Moron count of the day is definitely four as that's the number of people I've seen moving around the crap in the parking lot.

The dumbbells are decidedly girly. Even the manufacturer thinks so. As I was opening each of the boxes I noticed that the two pound and three pound dumbbells had photos of a woman on both sides. However the five pound and eight pound dumbbells had a picture of a guy on one side and a woman on the other.

Is this not the girliest set of equipment you've ever seen?

I was really glad that the Bosu came with a foot pump and the ab ball came with a hand pump.

The weights and the medicine ball also came with suggestions for lifts. I have four hand weight posters because one came in every box. I also have a poster for medicine ball exercises.

Oh well. Even if it is girly, I've got plenty of exercises I can do. It should help since I spend most of my day sitting now. At least it's something to laugh at.

For the less technical people reading this (yes, this was a learning experience for me too), here's what I bought and how I put it together:

From the top left, is the case. Under that to the right is the box with my new laptop battery and the envelope with my new mouse nub. Up and to the left of the case is my new keyboard and mouse (that was my splurge in the whole deal). Under the keyboard is the processor and the video card to the right of the processor followed by the motherboard. Under the motherboard is is two boxes each containing two GB of RAM. The final row is a power supply, a DVD/CD burner, a DVD drive, and three hard drives.

When you put together a computer you have to start by assembling the pieces that attach to the motherboard. The box comes with lots of stuff in it. The motherboard comes with a faceplate you install in the back of your computer that labels all the connections. It also comes with cables to connect your hard drives, floppy drives (who uses those anymore? ;-) , and your optical drives (CD/DVD drives). They also give you cute little stickers you can put on the outside of your computer so everyone knows how awesome it is. There is also a book that comes with it as a reference and an installation guide (that's the big one on the bottom left).

My motherboard supports either a Duo Core or Quad Core processor. It has built in energy efficiency (in case you couldn't tell by the stickers on it). I took it out of the box and took some pictures.

I think it looks like a little town. Yes, I know that's silly, but it entertains me. So, here are some "artsy" pictures.

Along one side of the motherboard is the connections. That's all your input devices (mouse, keyboard), USB ports, printer, monitor connection (but I have a separate video card), audio inputs and outputs, etc.

The first thing I installed was the processor. That little square is the processor and the big round thing is a heat sync with a fan. You do not want your processor to overheat!

To install the processor, you have to take that wonderful plastic piece out of the processor's home.

Yeah, that's right, Core 2 Duo. Isn't it shiny?

Here it is before I shut the door. There's a hinged door that keeps the processor in place so it can't move.

After the processor is installed, you install the heat sync on top of it. Here is my nerdy self worrying about how I'm going to get the pins to snap into place on the motherboard without cracking something. The motherboard certainly didn't seem very stable, but it's tougher than it looks.

I did get it installed and the fan plugged in.

Then, I installed my memory (RAM). It was much easier than I was expecting. They sort of make it idiot proof. It only goes in one direction because there's a little notch in the bottom that matches up with the holes. Then you just push down till the clips snap into place.

After the processor and the memory was installed, I put the motherboard in the case. You have to lay the case down flat and use screws to attach it to the case.

Once the motherboard was fastened to the case, I installed the video card. That is one shiny video card. Wiring everything proved to be a challenge because the video card was 9" long. But, the card is really quiet.

I put the rest of the pieces in their places inside the case. The cables at the top-right of the photo are my optical drives. My Hard drives are in the bottom right. Once everything was put into its place I connected all the cables. There are a lot of them. You've got a cable between each hard drive and the motherboard. A cable between the power supply and basically everything in the computer (fans, hard drive, motherboard, optical drives, video card, etc.). Then you have cables from the motherboard to the video card, optical drives, hard drives, processor, etc. It's a little difficult to see in the photo, but the cable that came with the motherboard was a little tight going to the optical drives because it had to go around the video card (it's the big blue one). The motherboard also only came with two hard drive cables but I bought three hard drives.

When it was all said and done, it ran! I was so excited! I did decide to get a couple cables though. I bought a thinner cable to the optical drives which worked out well. I also bought a third hard drive cable and a monitor cable. John and I ended up going to DIT because there aren't many places in town who carry that type of stuff. Their prices weren't awesome, but by the time I would have paid shipping on new cables it would have come out the same. I think part of their mark-up is to cover the cute little bags they give you to put your stuff in.

I made an enormous mess. Got pretty nervous and frustrated a few times, but it was all worth it. I priced a computer on Dell's web site with the same specifications as the one I built and I saved over $1,200 by building my own computer, which is more than I spent on everything together including the laptop fixes. I sent in quite a few mail-in rebates and should be getting about $150 back as well. Plus, my new desktop has been in the living room since I built it. I can't seem to convince myself to unplug it from my new TV. It's just so shiny!

