Honestly, I can't believe what the Hell I'm doing. Well, I can believe what I'm doing - I'm making some money (sort of). What I can't believe is what I'm *not* doing so I can instead make some money. Although, I suppose like all things, it's all pretty related. I'll go ahead and give a synopsis.

I moonlight from my job. In a matter of speaking. If you work in the field of computer science, electrical engineering, or any other field of study that involves a high pocket protector to weekend plans ratio, it's not called moonlighting. It's called consulting. And since I just bought a new pocket protector (look, the pens I like tend to explode - don't break my shoes) and spent Friday night playing video games, I'm going to go ahead and call what I'm doing right now (well, before the blogging, anyway) consulting. The project I'm consulting for is a pretty cool one, and I enjoy doing the work for it - it's the sort of thing I was trained to do in college (signal processing) and have done very little of since I graduated (which is funny, since I spent a year working in an audiology lab. But most of what I did there was hand holding - so much so that in my exit interview I bequeathed my box of latex examination gloves to the guy who took over my job). Which in and of itself is fairly believable.

The unbelievable bit comes when you think of all the things that I could (and arguably should) be doing that aren't work. Most of which revolve (however eccentrically) about the gravitational force that is my latest toy. My latest toy is an Epson Home 10 Powerlite projector, and it is (if you'll forgive the slide away from King's English) the bizomb. It's so cool, it reaches around the temperature scale and hits hot*. How about a quick rundown of some of those things:

Playing Grand Theft Auto 3: I'll tell you something. First of all, yes - this game is inappropriate for people who haven't yet had enough experience in life to learn that there are certain behavior that are acceptable, and certain behavior that are not only inacceptable, but are in fact completely improbably as well. I, for instance, should not be playing this game. I didn't realize this fact until I was driving around Long Island the other day, and seriously considered making up for my missing an exit on the Northern State Parkway by just making a quick turn on the overpass, and landing on the road I actually wanted to be travelling. It didn't stay a viable option in my head for very long, but I'm also a fairly plodding thinker. Someone more used to making snap decisions could have gotten into a lot of trouble right there (of course, according to my experience with this sort of thing, they would probably only have gotten one police star, which you can easily outrun. Only takes about a minute.

Watching the Sopranos: It's on. Right now. If I were a different order of creature, with some special sensory equipment, I could actually feel the electromagnetic waves travelling through the air (DirecTV) at this very moment. Instead, they are just giving me cancer. I could even be watching one of the past episodes of this seasons Sopranos, which somehow are sitting on my harddrive (officer, I really have no idea how that happened. Hackers, probably). But no.

Watching NBA playoffs: Which are on TNT right now. Again, at this very moment. It's really this month that is making me rethink the decision to cancel cable. But since I championed the decision to Sam, I really feel like I have to stick to my guns. But that doesn't mean it doesn't hurt. Do you have any idea how big Shaq is on a projected screen that is eight feet by 6 feet? I do. I measured. 4.5 feet. That's a 1:2 ratio! (which in and of itself is funny, since if that were my size, I'd almost be gaining a couple of inches.

I didn't want to be the one to bring this up, but since this is pretty much a monologue, I'm going to have to be that guy. Do you realize the disturbing potential for life-size pornography? If you project midget porn on a projector, there is a fair chance that it becomes bigger than life-size! That's... I'm not sure what that is, honestly. But I'm almost positive it will build character (although it's unclear if it will do it in the "Today you become a man" way, or more in a "I have seen the face of evil" kind of way).

Honestly, the possibilities are nigh endless. But here I am, doing work (well, blogging. But I'm almost done with this entry, and so getting very close to doing work). Which I suppose is all right, since things like projectors, and sheets on which to project don't come free. I wonder if this is why responsible adults have children. I mean, I work a bunch, and can buy a lot of toys, but seldom have the time to play with them. I think adults have children so at least someone will play with the stuff. But if that's the case, why did I always get yelled at by my dad when I played with his toys? I just don't get it.

In any case, that's a roundabout way of telling you the latest apartment news. Got rid of the TV, and replaced it with a projector. Sam keeps saying that it's the best thing that has ever happened to him. To see his face when he plays MLB 2004 on the Playstation 2, I feel like maybe he's not indulging in hyperbole. Especially since he follows up the declaration with "including my girlfriend."

*(Which reminds me of something that I was thinking about the apartment a couple of weeks ago. I guess everybody's place has that thing that makes it yours and no one elses. A girlfriend of mine had a shower that every few seconds got really cold. Arctic cold. Much colder than you are interested in at seven AM. But it was perfectly periodic, so if you were aware of the problem, it was no trouble at all to sit under very comfortable water, step out, step back, continue showering (of course, that's not a habit that leaves you quickly - I've cha-cha'd under a hundred different shower heads since those days, for no other reason than muscle memory). In my parents home on Long Island, my bedroom has always been the coldest room in the entire house (something about not being able to put insulation in. That, or mom and dad not actually loving me). I'm sure your place has it's thing too. If you're lucky, it's only one. My place has a few things.

One of them is that it gets hot in here. Really hot in here. I know I've mentioned it before, but I think it's significant enough to mention again. At night, sometimes, the only thing that keeps me crying about it is the fact that it would be a waste of water, sorely needed by my sweat glands. This isn't a new thing - since day one (go back and read the relevant blog entries) this has been going on. Which is sort of good, since it's allowed me to develop new skills. For instance, I've gotten really good at gauging exactly how much to open the window to strike a comfortable medium between the sub-zero temperatures outside and the oven-like climate indoors.. Too little and you wake every half hour gasping for just a little more of the (now Saharan) air. But I'm not sure that the worst result. Open them too much and by the time 4AM rolls around you find that you've been in a fetal position for the past three hours, the slightly running nose you had when you went to sleep has frozen your upper lip, and the apple juice bottles next to your head have collapsed so far into themselves that you fear they may soon be forming a set of (wonderfully aromatic) black holes. The most painful part (apart from the hypothermia, of course), is that you know you could end it all by getting out of bed and closing the window... But that would involve getting out from under the blankets, which may in fact be the only thing keeping you alive at this point (since you made a tyros mistake of not letting the sled dogs into bed with you). It's this sort of thing about the apartment that makes me like it so much - I'm only happy when I'm bitching about something, and if my apartment doesn't have it's things to bitch about, I'm not going to be happy. I have a feeling that this sort of thing is related to ones father saying that the incredibly desolate and primitive location he has chosen for your vacation will "build character." In the past I have greeted this with a strongly voiced "Go screw" ("voiced" of course being used in a fairly loose term, since actually saying that sort of thing to a parental unit in my family would have met [rightly, in my increasingly conservative opinion] with a swift whack to the rear).

All of this, is of course, moot for the next couple of weeks, since winter has, at long last, passed us by. But I had those paragraphs sitting in my newblog.txt document and really wanted to get them out. You know, in case you noticed that there was something of a disjoint in the narrative).