I'm not sure if you've heard the rumors or not, but they are indeed true: company dress code requires that I wear a suit every day to work except for "business casual" Friday. Incidentally, crazy things have happened like me racking up a few dollars on my credit card bill for wardrobe and the collared shirts hanging in my closet finally outnumbering the t-shirts. Who woulda thunk it?!?

I have to admit that I'm kinda gettin into the suit thing, though. It's not ideal, but it's not unbearable either, and it does sorta help me feel somewhat professional goin into the office. Rather than buy a couple more suits to add variety to my gray and black, I went with the alternative of expanding my shirt and tie inventory, at least until I get my first few paychecks. This did lead to me breaking down and buying purple. I'm not sure when I'll actually get the gumption to throw it on, but it's ironed and ready to go whenever I am.

No word yet on when I'll be wearing brown.

No one on the bus, which was carrying students from Enlow High School and Ligon Middle School, was injured, police said.
Source: WRAL News

I'm not tryign to be nitpicky here, but this is from a local news story, by a station based in Raleigh, whose studios/offices happen to be only miles down the road from Enloe High School. I could understand if this was some story that made national headlines and it was being reported by the local AP reporters, but come on. The station is literally a left, a right, and a left a few miles down the road from the high school. And I have no doubt that this story was written by some haughty journalism major from Carolina.

One of the things I've learned about myself throughout this whole blogging experience is that I'm not the type of writer who can just sit down, punch out a few words, click "Save" and be done with it. To use this post as an example, I rewrote this second sentence several times before I settled on using it as an example of my insanity. And that's what it is: insanity. Because with only a passing glance, you'll find that I'm not exactly breaking new ground in prose or purpose, and rarely are the topics of my ramblings the slightest bit interesting. Even in my mediocrity, I have to pore over every word and its placement, every comma, every

line break. And for what? So I might have a something larger than a four syllable word in some rambling nonsense about my pathetic cd collection.

The point of all of this is to say that I write less because I write more. That is, to say, I write less frequently because I write more words than basic communication requires. You see less of my writing because it takes more and more time for me to write just one post, and time is something that I'm starting to have less and less of. (I'll refrain from trying to rewrite that sentence without a preposition ending) Also, I'm apologizing to the one of you who (vocally) noticed that I returned and then disappeared again. I am really back, though, and I'm oh so excited about sharing my insanity with you once again.

At 8:30 a.m. on Tuesday April 19th, 2005 I officially become part of the working world.

Since last Friday evening, I have been housesitting for my aunt, who is globetrotting across Europe (okay, really only Italy and France) for the next two weeks. While normally I wouldn't consider this a noteworthy event, it is a significant change in my living situation (apartment to house, harder to experience "TV time with T-Rav") and, more importantly, she has a cat. And I'm pretty allergic to cats.

In preparation for the next two weeks, my aunt decided there were three major necessities: food (she went on a grocery shopping semi-spree), more food in the form of desserts (cheesecake, cookies, and ice cream sandwiches), and two 10-pill boxes of Claritin-D. In the past when I've roomed with a cat for several days, Claritin-D has been a life saver, sparing me the horrors of incessant sneezing and runaway nasal fluids, which I detest.

A further precaution that I, myself, have implemented is the "two room" system of living. This is a system I used during my adolescent years when I would sleep in the bonus room above our garage, while all of my clothes and various other possessions were housed in another room on the other side of the house. Being an only child, I could take advantage of the split second-floor architecture of our house in this way. In my current temporary living situation, I sleep in my aunt's master bedroom, where the cat is used to having free roam, while dressing myself in a designated "clean room" (so as to keep my clothes as dander and hair free as possible). This is one of my aunt's spare bedrooms which the cat is only allowed in when she sneaks her way in (this has happened several times during the first few days of my stay, leading to a moment of irrational frustration this morning). The only reason I don't just sleep in this room (which I said I was going to) is because it contains only a terribly uncomfortable day-bed without proper pillows or linens, a fact I first discovered as I prepared for bed the first night too exhausted to try to remedy the situation.

At first, I was a little worried about the whole situation, especially when I found out it was two weeks (I originally thought just one). But I must say, so far it has been quite fun. Her cat, Sasha, is probably the most outgoing and fun cat I've ever met (with the exception of your outgoing and fun cat I'm sure) and I honestly haven't had too many problems with sneezing, runny noses, or other such allergy symptons while I've been here. There have been a couple of quick fits of sneezing and fogginess, but nothing bad enough to warrant opening the boxes of Claritin yet.

So that's that. Just thought I'd give you a little update about what I've been up to for the last couple of days. Now if you'll excuse me, I've got some cheesecake to devour.

Trust me, you're not the only one who's gotten sick of looking at that stinkin picture of Yao Ming for the last 6 weeks. Oh yeah, I'm back. But not with a vengence.

Before I get going on some aimless rant about whatever it is I'm gonna write about, let me first point out that as a side effect of my diligent work to get this whole new look and feel ready, I reverted back to an old habit of mine with regards to my clean clothes. I'm sure there have been some other damaging effects, but I can't readily identify them right now and so I'm not going to waste time trying.

Part of me wanted to do this whole return thing in grandiose fashion with some long, edited many times over, eloquent piece about where I've been and what I've been doing. But in order for it to be long and eloquent, it would have to be packed with lies and slight exaggerations of the truth (they're different, I swear!) and I'm just not in the place right now where that's okay with me. I'm all about truth and honor and ... okay, there I go pretending to be noble and full of integrity again. Gosh darnit, I need to stop that.

Well I'm not going to do the grandiose thing. I'm just gonna say in two words (uhh, or 253) "I'm back". It's good to be back. And I promise I'll write more later, there's a ton to share.