I have since cleaned up the mess in my apartment. I kept all the boxes for the internal parts and the case. Oh, I also got my laptop completely fixed. The new nubbins are an enormous improvement over the previous one.

The old one:

And the new one:

Money well spent. Oh, the amount I spent to fix one computer and build a new one was also about $700 less than a new laptop I was considering. :-)

So, the car is: a VW Jetta. So, first and foremost, the things I like about the car (besides the fact that it definitely doesn't look like a shoe, as you can see).

I like that I can adjust the seat height. This works just like my Civic. Pull up to lift the seat and push down to lower the seat.

I'm happy I have power windows and locks (another thing that was annoying about the shoe). Plus, there's plenty of room to stuff things in the door.

I'm also a fan of the extra blinkers on the mirror. It took a little time to get used to the blinking in my peripheral vision, but it's pretty cool.

And my favorite feature: the key! I have been playing with this thing since I got the car.

I do have some features of the car, I'm not so sure about. They're okay, but I'm not sure that I'm just totally enamored with them.

First would be the trunk. I haven't decided if I like that the trunk completely opens or not. My trunk key on my Honda pops the trunk open, but you have to lift the lid. I think I lean more towards my Honda because then the trunk is open when I get to it, but you'd only know if you were standing next to the car. With the Jetta, it's going to be completely open for anyone to steal something out of it. I'm not sure I'm comfortable with that unless I'm very close by.

The radio would be another thing I'm not so sure about. It's not bad. It has an mp3 CD player (another huge step up from the last rental). I'm not sure I like the buttons. They almost scream "We didn't want you to get lost so the buttons and the text is huge!"

The shifter is okay. It's not as stupid as the shoe. It's a little odd because you have both Drive and a "Sport" option. I looked up the difference between the two in the manual. Basically, the Drive gear is more fuel efficient than the Sport gear. They claim Sport is supposed to be more "fun" to drive but suggest you leave it in drive. Yeah...no idea on that one. Plus, it's sort of like a weird half-ass manual. It doesn't even have a clutch. You can move the shifter to the right when you're in drive and then you push up to go up a gear and down to go down a gear. It just makes me miss my manual.

The control for the wipers is okay. Nothing really special to note. You can pick the frequency they clear the windshield like most cars.

The Jetta has cup holders. But I'd definitely say my Civic's cup holders are better. They limit the size and I miss my cute little sliding door.

Finally, things I'm not so crazy about. First would be the dashboard. It's not bad, but it's certainly a step down from the design inside my Civic. I've been spoiled by the digital speedometer and the digital face on the Jetta's dashboard looks cheesy in comparison to my car.

I'm not so much a fan of the crank on the side of my seat. The one that helps with back support makes sense. The one that cranks your seat angle forward and back is annoying.

Yet another dumb feature is the light above the visor. My thought was that the goal is to have the light shine on your face. This light isn't all that helpful. Plus, it's just one more thing that can break. Are you really going to take your car in because the sliding door on the mirror doesn't turn the light on anymore?

Another thing that has gotten in the way and also confused me when I first got the car is the center console. I'm sure it's supposed to be clever, but it's just generally annoying. If you don't pull the lid up high enough, it won't go back down.

I also hate the turny-button for the lights. Yes, that's right a turny-button. But it doesn't lie. However, it's below the dashboard, between the driver's side door and the steering wheel. I am so used to turning the end of the blinker stick towards the front of the car, that this is annoying, plus what is on the blinker stick is probably what makes this worse.

That brings me to the stupid blinker stick. Which also has the cruise control on it. Yes, the cruise control. This is where you turn it off and on and you set the cruise speed or resume your speed. Putting the cruise control in this stupid location means you have to tap the breaks to cancel your cruise or you risk accidentally turning your cruise control on. Oh, plus, if you nudge the blinker, it blinks like 4 times after it's already been returned to the "neutral" position. Yeah, this thing drives me crazy.

Last, but certainly not least, the Jetta doesn't get nearly the gas mileage my Honda does. So, while I would definitely agree that I was given a "comparable" car for a rental, I am glad I didn't buy one. I had considered it for a bit when I was looking at cars, but I'm not so sure I'm the type for "German engineering in 'da house." However, I hope you enjoyed your tour of the Jetta. It's a nice replacement, but I miss my baby.

I'm looking forward to getting my car back. However, it sounds like they were just able to start work on it this week and the stupid deer caused about $4,500 worth of damage. The body shop cited me about 9 days of work.

Surprisingly, nothing really happened Monday night. The worst night was definitely Wednesday.

