The weekend was a joyous good time.

Started mid Friday with my sister-in-law calling me at work, repeatedly. Mrs. NFB's family has this weird deal about phone conversations where there's always AT LEAST two more calls to verify everything that was just discussed. So, she calls, asks if we can babysit so her and her husband can both work overtime Saturday morning, I say yes. She calls back to make sure I really meant yes. Then she calls back again to make sure I understood how long. Then she called back again to make sure I was gonna be up early enough. Then she called back again. . .

Whatever, got that all resolved.

So, our niece comes over at 6:30. Nothing better than a four year old princess at 6:30 in the morning on a Saturday, when she thinks she should be sleeping in.

But, hey, we got along OK for the most part. Had some giggles and fun. She helped us clean the house and earned herself a dollar by picking up all the puppy toys and putting them away for us. She ate like a horse the entire time she was there. Seriously. Pankcakes, cereal, popcorn, more cereal, candy, more cereal, hot chocolate, and then she started asking for more, but we were going to be going out to lunch so held her back for about fifteen minutes.

Then SIL came and picked her up and ran home to get BIL and they were going to take us out to lunch to thank us for baby sitting.

Then our niece downed two big heaping plates of noodles. I asked her if she had a tapeworm and they said she'd been a little sick and hadn't eaten hardly anything in several days. Well, she made up for it that day. Wow.

Then, leaving the restaurant, the big red-letter event of the weekend. . .

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I look around carefully, see no one, start to back out of my parking space. I see the big-ass SUV behind and somewhat to the side of where I'm at throw it into reverse. As I reach to shift back into drive and pull back forward, *SMASH*. Hard enough to move the car.

He pulls back into his spot, I pull back into mine, and sit there for a few seconds, trying to calm myself down before going out there to throttle the guy. The calming down isn't working. Mrs. NFB looks at me worriedly as I slam the car into park, throw open my door, and run out.

She follows, grabbing my coat, trying to hold me back.

See, let me explain something. I've been driving since I was sixteen. I was hit once in my pickup about three years ago or so. Not once was I ever hit by anyone else in any of my other vehicles. I've never hit anyone except for one barely moving tap the first night I had my old Nissan, way back in the early years of High School. And that was a glare-ice incident. I'm just really, really good at avoiding accidents for the most part. When it's possible to avoid it, I avoid it.

I got this new 2007 Saturn Aura XR at the year-end clearance sale sometime in early December I believe. It's due for its first oil-change right now. And I've been hit twice by big-ass SUVs since getting it. My first brand spanking new, really nice car, and ass-fuckers in big-ass SUVs see the god damn thing as a target. People follow me everywhere about two inches off my bumper. And it's not like I'm just barely creeping along to justify it. There's no threat in the rear of this car. It's like there's a target on it.

So, back to the moment.

The guy gets out of his big-ass SUV and walks towards me slowly. I see the look of fear on his face. He stands about chest-high to me. The look of fear calmed me, finally. Though I was still angry enough that throughout our conversation I was just shaking uncontrollably. My writing in the number exchange game was barely readable.

I'm just thankful he wasn't one of those "I'm tougher than you asshole" guys, because there was every chance I was gonna pop somebody in the face if they tried to play it that way.

Mrs. NFB, sensing the danger was over, fled to the car. She doesn't handle stress-situations well.

Usually, I do. Somehow, I made it through this one without even saying what I thought. If you're gonna need a guy to help out with a car-scar, you don't want him thinking you're a raging asshole.

As we assessed our vehicles, we realized that there was one, tiny, barely noticeable divot in the paint on my bumper, and just a little silver paint rubbed off on his. After that hard of a hit, we were both surprised. He said, "damn man, what kind of a car is that that can take a hit like that and not even look scratched bad?"

Holding back the rude commets about how his driving must show him a lot of vehicle dammage, I told him what kind.

"Wow. I should look into one of those."

HOLDING BACK HARDER!

We exchange info, get everything taken care of, blah, blah, blah, there you go and we're back in the car.

So, the anger slowly went away. I told Mrs. NFB that if we ever come into some massive pile of money to not let me buy some really expensive car, because I feel sick about my really new somewhat nice car being banged up. I'd hate to think what I would feel when some jackass in an SUV runs into my eighty grand sports car.

But, the anger came back when talking with mom. Leave it to ma to make a bad situation worse.

She pops off with something about when she's driving her husbands big-ass SUV she can't see cars as low to the ground as mine at all. Now, I've asked multiple times why he needs a big-ass SUV. She repeatedly says he needs it for "all his stuff." He's an insurance salesman. "All his stuff" is two briefcases and a laptop. A suitcase if it's an overnight trip. You could fit that shit in a compact. But, that's not this conversation.

So, I ask, "Why do people need to drive vehicles that are four thousand miles tall?"

"I don't know? Maybe you should start driving your pickup again?"

"Yeah, that's a good idea. Let's piss twenty-five grand down our leg so we can have a nice vehicle sit in the driveway while we drive our old, barely functional piece of crap."

