[Kaffy update: She called tonight -- Except for a kidney infection that just kinda came out of nowhere, her Dad's still doing better, and she and her boner-popping cat will start the long journey home tomorrow morning. Now, back to our regularly scheduled bitching.]

Ever since I started with the brain candy, I've read all these horror stories about the withdrawal: Allegedly, the headache you get is supposed to make your brain feel like it's sloshing about in your skull. I haven't reached that point yet, but I am getting these little pangs every so often. I sure wish my PAP meds (that's Patient Assistant Program -- you know, as in free meds for the poor because otherwise? I'd be paying about $120 a month for them) would get here already. No, I'm not ready to jump off a building or anything; in fact, I'm not even exceptionally agitated like I was the last time I didn't have them. I just want them to get here before it gets to where I'm buggin' out.

Speaking of bugging out, I've got another good story in the hopper. It'll be out on Friday, and of course, I'll post it.

Waiting for Greta to come get me, and we're off to Dinner and a Movie in the Naperville area (Hi, Amy!) to see Shark Tale with Emperor Warrior Kendar, his baby bro and an assortment of other idiots. The cool thing about this joint? It serves beeeeeer. Mmmmm ... beeeeeeeeer ... I will love seeing a movie doing the 12-oz curl -- or several. Hope Greta's not going to want me to drive.

Btw, did I tell y'all what I'm going to be for JB's Halloween extravaganza Saturday night? A ghetto cafeteria worker. That's right, complete with a hair net and a pot o' mashed potatoes and an ice cream scoop. Any other ideas on how to make this joint more believable?

It's Satuday night, around 11-ish, and the Emperor Warrior Kendar and I are sitting around, he on one laptop and me on the other, watching Cyndi Lauper on PBS. He says this is sort of statement about our lives, but I'm not so sure.

Cyndi Lauper sure is cute, though.

Anyone catch that "Fashion Rocks" show on Fox tonight? Tell you what, I'd have never thunk to have Mary J. Blige sing Janis Joplin, but she did a bang up job on it -- got the right amount of sassy without all the ubbawubba emotion.

Lessee, what have I been doing the past few days ... well, I have a new friend-crush in a huge way: Her name's Jill, and she works at Customs in Miller, where I spent more money this weekend (but not a lot of money, since I don't HAVE a lot of money right now). I ended up picking up the thing I wanted about noonish, and I bascially stayed with her until closing time, drinking champagne and talking about EVERY. THING. It was really very cool. She thinks I have good morals. Heh, sucker ... no, actually, she's probably right, at least on a lot of stuff. Other than that, except for taking Mother out to lunch and picking up her acid-reflux medicine earlier, I took advantage of not working and spent most of the time in the crib, either sleeping, watching TV or talking to Mer, who's doing just fine. Of course, now that I've had a little taste o' solitude, I need MORE, dammit. But that? will not happen since tomorrow, I hit the ground running by talking to Joe Oberweis, the dude who owns Oberweis Dairies (and Illinois UBER Republican, but I'm not talking to him about his political shtick.)

Speaking of political, I'm probably going to be covering a focus group watching the debates on Thursday. In the microcosm of NWI, that ought to be a treat.

Another crazy day yesterday, trying to find where my biz assignment was happening, plus catching up on a story I accidentally blew off Thursday night. But I must tell y'all that I'm positively THRILLED to see that I'm not getting raked over the coals about my little Mother outburst.

Is my site taking forever to download? It was working all right last night, but she said it was real. slow. yesterday. Lemeno, and I'll figure it out.

[UPDATE: Just checked with Joelle, goddess of everything, and she says it's my Nerds Online counter that's making everything slow. Be patient, my pretties. Hopefully, they'll get it worked out soonest.]

Well, color ME naive: The Brazilians are back, and they're stealing more of Joelle's work. How do we know they're the same ones? Well, THE LINKS TO EACH OTHERS' BLOGS might be the first clue.

And here I thought it was all United Nations up in here and that they weren't going to be ignorant anymore and steal people's stuff. What a sap I am. I'm extremely disappointed, ladies. And while you're at it, why don't you tell me about the "ugly Americans" again.

Do you know that it took me a fucking hour to get home from lunch with Tara when it should've taken me only 15 minutes? What the hell, man!?!?! That blew.

