My Amazon Echo arrived on Friday.... Oh my gosh!!! It's both creepy and fucking fantastic!

"Alexa! What is the news?"

Then she plays the headlines from NPR!

I'll be honest though, Alexa doesn't have the great sense of humor that Siri has. If you ask her childish questions like "Alexa! What is your favorite food?", she answers that she doesn't understand the question. At least Siri makes something up! Yes, I routinely ask available AI dumb questions. I'm 5 years-old.

You guys, I wasted an ENTIRE Saturday listening to comedy podcasts!  I moved from couch to the chair to another couch to a different chair.  Then I picked-up the Echo and took it in the bedroom when it was time to retire for the evening.

I didn't do anything productive while I was listening either,  I pretty much just listened while I had the TV on mute.

What did I listen to? Thanks for asking! I caught up on "The Smartest Man in the World" podcasts with Greg Proops, "The Todd Glass Show", "The Steven Brody Stevens Festival of Friendship", "You Make it Weird".... And a few more.

What do they have in common? They're all comedy and they're all LOOOOONG.

I need to figure out a way to listen to the podcasts while doing other stuff, like maybe cleaning up my filthy, filthy apartment. Doing two things at once is going to be a major challenge. Am I up for it? Probably not. I'll keep you posted.

"Alexa! What time is it?"

Alexa: "5:25 am"

Crap, I gotta get my act in gear and get my iced tea to go to work!!

So happy today is Friday! It's been a good week, but I can't wait to sleep in a little and FINALLY get some laundry done.  I've got a quilt AND a duvet cover taking up a lot of room in my dirty laundry hamper, so I'd like to get that taken care of.

I received the part for my car that I hope will take care of the problem I've been having with it.  It should only take a couple of minutes for David to swap out the part, so it looks like a quick trip to Pasadena is on the schedule for Sunday morning. Fingers-crossed this fixes it!!!!  I'm tired of my car acting weird.

I told most of you guys about having to get rid of my very expensive, very beautiful rug.....because of the fucking moths that invaded my apartment because of one of my neighbors.  I thought that getting rid of the destroyed rug (I've never seen moths do damage to a rug before) and going through clothes, killing every moth I see, would take care of the problem.  I was WRONG!!!

Luckily, I decided to wait until I hadn't seen a moth for a week before I unrolled the new 6x9 rug I bought (still safely shrink-wrapped in plastic) to replace the one I threw away. It was five days and I thought "hooray, I can put the rug down soon!". Noooooope. All of a sudden, I'm seeing three moths a day! I'm probably going to have to toss out another rug I moved into the living room temporarily, as I think maybe it had a few moths hidden in it that I'd missed when I was going through everything. This is bullshit!!! I'm tired of throwing out pretty and pricey rugs, all because I did a favor for a neighbor.

I'm also going to rearrange some of my furniture and maybe look into getting a storage unit to move some of my seasonal stuff and boxes (and boxes and boxes) of comics and CDs to. Since I am probably going to be moving in the 8-10 months, it might be easier to move this stuff out now (since I never go into the boxes anyway) and that way I don't have to pay The REAL Rock N Roll Movers to do it (they are the BEST movers, look-up their story, it's awesome).

I don't need to get a pedicure, but I really want to change the color of my toes and get a foot rub, so I think I'm going to try and fit one in this weekend. Yaaaassss! Foot rubs rule!

The plumber came Wednesday and replaced most of the pipes/hoses under my bathroom sink, so I guess it wasn't my lack of plumbing skills that caused me to be unable to fix the problems last weekend. PLUS, the cuts on my hands are almost healed. Bonus!

I can tell that it's gonna be a good day today, I can feel it. I'm going to pay my bills, have a few conference calls, maybe buy a stock I've been looking at (if the price comes down to where I want it). I'm looking forward to starting the day!

This past weekend was fun. I got to see my dad for a little bit, went up and hung out with friends for a while and tried my hand at fixing a plumbing issue. I totally failed in the plumbing dept and cut up my thumb and index finger, but it was fun nonetheless.

Add to that the fact I had a very good day today and I can honestly say I'm happy, so hooray for that!

All is good.

I'm confused these days. My instincts are usually fairly accurate (not anywhere near perfect, but sometimes accurate). I'm not sure how to feel, so, of course, I end-up feeling terrible. Which I do right now.

I had a birthday recently and, weirdly, this year was better than what I've experienced in a long time.  Even though I just started my job, most of the folks at work who found out either gave me a card or a gift. It wasn't necessary, but it touched my heart. One of my brokers brought me breakfast, took me to lunch AND (the best part) smoked me a rack of ribs and gave me beer to go with it.  I'm really not into gifts or money, so the fact that he spent time and his immeasurable talent, making food for me honestly made me tear-up. I was, and still am, deeply touched.

Tonight I went out with Samantha and David for dinner at EC's. Danny (bartender) flirted with me, which was nice since I feel fat and old. The drinks and food were amazing.

I may be old and single (old maid, party of one), but I love my friends.

I am truly fortunate.

So far the holiday weekend is going well. I decided to not wait for my friends to make time in their schedules and saw X-Men: Apocalypse by myself this morning at the first showing. Good movie, if not a bit under-developed in some areas.

I've had some car issues, so I took it up to the dealer yesterday to have them check it out. Thankfully, I got it back today. Parking in my neighborhood is too difficult with just a visitor pass, so I'm glad to have my car back so quickly.

The folks are in-town, so I am going to meet them for dinner tomorrow night. Should be fun. I think I'm going to bake something for my dad before I head out.  I have a ton of errands to run before I meet them at their hotel, so I have to really try to keep to the schedule I wrote out.

Monday, I am walking in a charity 5-K walk for disabled veterans, then I have to go to breakfast with our team (that's a new, unexpected development), then hook up with a friend of mine to celebrate her birthday.

Yikes! It's gonna be a tight schedule!

Luckily, part of the birthday celebrations for my friend includes pedicures.....which, while I don't need it, I'm defitely looking forward to it.

I hope it's not hot the next few days......

My self confidence, the little I had anyway, took a big hit yesterday. Not my confidence in my ability to do my job (that's fine), my personal self confidence. All it took was a couple of comments over lunch. I'm sure they weren't serious and it wasn't a situation where the other person was being mean on purpose. In fact, the person who made them said they were kidding, and I'm sure they were, but I was crushed. I still am.

I'm sure I will get over it, but its going to take some time. I'll pretend like nothing happened and that things are fine, but, honestly, they're not.