"I just know that driving a bigger vehicle is safer!"

"How is driving a vehicle that's so tall you can't see other vehicles SAFER?"

"Well, you wouldn't have been hit if you were in a bigger vehicle!"

"Mom, stop it."

"I'm just saying, you should really have a bigger. . ."

"Stop, or I hang up."

"It's not safe driving. . ."

"Goodbye mom."

"ALRIGHT! I'LL CHANGE THE SUBJECT!"

I'm sorry. My car would not be 2007 Car of the Year if it wasn't safe. And driving a bigger vehicle isn't safer. You want to be safer? Drive a vehicle appropriate for your uses. Going to the grocery store? Drive a car that has a nice size trunk. Carrying two briefcases and a suitcase? Again, a car with a nice size trunk, or hell, a back seat. Running a rescue operation in the middle of the desert? OK, maybe an SUV.

I'm fucking sick of being bounced off of by SUV drivers because they claim they can't see me. You don't need to be the biggest son-of-a-bitch on the road to be safe. Your not safe. You're just more of a menace to everyone else.

If mom wouldn't have turned this into a chance to lecture me, the anger probably would have went away by now. But no, rant and rave crazy woman. Tell me how stupid I am for driving a respectable car while you storm around town in your huge monster truck.

The next time she complains about gas prices, there's going to be a war.

I refuse to cave on this point. I will not buy a huge vehicle just to defend myself against huge vehicles. Fuck you. Pay attention to your driving and drive a vehicle you're capable of handling or stay the fuck off the road.

BREAK

More cheerily now.

I bought a pro-level compressor/limiter plug-in for Logic this weekend because, honestly, I hate the way the built-in compressor colors the sound. The one negative is that as a channel comes to life that has the compressor put on it, it clicks.

So, I took all my crossfade points and built in automation to go from dead silence up to whatever level I need on the sliders. Took the poppy intro bits and turned them into glistening silence.

Then I got really drunk and entertained myself by playing the song and watching the sliders move on their own. That was awesome.

This week I look to spend more time writing another song, and less time fucking with mixing. Because I'm about to shift it all into creation mode. w00tz and shit.

Had a moment to show AFKS the first tune, the one I showed you guys last week. His comment? "That main riff is probably OK. Don't much like the rest of it."

Thanks for your support.

BREAK

So, Mrs. NFB lectures me about staying up to late. Then she sits up watching TV in bed until eleven and feels like shit the next day.

I asked her why she did that.

"TV in the bedroom is bad. Especially a good TV. Because I want to watch it. Because it's there. And I stay up too late watching it."

"Just turn it off."

"I CAN'T DO THAT!"

The pups are not amused. In fact, they've taken to leaving the bedroom and going to sleep out in the living room because they're sick of the TV being on after their normal bedtime.

Mrs. NFB has lost her early-sleeping buddies. She likes to go to bed at eight o'clock, and the pups with her. That's changed now.

But TV is one of those addictions that doesn't count as an addiction. It's not a problem and she can stop anytime she wants. Or at least, that's what she tells me. Right before launching into a huge "DANCING WITH THE STARS STARTS NEXT WEEK AND BIG BROTHER IS ON AND SURVIVOR IS ON AND IT'S GONNA BE AWESOME!" rant.

But hey, until she starts taking her tiredness out on me, I don't care. She's happy, or so she claims. Good enough.

BREAK

Zippy's mission this morning was to take care of a system in the receiving area that's got a chassis fan not working, and therefore won't boot up. BB assigns Zippy to take care of the problem right when he gets here. Here's the basic run-down of how that's going.

1. Spend twenty-five minutes surfing the web and chatting with his wife online.
2. Spend ten minutes asking BB questions about the chassis fan that's out.
3. Spend another twenty minutes surfing the web and chatting with his wife online.
4. Finally go out to look at that system.
5. Bring that system back to his desk.
6. Spend another ten minutes surfing the web and chatting with his wife.
7. Ask BB if we have any power supplies for these systems. Because that'll obviously fix that chassis fan.
8. Replace power supply.
9. Try to boot up the system. Let it sit error-code beeping for about ten minutes while he chats with his wife and surfs the web.
10. Turn off the system and go look for another power supply. Because when that didn't fix it, it's obviously because that power supply is bad too.
11. Give up on looking for another power supply and go back to surfing the web and chatting with his wife.

Not that I'm above surfing the web *COUGH*. But hey, if there's something that needs fixing, I fix it first.

Case in point, my first job this morning was a missing section from our online catalog search. Found the missing section, updated it to correct the error (an 'o' instead of a '0'), and got it up and running before doing anything else. So why it's taking him so long to just go grab a chassis fan from one of the junker systems we have upstairs I don't understand.

BB and myself believe Zipster will try to turn this into a week long project. We have faith that he may even be able to stretch it into two weeks. In the meantime, the dock boys are pissed that they're missing one of their two systems.

Way to go Zippy!

Enough. I've got a finger-nail clipping idiot to destroy. Clipping nails at work is a capital offense. Outs.