I sent the letter today -- certifed it and everything. I know the fam suggested I wait, but honestly, it didn't take a weekend for me to know that I'm not going to put up with her bullshit. So, I'm sure I'll have an update later this week, because if I know my little sister, she's NOT going to go down without having the last word. Sigh.

All the talk here about sex, booze and pills, and all I get is a 1 percent increase in the Gematriculator thingy? What a screw.

Don't you just hate it when you get up in the morning, and you know the first thing you usually do before you trudge to the can is take your meds, but then an hour later, you forget whether you did or not, because there are some days when you don't take them just because? And then you can't really take another because going to 300 mgs from 150 might put you in the brain garage or worse? Gah.

Yup, got a bit of an edge to me today; it's probably just PMDD or During-MDD or whatever we call it when our hormones go batshit, but I hate it. Oh, and Mother wants to hang out with me today. Again, I say, "Gah."

In my e-mail tonight (and this'll be the last of it, I promise):

Have I mentioned how much I love my job? Especially when my assignment tonight? Included a wine tasting and hors d'oeuvres. SPLENdid.

But as I was putting on my unnywears after my shower? I couldn't figure out for the life of me why I couldn't get them over my legs. I mean, I was so excited to find that Old Navy made comfortable bikinis for chicks with big butts that this was just unfathomable, or else what the hell did Greta do to my wash!?!?! Did she really shrink them that bad? (Note: I do my laundry over at Greta's, and sometimes she finishes up for me.) But I squeezed them on and rushed off to my assignment (with other clothes OVER them, of course).

But as the night wore on, the unnywears were cutting into my skin, and I was becoming increasingly unhappy. So after the assignment portion of the evening, I rushed off to the ladies room to figure out what was going on. Wouldn't you know, they weren't even my unnywears; they were Greta's. How could I have NOT noticed this, you ask? Well, we both shop at Old Navy and probably bought the same ones, only in different sizes, and she thought they were mine.

Well, now that I had that figured out, what was I supposed to do about it? I mean, even though they were clean, there's still something kinda weird about wearing someone else's unnywears for ANY reason, plus they were still cutting into my skin. What's a broad to do, right? This broad decided the best thing to do would be to take them off and put them in the inside pocket of her jean jacket.

I'm not sure how I'll feel if Greta wants them back after this.

So much for trying to wait for amnesty: Today, I got this letter from a big fancy law firm in Chicago letting me know that it was sending me a Notice of Registered Judgement about the scads of parking tickets I accrued while working downtown, and that it could garnish my wages or put liens on my assets (yeah, WHAT assests, I'd like to know. If they find some, they can have them, because I'm sure not aware of them) or whatever. I called the attorney who sent the letter and told him that no, I really don't want to welch on my responsibilities but a) I'm a free-lance reporter, and b) I got nothing, what can we do, here? And the guy, who was actually pretty cool, established a payment schedule for me: $300 down by Aug. 1 and $161-ish for the next 36 months. (Um, yeeeeaaaaaaaah, it was a LOT of tickets.) It's a lot of money, but what else can I do, right?

Which brings me to my next point: There IS one I can do, and that's advertising. So as much as I hate marring the look, Chez Broad's going to hopefully get some tasteful advertising soon. Hey, but all the cool kids are doing it, right? Right!?!?

Ok, maybe that DOES make me a sellout. But at least I'm not fucking Mike Ditka. For the love of Christ ... (Oh. wait. He's not running for Senator of Illinois after all. Crap.)

My evening? Was spent driving around in the paper's P-T Cruiser with one of the staffers in the Town of Highland parade. And you know, we had an awesome time doing it. Of course, the company only left us with a 1/4 tank of gas and wouldn't give us any candy to toss to the kiddies, but that just made it more fun, because the staffer and I are smartasses, so whenever the little shits would demand, "We want candy!" I would yell back, "No! Gimme some of yours!" To which they'd be like, "No!" and we'd all laugh and wave. We want to do it again next year, only we'll bring more people and good music to blare. It'll be fun, I tell you. It WAS fun, especially if you don't count the moments when I felt like Franz Ferdinand before those wily Serbs got him.

The part that was gross, though? Seeing DtR sitting on the sidelines with his wife and kid.

Since everyone wants to see the new ride, and MT is still won't let me download photos, here's a link to them: Lookit.

If you have problems getting into it, lemeno, and I'll mail you the linky.

[UPDATE: That link won't let you get to them, so give me a holla and I'll e-mail the album to you.]