I vaguely remember eating vegetable soup at 3:30 in the morning while my friends took my phone and drunk dialed a few people. My apologies to Autumn-kitty. I saw her on the outgoing calls list the morning after.

I know I also drunk dialed Benito three times. Gah.

The next day I felt like ass. I drank a bunch of water and slept in until 1, only to pry myself from my bed and onto the couch. I finished watching Catch Me If You Can while moving as little as humanly possible.

Benito eventually also pulled himself out of bed (he was out of it because of bacteria, not beers) and picked me up.

Back to his couch. More TV.

Sleeping in again until 1. More couch. More TV. Then the weekend was over.

On the upside, we finally finished a videogame we�d been working on for a couple months, so I can cross that item off my 101 in 1001 list.

I also got to try out a new Donkey Kong game where you use a set of bongos to move the monkey. It was pretty fun, but I had to keep taking breaks because my hands would start to hurt from all the clapping after beating a level.

This was also the cheapest weekend ever, as Benito and I ate in each meal and didn�t make a trip to the grocery store, Target, or any suburban mall store.

We�ll have to try this whole cooking thing more often. He seems to dig it when I heat a frozen veggie burger, boil some rice, steam some random frozen veggie, and call it a meal.

I don't know if anyone else has caught the new show "It Takes a Thief" yet, but it's gotten me thinking more and more about security and my house.

The show is run by two ex-burglars who test a family's current security system, prove that it's worthless, and then help them set up something new and unbreakable.

So here I am thinking that I really don�t have much to steal (except for a fantastic cat). And then the show points out that stealing any financial information could lead to identify theft and how all of that needs to be under lock and key.

I have so many papers hanging around in the form of check copies, bills to file, and paychecks to shred -- all information that could lead to identify theft were someone to ever break into my house.

So now I feel all call-to-action on this new tidbit of information, and I�m getting it together and then finding some sort of filing system that I can lock down all of the checkbooks, past info, and the other oh-good-ness-I�m-so-screwed-if-this-disappears stuff like my birth certificate, passport, and social security card.

If you get a chance, watch a couple episodes of �It Takes a Thief� to get some ideas on what needs to be done. $4,000 on an entire house could save thousands in lost items. Watching only a couple episodes tells you pretty much everything you need to know about security.

And who says television can�t teach you anything?

Question from the guestbook:

---- Any resolution/answers about the Hotmail question?
---- This really interests me and I did not see anything
---- in your follow up posts.

A couple weeks ago I opened my hotmail inbox to see several messages that I had deleted 20 months ago. I wrote hotmail asking if there was a reason why these emails were saved on their end and how accessible they were to everyone else.

I got a response from hotmail that said something along the lines of, �We�re sorry you�re having problems with hotmail. Hopefully you�ll just grin, bear it, and eventually forget that you sent us an email and that we�ve not even read it and just sent you a generic sorry response.�

I about pulled my hair out when I got said response, as I don�t grin and bear much, and I certainly wasn�t about to forget my issue.

A day later I got a customer response request asking how well my question was handled, and I reamed everything. Well, nicely reamed everything, in that I talked about being disappointed that my email wasn�t even read and that I got a generic sorry response when I asked a legitimate question about a security issue.

Guess who still hasn�t gotten a response??

Gmail, it looks like there will eventually be a transition. Especially since you have a browser notifier. Whee!

Today I finally remembered to bring into work my list of movies to eventually watch.

I now have 133 items in my Block Buster queue. It looks like I�m gonna have that service for a while.

With exception to new releases between now and then, I�m not adding anything else to the queue. That will be enough movie-watching for me for a long, long time.

MSNBC News Services
Updated: 12:33 p.m. ET March 16, 2005

VATICAN CITY -- The cardinal leading the Vatican�s charge against The Da Vinci Code urged Catholics on Wednesday to shun it like rotten food and branded the bestseller �a sack full of lies� insulting the Christian faith.

Um, Cardinal... The book is two years old. Who cares? We�ve had plenty of best sellers since then. Do you really have nothing else to get pissy about?

Yes, I�m embarrassingly enough still all over Nashville Star. After a flop of a performance from the previous week, Christy was eliminated. Next week, Casey�s gone after her abysmal rendition of Janis Joplin�s Me and Bobby McGee.

Poor girls. They�re both talented, but they stunk their one week up. But...

Go Tamika! Go Jason! Go Jayron! Go Erika Jo! Go Jenny! (In that order.)

The rest of you, you�re good, but you�re just not on my growing list of favorites.

On Monday night I flipped to the TV Guide station since I couldn�t remember which station the show came on at 9 a.m. I swear the entire guide rotated without saying that NS was on. I got all nervous and considered calling someone to find out what freakin� station it was on so I wouldn�t miss any of the show or to at least get a play-by-play on what was going on.

The show is on Tuesday nights. Geez Louise.

If this how people felt about Survivor back in the day? This is ridiculous.

Since badbanners.diaryland.com is now shut down because people got their feelings hurt, I�m feeling free to run my banners without fear of ridicule.

ALL of my banners have pop stars on them, and they get 7% click-through rates. I�m not proud of using Justin Timberlake, Britney Spears, and Christina Aguilera as my representatives, but I�m catering to my audience and bringing more people in.

If it didn�t work, I wouldn�t use it. It�s as simple as that.

So when you see an ad of that sort, feel free to let my guestbook know that my PhotoShop skills stink, Ms. Spears-Federline is *so* 2003, and that I shouldn�t be allowed to run banners. I�ll respond, �Yeah, I know,� �Yeah, I know that too,� and �You clicked on it, dummy.�

Holy crap.

Every few months I breathe a little life into my Mary Kay business/tax shelter (har har) to drum up a bit of business. This morning I put an ad in Craig�s List, and the response has been ridiculously good.

Each time my Mary Kay Director and I talk, she�s so focused on the far away future and what all this can do for me then. I, however, am a self-micromanager. I need the small steps and the resulting immediate benefits.

Sign up, get a discount on your makeup and tax write-offs for owning a business. I�m writing off office space, electric bills, beauty products, gifts for friends, and anything else I can legitimately tie to the business.

Hold a few virtual parties to help others raise money for their charities and causes or earn free products, and get some cash to spend on traveling this summer. I�m three virtual parties away from going to Istanbul!

Recruit one person and let it be some momentum. I now want more and more people to get all the benefits I get from this.

So I�ll be busier now that I�ve got guests throwing themselves at me for a free facial and makeover in exchange for them listening to company facts for an hour.

It looks like I�ll spend half of each night writing people back and making phone calls to make things happen.

Speaking of which, it�s time to get outta here. Have a great Monday, everyone.