Mutual hosted an invitational swim meet over the weekend. As an employee, I received two free tickets. John and I went on Saturday night. They built an Olympic regulation swimming pool inside the quest center. Pretty impressive:

It was my first swim meet. Things ran similar to a track meet and I definitely enjoyed the experience. I'd definitely go to another one given the chance. I even had the opportunity to see Michael Phelps swim and speak after his race was over. So, all in all, a cool experience.

Anyway, after he opened the box and started using it, John came to the conclusion that it reminded him a little of a baby elephant he could drag around by the trunk. He brought it over this weekend and used my garage to clean out his car (given that mine is at the body shop...poor car). While he was over, I made some eyes, which we stuck on the vacuum. I think it does look surprisingly like an elephant. Perhaps we need to move the "tusks" to the front though.

We decided to name it Walt. It sounded like a good name for an elephant-vacuum. So, here is Walt, John's baby-elephant-vacuum:

Now we can be like Michael (in the show Lost) and run around frantically yelling Waaalt! Waaalt!

All of a sudden, I see something move in the middle of the road by the concrete barrier separating eastbound and westbound traffic. Then I hear John yell "Deer!" "Deer!!" In a split second I thought "What is that? That can't possibly be a deer. What the hell is a deer doing in the middle of the interstate?! Oh, shit!" I tried to dodge the deer by braking and steering to the left. The point of impact was my left headlight. I think I knocked the deer around and I'm guessing it died on impact.

I pulled over to the side of the road, directly in front of the Exit 402 sign and I looked at John and said "What is that smell?!" John handed me his phone and I called the police. Then, he got out of the car to look at the damage. He came back and said it didn't look too bad, mostly cosmetic. I got out of the car to look and I couldn't really say anything. As I was getting back in the car, I noticed something on my mirror. It looked like dirt or tar under the light on the interstate.

I had the car towed because the seat belts had locked up and there was no way we could breathe and have them on. Plus, the front bumper was rubbing against the front tire. The tow guy was nice enough to drop us off at my apartment complex and then we followed him to the dealership. As he was unloading the car, he noticed me looking at the mess on my car and he looked at me and said "Yup, that's deer poop."

So, not only did I hit the deer and kill it, I actually did scare the shit out of it. All the way down the driver's side of my car.

Without further ado, here are the photos:

The white thing you can see is the container for my windshield wiper fluid. Directly behind that was my battery from what I could see.

The beginning of the poo:

And, most of the poo...yeah, that's gross:

I swear I have some of the worst luck with cars. My poor baby...

The way it works is you can either reserve your movies online by creating a login and picking out what you want to rent or you can pick out your movies in the store at the kiosk. The good thing about creating a login online is that it will e-mail you when you've made your reservation, when you've picked up your movie, when you've returned your movie and when they've charged your credit card so you have a paper trail for the whole process. All you have to do is walk up to the kiosk, swipe your card and it dispenses your movie(s).

They kiosks look something like this:

The disks dispensed look like this:

When you return them, you just hit the return button and stick the disc in the side of the kiosk and you're good to go.

So far I've rented 27 Dresses, P.S. I Love You, Atonement, and Waitress (yes, all girly movies because John wouldn't want to watch them with me so I watched them while I was sick). I liked 27 Dresses the best out of all of them and honestly that's the one I expected to like the least. I thought the other three were too depressing.

Let's see, there was my mom's birthday. Happy birthday Mom! Then, Mother's Day. Then Brad went to Canada and rented an apartment (he's moving soon!). Then, I got sick right before vacation in San Antonio. Flew to San Antonio (flights complete with tornadoes in Denver!). Then, my uncle got married. Congratulations Uncle Rod & Diana!

Everything was fun, but I'm ready for some rest and relaxation where I don't have to do anything or go anywhere. In the course of the month, I had the opportunity to experience Redbox and What-a-Burger, finish the Chronicles of Narnia (finally), and see just how big things in Texas are (including Sea World).

I plan to post about such things soon. However, it's been so long since I posted anything (given the crazy month that was May, I figured I'd just update a few things first).

John's mother was telling me about past Greek Easters, before John's grandmother passed away when they would go to midnight church, then to his grandma's for food and wouldn't get home until 5am. The Greeks do know how to celebrate.

Sunday, we met his extended family (and other church members) for lots of Greek food. I tried the lamb again this year. I wasn't a huge fan last year because it was a bit dry, but it was very tender and moist so I'd have to say I like lamb.

• Top Chef: This one's a classic. Probably the one that started the rest (besides Project Runway). It is actually interesting to see what the chefs come up with each week. The drama gets annoying sometimes. All I really care about is the ingredients, how it looks and how it tasted. Then I get to wish I could cook something like it.


• Project Runway: Another classic. Designers make all sorts of weird clothing for various occasions and various people ranging from prom dresses, WWF women's outfits, men's suits, etc. It's always a good time to make fun of the weird stuff people like to pretend are clothes coming down the runway.


