It's just a little easy-to-do fundraiser for the American Cancer Society that takes mere moments of your time and results in a $6 donation.

If everyone that reads me daily did just the first two of the three bullets I listed as money-makers for the ACS, that's a good chunk of change. Now imagine that you told a couple friends...

It's like karmic multilevel marketing -- Whee!

Benito and I occasionally dork out and IM with l33t sp34k. It usually has to do with something along the lines of saying "g1// // 13" when one of us "d00ds" the other and brags about scoring two bags of animal crackers for the price of one in the office's breakroom.

I guess that's just a long way of explaining why today's entry's title is what it is.

Please don�t take away my cool kid card.

Moving on now...

This previous week was a busy one. I spent the latter part of it out of town for a company get-together. This involved sitting through meetings all day long, performing �skits� to reinforce the marketing messages we heard all day long (and to build team unity or whatever...), and then watching all of the married-with-kids folks go crazy on their two nights of freedom.

I lived it up as best I could, as the gin was top-shelf and free-flowing, and some senior manager was comp-ing all the cab rides. Really, who was I to argue?

[Out-of-story story: While waiting for an elevator at the meeting complex, someone stopped me and said that she went to high school with me. Sure enough, I played the drums with her in the middle school band and basketball with her in high school. Who figured that I�d ever see anyone from high school again, nonetheless while waiting for an elevator 1,300 miles away from where we previously knew each other?]

I left for the meeting on Wednesday night slightly sick with a tickle in my throat and a little congestion, and I came back completely exhausted. Lucky for me, Benito was also out of town all week for work meetings and had a similar hack and sniffle, so he was just as exhausted.

Much of our weekend was spent slothing. We did hit the burbs for a bit of shopping, but we returned home to watch a movie and then nap until 11 o�clock.

Being home and sufficiently settled, tonight I pick up Hambone from my ex-neighbor Helga. It�s always funny to pick him up from her place. He says hello to me, gets scratched, and then goes back to playing as I visit with her. He�s obviously happy there, and he at least recognizes me as his mama before getting back to swatting his toy mouse around.

Tonight I�ll be there until way too late in the evening and will have to catch a cab while competing with all of the drunks in my former part of town. Boo!

And then Hambone will puke in the cat carrier, and I�ll have to clean him when we get home. Double boo!

So long as I have my kitty back, that�s what matters.

A few times last week I woke up early enough to go to the gym and workout. It�s something I�ve got to do, as my evenings seem to get busier and busier, leaving me little time to go to the gym. With the Shamrock Shuffle (the first race of the year that Benito and I participate in) coming up soon, I�ve really got to get my butt in gear.

I don�t see Benito as competition. Truth be told, he�s gonna beat me in any long-distance race. (I haven�t ever seen him run short distances, so there�s no telling how our race results would turn out for that since I�m quite speedy there. In all that I�m told, I�d kick the crap out of him in basketball -- ha.)

However, his friend (who I talk with enough on IM to go ahead and say �our friend� instead of making the friend Benito-only) is joining the race as direct competition with me. We�re talking trash, but neither of us is actually taking any steps to back up anything we�re saying.

[Side note: Last year�s friend who was supposed to give me something to beat was beaten by almost six minutes, despite my hold-up after I ran into a pole. In his defense, he did make a bathroom stop somewhere along mile number three. He�s since moved, so there won�t be any do-over for us this year.]

Okay. I just got off IM with the (formerly) Benito-only friend. It seems that he�s not running the Shamrock Shuffle after all. Boo! Boo! However, he did say that he�ll run a 10k in July(ish) against me. I�ve already decided that it�ll be the Proud to Run race. I�ll make t-shirts for us... [grin]

All right. This is turning into a narrative about nothing. Time to knock it off.

G�nite all.