So, a while back Terri tagged me which means I must do this.

RULES: Each player of this game starts off with ten weird things or habits or little known facts about yourself. People who get tagged must write in a blog of their own ten weird things or habits or little known facts as well as state this rule clearly. At the end you must choose six people to be tagged and list their names. No tag backs.

1. I’ve never been to a 7/11

• I love to sing, but never in public. When I’m home alone, I’ll sing along to my CD or MP3 player almost constantly.

• While doing the above, I often am dancing around which makes me feel extremely sexy but probably makes me look like a dork.

• I pace. Back and forth. Up and down. All around. I pace. Sometimes it’s more like I’m prancing.

• I like cats only slightly better than dogs. I love them both, really. When it comes to the latter, I like them big.

• I cry over movies a lot. I know I’m like some uber bitch but movies make me cry. Books, too.

• In elementary and middle school I participating in OM(NowDI) quite often.

• I like to think of myself as mechanically creative. I like to make stuff but I have difficult unless I work in a sort of formula.

• I had to go through most of my button wall to find 6 people to tag.

• Before Rian, I never thought of myself as someone who would get married. I thought marriage was a sham, a crutch, an excuse.

And now, for my tags:

• Heather
• Randi
• Starlet
• Angie
• KayC
• Sasha

Murphy’s law of commerce goes something like this: If it’s a product Cole likes, it will be discontinued. Obviously, this is unfortunate for folks named Cole. Oh wait, that’s my name! Fuck.

Tonight I was reminded just how much I love Rob Zombie’s Hellbilly Deluxe. In fact, there was a time when I was around 14 or so that it was pretty much all I listened to, day and night. I loved it. And after the friendly reminder about how much I love this CD, I popped it in tonight and continued to enjoy it some more, that is, until my batteries died. )=

While listening to such glorious audio stimulation, I tweaked a few things on the site. For starters, I added a page that explains just what the point of a personal website is, but that is not all. I’ve continued adding breadcrumbs to the content section and some things were moved around so if you notice anything amiss, please let me know.

While updating that section, I noticed a few things which were sorely lacking updates such as the poll and guess and win pages, which have all been updated now.

For some less than stellar news, I need to replace both my CD-rom and my CD-RW drives which probably won’t happen, to be honest with you. I have a small tower case (or so says Fred the computer guy) for my computer which is due to the fact that HP decided to go with this “minitower” scheme for the model of my computer. It looks pretty neat; in fact, I’ve always been a little proud at how well my computer parts match and have made a conscious effort to buy matching accessories, such as my wireless mouse.

Anyway, to replace either (or both) of my drives I’m pretty sure I’d have to take off the “doors” (click to see an almost identical product) which hide both openings and let the new drive stick out from the front which would be most unbecoming.

So, that’s it. Yup, you have it. I will be miserable for beauty. It’s the price I must pay, the sacrifice I must make. The path I must travel. The self.. What? Oh, yes. Anyway.

Let me tell you a bit about the, er, disappointing performance of both of these pieces of hardware. After I received my PC back with its new power supply from Fred the computer guy, I noticed that I could not burn CDs which sucked, big time. I had purchased CDs solely for the fact that I was going to burn all my stuff to them. Didn’t happen.

However, I was still able to play CDs from the CD-RW drive which is better than nothing, I guess, if you’re the type of person who needs 2 drives to play CDs. You know, maybe if I had multiple personalities and I could turn them both on and have each use only 1 ear then, sure.. great, 2 drives which can only play music would be awesome! But, y’know what? I don’t. So this is not awesome.

Today, I go to rip a CD which, may I mention, Rian has done successfully since the return of my precious piece of junk machine. Guess what?! It doesn’t work. I bet you didn’t see that coming, huh? Neither drive will work. The CD-RW drive doesn’t recognize the CD at all and while the CD-ROM recognizes it, when I try to rip the CD, it makes a sound uncannily similar to an asthmatic elephant with a respiratory infection trying to breathe through a straw. It literally sounds like it’s wheezing.

So, I take out the CD which doesn’t seem to have suffered any damage and I try it again. I know, I know. Bad idea right? Luckily, nothing any worse happens; it only does the same but I am still unsatisfied.

Currently, I cannot open either of those drives either by pressing the buttons on the tower or the button on my keyboard for the CD-RW drive so I can’t even check and see if the problem may be with the CD I’m trying to rip (Rob Thomas, Something to Be…).

This is rather depressing because I had planned on not investing in a new computer but just upgrading this one (DVD drive(s), adding RAM, perhaps more space, etc) so it would last me quite a lot longer but it looks like I will have to retire this and sooner than preferable. Of course, this also doesn’t work in Rian’s favour because when that time comes, we will need to buy a brand new computer package so that everything matches. -smirks-

Are you still there? Good. Here’s a treat for you for sticking with me this far.

I’ve been munching on these candies for the past day or so and while I must admit that I love Reeses Pieces, these just don’t do the trick. They don’t taste like the original at all. They’re not very peanut butter-y, in my opinion. How rude of me to offer you bad candy. -w- That’s Cole for ya.

Lately, I’ve been browsing the internet for things I would like but probably wouldn’t buy even if I were a millionaire because I get some sick sort of sense of satisfaction out of denying myself pleasures in life, even if I don’t need to. You can browse all these things and perhaps purchase some of them for me at my TheThingsIWant wishlist. If you haven’t heard of this website, you should check it out. You can add anything on the internet to a wishlist, rather than having several separate wishlists.

