The song I blogged about earlier, “100 Years” by Five For Fighting, must have impressed a lot of people. This morning I was watching the news on CNN before coming to work, and a commercial for Chase (a New York bank and credit card company) came on. It was a neat montage of life milestones, cut to that same song.

I had another interesting bird conversation this morning, this time with Sammy, my big beautiful blue and gold macaw. He’s not as talkative as Phoenix, but on days when he’s chatty, he really demonstrates he knows what’s going on. Unfortunately, he has developed a disturbing speech impediment in recent weeks and has renamed me “ROTT”.

This took place between me and Sammy as I was getting out of the shower.

SAMMY: Yvette. Yvette. C’mere. Yvette. YVETTE! Yvette. Hey! YvetteYvetteYvette!

SCOTT: Yvette’s not here. Stop it.

SAMMY: YVETTEYVETTEYVETTE! C’mere! Pretty bird! YVEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEETE! (ad infinitum)

SCOTT: (getting a bit bothered) DAMMIT SAMMY! YVETTE’S NOT HERE! NOT HERE!

SAMMY: CRAP. CRAP! (long, long, LONG silence) Rott? Hello. Rott! C’mere. Love you. C’mere.

Sammy got a nice treat out of that one.

In other news, this week I’ve been studying accounting, in a manner of speaking. Until now, all of my financial data (checkbook, savings, etc.) had been managed by an Excel spreadsheet. It was developed entirely by me, and what I know about accounting could be written in crayon on the head of a pin with room left over. So, it did lots of things in odd, non-standard ways, and it generally did what I wanted but not what needed to be done, if that makes sense.

So, I decided to standardize on what everyone else is using, Quicken. I got the basic version and spent most of this week moving the first few months’ worth of transactions in, categorizing them, and setting up my scheduled and repetitive payments, bills, and such. I think I’ve finally got it. I did a full reconciliation last night and got a nice zero where the error would be if I’d botched things. I must say I was impressed when Quicken found my bank on the internet, and quickly went “SLUUUURP”, pulling down the last 3 months’ worth of bank records. Nifty. Now I can do some forecasts and determine if I’m going to be able to do non-essential, discretionary things this month, like eating. 🙂

Tony seems to continue to do well. He did have a bad episode the other night where he suddenly threw up for no reason I could see, but he hasn’t been sick since and is still eating pretty well.

It’s Friday! It’s going to be a busy weekend. I have a club meeting in the morning, then I must see to getting the brakes on my car fixed … the left front brake has gone metal on metal, and that makes me angry. The brakes on this car have squeaked ever since I got it. I complained bitterly to the dealership, and took it to their shop twice. Both times, the mechanic had a quick look and then handed me a memo from Ford Motor Company, which says, essentially, “Our brakes are designed to squeak, and there’s nothing you can do about it, so piss off.” The problem is, of course, that a squeak is supposed to be your indication that the brake pads are wearing thin, so you can replace them before they wear down to the metal liners. If the brakes squeak all the time, then it doesn’t sound any different when they squeak for a reason … AARGH! I’m going to have to buy a new brake rotor and pay for lots of extra work, and it’s NOT MY FAULT! Thanks, Ford.

There is a “pool party” on Saturday evening at the pool at my apartment complex. I am trying to decide whether I should go. I’ve been such a hermit lately, I really should get out more, but these will all be people I don’t know at all, and I always feel really uncomfortable at parties where I don’t know anyone. I feel uncomfortable at parties, full stop. 🙂 I’ll keep thinking it over, I’ve got 24 hours to decide.

In other outrage-related news, I was watching one of my favourite TV shows last night, “ER”. It was a suspenseful episode, which had been promoted all week with phrases like “Carter’s big decision”. (Carter, played by Noah Wyle, is a central character on ER.) This episode was the one in which he was to decide whether to stay in Chicago or go back to Africa to be with his wife.

Ten minutes before he made said decision, during a commercial break, the local news talking-head idiot came on with a promo announcement. “Tonight on 11 Alive news, Laura Innes of ER describes what the series will be like without Noah Wyle.” Thanks for the spoiler! What an ass (arse, for you British readers).

Enough babble for one day. I’ll bore you further tomorrow.