter, and instead of chicken stock, I used vegetable stock. It’s certainly not low fat since there is a ton of cheese in it, but it was still good.

Now it’s time to walk Reggie and then watch The Next Iron Chef. I still think Michael Symon could possibly win this. Of all of them, he has the most star power.

Have you seen the Macy’s commercial where Usher is talking to Martha Stewart? Honestly, girl, when do you sleep?

Love that.

I’m tenatively going to be in Pittsburgh the week before Thanksgiving to testify in court. That’s the weekend after I get back from Chicago.

Since I’m going home, Reggie will probably be coming with me.

Woot! is doing a Woot Off today, and so far, I haven’t bought a darn thing. I will say, however, that most of the stuff they’ve been selling has been junk.

I have two little annoyances at work this morning.

1. Why can’t people show up on time for shit? I have two coworkers that casually waltz into the office after 9:00, even though most of the company starts at 7:00, 8:00 at the latest. It annoys me when they rush into a staff meeting ten minutes late.

2. Why must certain individuals interrupt me when I’m speaking to correct what I’m saying when it’s not really wrong. We’ve rebranded our HR system. In a staff meeting, I referred to it as the product name and he interrupted me to correct me. I think my tone was a little bitter when I said “The product’s name is…”

Eh. I’m just a little cranky this morning.

I always have trouble getting to sleep on Sunday night. Tonight is no exception.  I went to bed at 10:00 thinking I’d be able to get a good night’s sleep. Wrong.

Thinking I’d be able to sleep while the Red Sox were in the playoffs was just plain dumb. The whole neighborhood must have been watching the game because there were tons of shouts, screams, and other various noise keeping me awake. Heck, even Reggie was woofing at the noise in the neighborhood, and he never woofs at much of anything.

It’s a good thing they won. At least my sleeplessness wasn’t in vain.

The meth addict downstairs is gone. When I got back from spending the weekend at Beth and Paul’s house, the apartment was empty. He packed and moved in a weekend! Obviously, my landlord has got to be happy he’s gone. I’m curious how many thousands of dollars he lost on this one.

While it’s good that he’s gone, it also means that I need to return my lease. I told my landlord several months ago that I would return my lease when this guy was gone. I need to keep up my part of the bargain.

I was supposed to have a date today. This one turned out to be worthy of Sam. Now normally, I’m attracted to Latino men. This one seemed cool and his pictures online weren’t bad.

When he called me, I knew something wasn’t quite right. His English wasn’t all that good. When he got to the door, I realized that his pictures didn’t represent him well. As we got talking, I knew it wasn’t going to work. If, for no other reason, dude had three bottom teeth. I’m not making this up. He had three bottom teeth.

I can deal with a lot of things. My teeth are far from perfect, and I have a few gaps in my teeth. But still… Maybe this demonstrates I’m shallow. If that’s the case, then I’m guilty. A guy has to at least have decent teeth.