This is the recipe for my favourite new non-caffeinated tea. It's particularly soothing on my throat which is good with the cough that I've been suffering through and is insanely easy to make. It's simplicity belies how good tasting it is as well as how much you'll love it.

Boil water.
Peel a large piece of ginger and cut it into small pieces.
Put ginger and a good amount of honey into a teapot.
Let steep for 3 - 5 minutes.

That's it. Adjust the honey and ginger to your taste levels but I assure you that it's changed my life. ;-) Okay, not really, but it is my favourite right now.

Thanks to Sushiro and it's perky waitress who explained how it was made.

What do you do when you see the same pattern repeated over and over in your life. I'm going through a period where I'm upset and feeling down about myself. I feel ugly and undesirable. Everything triggers these feelings whether it be from relationships in my life to popular culture to looking at 'beautiful people' on the net. I think I might have also hit my limit -- the point where people are tired of hearing about my self-absorbed feelings and responding to them.

A very wise woman (My Aunt Erna) once told me to love myself and who I am. She told me to always remember that, "The best is yet to come." But I have a hard time believing that right now. Nothing ever changes. Things just keep spinning in the same circles and although I might occasionally venture out of them, I get sucked back in eventually. Circles spinning around and around like tops that never stop.

I think I need to schedule some alone time for the near future.

My net worth is $1,681,660.00.

No, that's not how much money I have saved but it's how much my life is valued according to whatever arcane formula that Human For Sale has come up with. You've got to be suspicious of a website that evaluates your net worth partly based upon your penis size which it so thoughtfully asks for among other more tangible items as education level and career.

Still, $1.7 million isn't bad. Lately I've been feeling as though I'm more around the $40 K mark so it gives me a bit of an upswing.

Things weren't nearly as bad as I was expecting. Isn't it interesting how things often are? Still there is yuckiness to wade through over the next couple of months with this horrible project. I'm hoping things go well.

As for my review, it went really well. It was almost completely what I was expecting and actually a little better than that.

I purposely avoid talking about work on my blog for several reasons. The first is that, for the most part, my daily work routine is boring and is even less interesting than where I went for supper the night before (Sushiro, with Don - it was great). Another reason is that there are a few topics that I just don't think are generally appropriate for me to talk on the blog about. These include the inner workings of Daryl and my relationship and sex-life, the dollar figure of salary I make, certain confidences friends place in me and, as well, most of the details about my job.

But I'm all bummed out and anxious now. I have my performance evaluation with my supervisor this afternoon (in 90 minutes now) and an old project has chosen to rear it's head up this morning. So now my boss wants to talk about this project at the same time as my review and I'm concerned that there might be a flux of the two topics together. The project is one where I don't feel that I'm qualified to do all the work myself and was originally promised external help. Now that external help has evaporated but the deadline still remains and, as far as I'm concerned, it's unattainable.

So I sit here anxious about how my review will go and anxious about what will happen with this project.

Stewing in my own juices, roasting on a spit, angry at the world, I remain humbly yours,

-Todd

Yup, I decided that it was time I started taking steroids. I'm expecting that my muscles should swell, my testicles should shrink and that I'll get 'roid rage (so don't piss me off).

Well, actually my doctor gave me a corticosteroid inhaler (Qvar) that supposedly should help me with this cough that just doesn't want to die. I've never had an inhaler before. Does this make me a cool kid now? Or do I still need to get the braces put in as well?

--

Last night Daryl and I watched our usual Monday night lineup on TV -- Air Farce, This Hour Has 22 Minutes, Monday Report, Campus Vets (shot nearly next door to where I work at the Western College of Veterinary Medicine), and Airline. My first comment? I watch wayyyyy too much TV on Mondays.

The next comment is that a lot of CBC's satirical news shows are getting long in the tooth and probably should be canceled. 22 Minutes is almost getting painful to watch. Monday Report is the only show that still feels like it has a heartbeat of the bunch.

Campus Vets allows us to ooooh and awwww at the cute animals every week and hope that their treatments go well. Luckily 5 out of 6 animals treated seem to get nursed back to health but that 1 out of 6 still makes me tear up.

And Airline... Airline is my guilty pleasure. As a frequent flier, it's fun to watch all the drunks get denied boarding; to see loser people with short tempers lose their heads and basically to get a new appreciation for all the crap that airline employees have to put up with. I have to commend Southwest Airlines for allowing such a detailed view into how they relate with their customers. In every case I've seen, it appears that they go out of their way to do all they reasonably can. Of course you gotta wonder what happens when the cameras aren't around...

Sushiro for supper tonight with my friend Don. Yum. Sushi!

Someone found my webpage by searching for "what does ed harris whisper to charlotte at the end of lost in translation".

Sometimes a total stranger can make you laugh and help start your day off right.

Just too much sadness on Saturday. I think I overdosed on it and it is as palpable as if there would be a 400 pound gorilla in the room.

The day started off well with picking up Becky and Angela for a day of retail therapy. I scored a new stylish cordless phone and then we went off to the mall to wander around. Much hilarity ensued getting kicked out of second rate women's clothing stores (ha! like that's hurt me!) and wondering how to ask the cute boy at the Greek food counter if he could give us a little extra tzatziki, if you know what I mean, *nudge nudge*.

We then went and saw Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, the latest from Jim Carrey and the ever über-weird writer Charlie Kaufman. Can you like a movie while not really liking it? I think that's how I felt. I thought it was probably the best serious work Carrey has ever done (Truman Show included), but the movie seemed to draw out a simple point through an overly long progression. The point I took was this -- in any relationship which goes wrong, horribly so or not, there are still so many good points in it that you should treasure. Really, that's it. I loved the acting and the setup and the sci fi aspects of the film are really done low-key but it seems like an awfully large set up for such a simple point.

In the evening, Daryl and I went to see The Laramie Project at the university. We had both seen the excellent HBO film a year or two back so we knew what to expect. I still had a few tears roll down my face.

I think I need to see something upbeat soon or I'll end up at the funny farm. And why do they call it the funny farm? Psych wards are rarely on farms and if you're there, you're likely not laughing. Or maybe you are...

My boy of the week is actor Jonathan Schaech, whose most noted role to date was in That Thing That You Do.

I've had a cough now for 4 weeks -- a dry, hacking cough. It's just enough to be annoying but not enough to really take a lot of my attention. I went to the doctor once and he gave me some codeine cough syrup. It helped me sleep at night and now I don't cough at night anymore (with or without the syrup) but the cough still persists.

Today I was telling my mom (an ex-nurse) on the phone about it and she said I need to go back to the doctor and ask for a chest x-ray. Now I'm worried enough to look up symptoms on the net and see the 'big C' as a possibility. Daryl thinks I shouldn't diagnose myself and I agree. I'm going to go back to see him Monday morning at 8 about it again.

But now I'm worried. :-(