In honor of the movie that’s recently come out (which I have not yet seen, but Tim, of course, has), I wanted to remind people that I have, in fact, actually been to Bruges.

I even have photographic evidence of this fact. I even have evidence that Mark was there with me, and that he was way taller than the people the brewery designed to accomodate.

My personal favorite picture is not any of the carefully preserved 1600′s architecture that Bruges is so famous for, but the following piece of propaganda from their chocolate museum (click to enlarge):

Come on, just eat things in moderation and you won’t get fat! It’s just that easy!

So as you may have heard, the strike seems to be just about over. Official voting will finish Tuesday night, and if all goes well, the writers will be back to work Wednesday.

What that means for me personally is a bit unclear. Seeing as how it’s about 10pm and I haven’t gotten a phone call from my ex-employers yet, I’m under the impression that I at least won’t be working tomorrow.

All I know is, even if that phone call for some reason doesn’t come (although I expect it to sometime this week), at least with the strike lifted, there are going to be actual jobs that I can go out and compete for, with some confidence that I’ll actually get one of them.

That’s been the most frustrating aspect of all of this: Not only did my job disappear, but 95% of the other jobs that I’m qualified for disappeared as well.

All in all, as much as I enjoy being able to blow off doing my laundry because I can do it in the middle of the day Monday, it’ll be very nice to go back to work and be productive again, as well as seeing all my friends.

At least the end is in sight. Hooray for that, at least.

The best Onion Radio News in a while. Audio plays automatically on loading, so adjust your volume accordingly.

Hooray! My computer is back!

What makes me really happy is that they didn’t wipe my hard drive, so I’m pretty much back up and running immediately, with the exception of a few files I had to move around from the external drive I was saving everything to while I was using the temporary computer.

The really excellent news is that because they turned the repair around faster than they thought they would, the rental place only charged me for two weeks, even though I had it a couple extra days. Saved me another $80.

So basically, for waiting four extra days to get my computer back, I saved almost $700 in the great scheme of things.

I mean granted, this was still a very, very expensive excursion into the world of Setting An Example For People Of Why You Should Not Drop Your $2500 Computer.

But good lord, it could have been a lot worse.

Just not doing anything terribly interesting, and have had a serious drop in motivation this week. After working for a couple weeks, to go back to doing nothing is awfully frustrating.

I will note a few random things I’ve noticed in the last few days:

- Chaplin falling asleep on my chest means I will, without fail, be asleep within 15 minutes as well.

- If ever you’re cleaning out your apartment and you find old letters or printed-out emails from your ex, for the love of god, do not start to read them. Save them if you must, but shove them in the drawer before you start reading them. Do not do that to yourself.

- I have to vacuum up dirt and cat hair substantially more often now that I have hardwood floors, but I doubt there was actually any less dirt or cat hair when I had carpet. I’m not grossed out by much, but that thought grosses me out just a bit.

- Apparently the new guy next door to me is some sort of classical pianist. It’s kind of interesting when the music bleeding in matches up with whatever movie or TV show I’m watching. And sometimes its hilarious when he’s playing some delicate thing while I’m watching an action movie.

- No matter how much food I buy for a party, it’s inevitably way, way too much, and I wind up freezing a bunch of meat and throwing out a bunch of buns. I just cannot get the calculus right.

- I have several hundred DVDs, most of which I never watch, so I thought I could sell some to bring in some extra money. But combing through them, I can only find about a dozen that I’m actually willing to part with, most of which will not bring me a damn dime because nobody else wants to watch them either.

Now THAT was a great Super Bowl. Probably one of the few I’ve really gotten emotionally involved in since the last time the ‘Skins won, and that was a looooong time ago.

But how could you not? After Eli Manning somehow managed to escape a tackle, put up a huge throw, and then have David Tyree catch the ball against his helmet, with a guy trying to wrench it from him with all his might.

That single play was, to my recollection, the craziest football play I’ve ever seen, even crazier than when Boise State won the Fiesta Bowl with a fucking Statue of Liberty play a couple years ago.

To turn around from looking like you’re completely fucked, making that play, and then Plaxico Burress absolutely blowing away the defender for the TD on the next one, you had to love the Giants.

The people who came to my house to watch the game started out, by and large, not particularly caring who won. A few wanted to see the Pats lose, just to fuck with their perfect season, but there wasn’t a lot of emotion.

But as the seconds ticked off while Tom Brady repeatedly launched the ball down the field, everyone was rooting hard-core for the Giants. We were all on the edge of our seats, then we celebrated as if we had been rooting for them for years.

That’s why I love sports: When you see such incredible feats and get completely caught up in the emotion, there’s nothing better. Even if you didn’t start out rooting for someone, great games and great players and especially great plays will make you care.

Really, really fantastic game.