I did, however, purchase two things (which are still listed there) for myself: a cute bra and panty set from FigLeaves. I’m quite excited for it to arrive! I should think Rian would also be appreciate. >_>

Anyway, with that I shall go to tweak some behind-the-scenes functions of the site and try to acquire the music I was able to oh-so-successfully rip from my CD.

I just recently (as in earlier this morning) finished reading A is for Alibi by Sue Grafton. I had only heard of this author and series in recent years, as she has become increasingly popular, and decided to pick this one up in my quest for new reading material. I will most likely continue on with the series because my interest is piqued but whether I’ll finish it is dubious.

My first thought upon reading this book is the the author, Miss (Mrs? Ms?) Grafton doesn’t seem like an established writer. Her writing is tense and terse which does go with the personality of Kinsey Millhone, the private detective protagonist of the series, but also makes reading feel very choppy. Additionally, the use of tense is amateur; I would have known better in my high school English classes than to switch tense the way the author does.

Still, the reader is drawn to Kinsey Millhone and the book which is, if you couldn’t guess, a mystery. I like mysteries, don’t get me wrong, but I don’t like them too mysterious. I don’t like being in too much suspense; it pisses me off. But I didn’t need to worry about that in this book. Although it’s fast moving and takes a few surprise turns, it’s believable and not stomach-upsetting.

I also felt that both contents and style of writing were dated which makes sense considering that this book is over 2 decades years old, older than myself in fact. I was quite surprised to read that this book was originally published in 1983; as I’d mentioned, I’d only recently heard of Sue Grafton who is, by the way, 60-some years old. My estimate of her age by her style of writing.

Anyway, in this story Kinsey Millhone is hired by Nikki Fife to investigate the murder of her ex-husband for which she was imprisoned 8 (or was it 9 years?). Pleading innocent she sends Kinsey on a chase which has long been dead but being the ever stubborn and dare-I-say anal detective that she is, Kinsey pushes on even when the trail seems to be cold.

Eventually, after interviewing those surrounding the case, becoming romantically involved with one of her suspects, being present at a break in and listening on the other end of the phone as a potential lead is murdered, the clues start adding up and Kinsey discovers who is, in fact, behind the murder of Nikki’s husband Laurence Fife and also, coincidentally, a woman who was murdered in the same fashion shortly after.

“And in the end should someone die?” Yes and that someone, though I won’t name names, dies because Kinsey shoots him. Actually she – and I quote – “blew him away.” I’m not entirely sure the hard ass personality of Kinsey is something you can always believe and it is with that line which I am most skeptical, but I go went with it anyway.

At the end of this book I was flabbergasted; it was just so short. At 200+ pages, it’s not an epic novel by any means so perhaps the fantasy books I’ve been reading make for a poor comparison because there is a full story in here. I hope that, in future novels, Miss Grafton chooses to elongate her stories a bit more, clean up her writing, and modernize the content and style.

Overall A is for Alibi is a book worth reading, even if it is 20 years old and especially if you can let some things go to aid the suspension of disbelief.

This week has been a busy one for me so I’m glad it’s coming to an end but it seems to be indicative of the fact that my life is going to be a bit busier from now on. For starters, I developed an abscess on my waist/tummy which originally seemed like an annoying placed pimple (like you want anything where your pants line is) but it only grew bigger, more painful and redder.

To save you the gruesome details which are pretty horrific, if I do say so myself, I wound up taking a trip to the ER on Monday per the recommendation of “my” doctor not because I was dying or anything. They cut me open, drained me out, taped me up, gave me pain killers and antibiotics and sent me on my merry way.

The ER doctor wanted to make sure the surgery clinic followed up with this, which they did though perhaps a bit too well. However, the surgeon wasn’t very impressed with what she saw the ER did when I went in to see her on Wednesday.

So she cut me up a little more and basically repeated what they did except she gave me anaesthetic this time, which they hadn’t in the ER. She taped me up, sent me on my way but told me to come back the next day (yesterday) which I did. Luckily all she did then was take a look at it, poke a bit and tape me back up.

So, I have a hole in me, literally. A few layers of skin are cut out altogether and it’s all bloody and disgusting (of course, Rian, being the boy that he is, wants to see it and play with it and stuff all the time -rme*). At least it no longer hurts (though it itches) and I’m down to two gauze pad layers rather than the gigantic lump of gauze and tape I had before.

To amuse you, I made this totally, completely, true to size, realistic looking graphical representation of my hole.

Aside from my minor health issues, we saw Casino Royale which was my first ever Bond movie. I know some of you might find that hard to believe but in all my years of watching movies – and there have been some pretty low profile ones – I’ve never seen a James Bond movie.

Anyway, I wasn’t all that enthusiastic about it to begin with. I’ve had plenty of time to get myself acquainted with Mr Bond, were I afflicted with the desire to do so, but I’m not. James Bond just doesn’t appeal to me. He’s a man’s man, exactly the type of man I do not like.

But I went because it was something to do and I can’t really say “No” anyway. I found the movie to be okay overall – not a thumbs up nor a thumbs down. It was decent. I was most impressed with the animated introduction (which was accompanied by a song from Chris Cornell – what happened to Audioslave?) which reminded me of the vector art you see so much online.

I can’t say whether it really seemed like a Bond movie, or if the part was cast well but I enjoyed the overall plot, until the ridiculously retarded, completely unbelievable and insanely inane plot twist which brings us to the end of the movie. In fact, I felt that when that plot twist started, it actually should have been the end of the movie so the rest of it feels tacked on to the end rather than a part of the same movie.

Oh well, life goes on and I am still not a fan.