• Shear Genius: Modeled after the first two. They gathered a bunch of hair stylists and made them cut hair! Novel idea.


• Top Design: Again, modeled after the first two. A bunch of interior designers have to design various rooms/spaces.


• Make Me a Supermodel: sort of a cross between Top Chef and Tyra Banks' 'America's Next Top Model'. There's guys and girls all living in the same house. Guess what, they all want to be models!

I've also been known to watch some random reality shows on Bravo as well like Tim Gunn's guide to style. You know, those style shows are kind of mean. Essentially your friends think you dress so crappy they have to contact a TV network to do something about it and then they show up and tell you how crappy your clothes are, make you throw them all away and spend way too much money on new clothes and you end up with 1/2 as many clothes as you started with. I'm not sure I'd necessarily view that as a good thing. Anyway, I also watch (and by "watch" I mean not change the channel and tune out about 70% of the show like the rest of anything else on Bravo) Workout and pretend it's helping me exercise. It hasn't worked yet, but I have hope that someday it will.

Anyway, as I was saying, I "watch" a LOT of crap TV on Bravo, but I've finally found a show I can't leave on the TV for more than 30 seconds without having that feeling that someone has just scraped their nails on a chalkboard. That show would be "Step It Up and Dance" with Elizabeth Berkely. I can go on about reasons why I can't stand the show, but I'd almost suggest you flip past it yourself. Maybe even see how long you can stand to leave it on the channel. I can't stand those "Real Housewive's" shows, but I can last longer on those than I can if "Step It Up and Dance" is on.

Anyway, if you want crap TV you don't have to, or don't want to pay attention to, generally Bravo's not a horrible choice. I wouldn't suggest trying to devote your full attention to most, if not all the shows on Bravo though. But they are generally good filler/background noise. Except "Step It Up and Dance".

Anyway, today we're going to pretend that we're in grade school and tell about what I did with my tax refund. Well, part of it. Some of it will be going toward the car loan. Anyway, on to the fun stuff.

When I started college, my parents took me out to Bed Bath and Beyond in Lincoln and we bought the cheapest set of pots and pans we could find. They worked while I was in school (not that they were used all that often) and they're still a decent set of pans. They do the job, but shortly after I moved into my apartment, I had a hankering for pancakes and made the mistake of thinking I could make good pancakes in my non-stick skillet. The sad half-burnt, half yummy pancakes (and when I say half, I don't mean half of them sucked, I mean half of each pancake was burnt) made me think about getting new pots and pans. So, I found a set that I liked and bought those this month. After the tax refund was deposited, of course.

I purchased the new Calphalon CS Non-stick dishwasher-safe set. They were pretty expensive, but totally worth it! They distribute heat evenly. Each pan is non-stick on the inside, steel on the outside and every single one goes in the dishwasher with no issues. I can even wash them with either gel or powdered soap. Below is a picture from an online catalog of the set I purchased. It came with two skillets (omelette pans), two sauce pans with lids, a stock pot with lid and a sauté pan with a lid. I'm debating on whether to order a mid-sized sauce pan and a larger sauté pan. We'll see how the cooking goes for now. Below is a picture from an online catalog of the set:

I also purchased a new set of knives. I had purchased a set of Chicago Cutlery knives when I moved and had problems with them from the start. I was shocked to find out that every single knife in the set was serrated. I found out later (after it was too late to return them) that it was a "feature" of the set. Although not prominently displayed on the packaging. After avoiding purchases of chicken and steak and basically any other meat I'd have to cut for months, I finally decided it was time to get a better set of knives so I didn't have to avoid cooking yummy things. So, I bought a set of Wüsthof Classic knives. Consumer Reports rated them as one of their "best buys" so I went with them. Plus I didn't want to spend an arm and a leg and these were plenty expensive from my viewpoint. Anyway, I can't even begin to explain how much better it feels to slice smoothly through a piece of raw meat before cooking rather than having to saw through it. It's like a breath of fresh air and now I can cook a wider variety of things without having the annoyance of a serrated chef's knife.

One of the most amusing parts of the shirt is right below the tag. I didn't realize that threadless.com did this, but it would be really cool (if I were more artistically inclined) to have one of your designs printed because they tell you who designed the shirt, what edition the print is and the title of your design. Plus, it has more penguins on it, so how could you not like that? Also, I ordered a large. The baby-t's can run a bit small at times so I played it safe. I wasn't anticipating the tag to say "girly large." Generally amusing.

I found a few other shirts (Arctic Spa and Penguins on Holiday) I liked on the site, but sadly they don't have my size right now. If enough people request a re-print, they will make them available again (hint, hint).