I am off work today, yay!

So far I have:
1. Slept in till 9:30, a full hour after I'm normally at my desk, yay!
2. Paid two bills that were actually due yesterday but since it was Sunday, they wouldn't credit them anyway till today.
3. Escalated a case with eBay where a seller never sent me the item and has not responded to my attempts to contact them (and got a refund!)
4. Eaten breakfast (Veggie sausage, egg, and cheese on an English muffin.)
5. Charged my glucometer (I had it charging last night and it didn't work for some reason, so I had t do it again,)
6. Checked out Facebook and taken three quizzes (I am supposedly supposed to live in Los Angeles--which I went to in the 1970s and didn't care for--and I came out as Captain Jack Harkness for 'Doctor Who' companion. Can't remember the other one, as I am writing the commentaries later in the day.)
7. Checked my e-mail (Mostly the normal stuff. I love that on my computer I have the ninjas theme for Gmail, though. It's very cheery.)
8. Checked the news (Lots of violence, see later post on gun violence.)

So now it's on to other things. What I'd like to do today:

• Get my hair cut. (I did, but she didn't really take off as much as I asked her too; it's been barely trimmed.)
• Get into the pool. (See later post on that.)
• Maybe go to Lane Bryant. (Decided to go to Meijer and check out sandals instead, to no avail.)
• Go to the library and return a couple of books. (Did that.)
• Listen to music. (Of Monsters and Men's My Head is an Animal.)
• Watch some of those things on the DVR and DVDs that I haven't yet. (Thinking about 'Sherlock', but haven't yet).

In other words, do what in Dialectical Behavioural Therapy they used to call 'pleasurable adult activities' and relax. :) Oh, and maybe get a jump on the game notes. We had a good game, then watched 'Witches of East End' and 'Salem'. But I was tired and a little hormonal last night when I got home, so I went straight to bed.

Okay, off the computer and time to do something fun. Enjoy your day!

(PS: I also napped on and off throughout the day, keeping off my knee, which hurts, but not as bad as it usually does. Oddly enough, the left knee is really hurting, a sharp pain when I move it. Perhaps I hurt it at the same time, only not as badly, and it's starting to act up, or, perhaps it's just working harder since I'm putting most of my weight on to it instead of the right knee. Hurts either way.)

I have a confession to make

Remember the reminiscing I was doing the other day regarding old school computing? That is, my old Atari, in response to the video of kids reacting to the old ASCII system?

This coincided with a message from eBay saying I should change my account password due to a breach. Now, I've been on eBay about twice since I opened the account a few years ago, once to get something a friend was interested in, and once to replace a puzzle I accidentally broke of said friend's. But I do have an account, so I dutifully went to change my password.

I was still thinking about my old Atari 800XL, and so I typed it into eBay's search engine, and found several listings, all more expensive than I would have spent--about $100, which is what the system cost when my mom bought hers all those years ago. Then I happened upon a 600XL computer that was one model below mine, but takes the same cartridges, purportedly worked, and was about a third of the price of the others.

So I bid on it. And no one else did. And the next thing I knew, I'd won the auction. I also bid on a joystick, and won that one, as somewhere along the way I divested myself of my joysticks. But I kept my ROM packs, mostly games, about fifteen in all. There's something thrilling about getting down to the wire and bidding on something in 50 cent increments. So have to watch that! :) Today I received the computer (it came very quickly--it was Monday when I won the auction). Tonight I took it home and hooked it up to my bedroom TV and yay, it works. I tried a couple of ROM packs to make sure. So as soon as the joystick gets here, I can play the games I loved, such as Joust, Dig Dug, Centipede, Frogger, Gyruss, etc. So I logged back on to eBay and left very positive feedback to the seller, who was very reasonable, included the connectors I needed to get it hooked up, and got it to me very quickly.

I'm afraid I'm a bit of an old-fashioned video gamer. I still have an old Nintendo system, too, one with cartridges for Gauntlet and Gauntlet II. :)

That I'll probably keep, but there are other things in my house that I might do best to put on eBay. Things like Elvis records from the 60s in great condition, an old Game Boy system that I've never really used, a wallet that is too small for my phone these days. I could have my own online garage sale. This has possibilities....

Okay, it's almost 1:30 am. I got home late because I was waiting for a break in the weather, where it was storming. Time for bed--7 am comes early. Good night! May you dream of little pixelated protagonists saving the world from evil.

Archivists gone bad

Man arrested in eBay sale of historic documents

Daniel Lorello, a department of education archivist for the state of New York, was arrested for stealing documents and artefacts since 2002--and about 400 items in 2007 alone. A history buff alerted authorities when he found Lorello selling items on eBay. Police recovered about 400 items from his home, estimated to be about 90% of what he stole; the rest was probably sold.