today i’m on day 2 of my birthday vacation. i originally planned to go to rollercon, but me figuring it’d be more sensible to not spend money at the moment and cynicalscribe paying off her wrist kinda put the kibosh on either of us going, so instead i’m having more of a “staycation”. it’s funny, carrie called it that earlier today, and then at dinner mom called it that as well.

yesterday i was productive, though i got a later start than i planned. got my driver’s license renewed, went to the comcast office and picked up a second DVR for the house, went to class (was late due to having to drive with rush hour traffic instead of against it like usual, even though i allowed myself twice the time it would take to get there normally), hung out with zenmetsu and worked out electric bill stuff and puttered around on our iphones, came home and set up the DVRs, paid off a credit card (woohoo!) and engaged in video chat hijinx with whammywah.

i don’t like having to get my eyes checked at the MVA when i get my license renewed. each time i’ve had trouble seeing the letters. it’s not that i can’t read them — i can read them just fine and say exactly what letters are there — but the machine they have you look in is weird. it’s like you’re looking into a periscope, and by putting your face up against it your forehead presses in a button to have it light up and then they ask you to read the 4th line of text. when i try to do it, it’s like trying to look at a stereoscopic picture with a viewer that’s not at an distance that you can see properly. so, i don’t know if it’s me or what, but when i put my head up against this machine and they ask me to read the text, i have to kind of cross my eyes to read the text properly and have to make note of the characters as they move when i do that. i can see the light that they shine on the left and the right to check your viewing angle fine, but it’s always that damn reading the 4th line of text that trips me up. i hate it.

so i picked up a second DVR for the house, since you need one to watch hi-def content and i had moved the one we had from our den to our living room to work with my hi-def tv, but folks still wanted to record shows to watch in the den. anyway, i got all that set up, but it’s really weird… the original DVR that’s now back in the den still gets all the proper channels correctly (the hi-def ones too, even though it’s not hooked up to a hi-def tv it still makes an attempt to show them), and the one in the living room hooked up to the hi-def tv says it’s not authorized for some of the stations that normally are available (things like the HD version of the sci-fi channel, the national geographic channel, etc.). the really weird thing is that the old DVR doesn’t get HBO / shotime / starz / etc. — which makes sense, since we don’t subscribe to any premium channels — but the new DVR does. made it a little surprising when i was hooking it up and the first channel that it was set on was HBO and “final destination 4” was on, right at the part where the two girls are getting naked to tan in the tanning salon! so i don’t know why it’s tuning in HBO on one and not the other, and why it’s even tuning it in at all.

class itself was funny (as usual)… my instructor is great. he was a CIO for the census bureau and now he’s an associate CIO with the treasury department, and inevitably any discussions on our chapter for class end up about either a) catching people with porn in the workplace, or b) crazy experiences he’s had at work. yesterday he told us how there was some guy writing on the men’s bathroom walls with their own feces and everybody thought it was this guy he was friends with, so he had to confront him with “scott… you’re not writing on the bathroom walls with poop, are you?”… they ended up having to set up a hidden camera to see who was going in and out of the bathroom and it ended up being some guy who’s a lawyer and a nutcase, apparently. there was also some guy that a lady caught jerking off at his desk and my instructor had to mediate the situation (“why! why! i’ve got a masters degree and all these certifications and i have to mediate this!? why?!”). the guy claimed my instructor had something against folks who wanted to masturbate at work and was out to get him because of it. eventually the whole thing went to court and the instructor had to testify against the guy and he ended up only getting 2 days off of work without pay. they moved his desk but now nobody wants to sit next to him, hahaha…

i’m glad i got my credit card paid off (well, it’s not paid off yet, i only did some rearranging of money from my savings to my checking account, and then scheduled two payments from two checking accounts to pay off the credit card in a few days)… it had the lowest balance, but the intermediate rate of my three cards i have. and now i took the money that i set aside for automatic payments on that card, and split that to go towards the other two cards i have. every little bit helps!

today i didn’t really do anything but sit around the house. i called the car dealership to find out more info about my new MINI, but i ended up having to leave a voicemail for my motoring advisor. hopefully it’ll be ready on saturday — that’d be an awesome birthday present!

i’m trying to think of what to do for my birthday this weekend. festive wants to go to nando’s in dc with cynicalscribe and myself on friday night, which might be an idea, but i’d also like to go to bad decisons on either friday or saturday night. _dream_believer said he’s trying to get together folks for karaoke on saturday at remington’s, but i don’t really like it there as it’s gotten a little (ok, a lot) rednecky for my taste, and zenmetsu described it perfectly as just “bad”. but i’d like to hang out with folks for my birthday, though i’m not sure exactly when or where yet. hmph. suggestions?