Phlegm Is A Funny Word

I'm on the downswing of a cold right now. My sore throat lasted only a day, and I'm alternating between sniffles and phlegm hacking. It gets better as the day goes on, which does me no good when I have a phone interview in the morning. I apologized for my voice early on, which probably sounded as lovely as Gilbert Godfried after 10 consecutive cigars. The surprising part was a call back just hours later to set up an in-person interview next week. A same-day call back; that has to be promising, right? I won't bite though, I'm experienced enough now to prevent myself from getting my hopes up anymore.

I've curtailed my online poker playing almost completely. I've withdrawn the majority of my money from my accounts online, originally leaving about $600 left, but when I started blowing through that, I cashed out the rest. At one point the other day, I was left with $.77 in my account. I've spent the majority of my unemployment thus far staying at home playing online poker. While I was successful at first, I hit a rough streak that was really hard to handle, especially knowing I have a couple grand sitting in those accounts. When my severance package ran out, and I was left living off of my unemployment checks, cashing out was an imperative.

I used my most recent cashout from online poker to buy an XBox 360. My Playstation 2 is on it's last legs, and it was time for an upgrade. Aside from Guitar Hero, I'm not really an avid video game player, so the money invested was probably not the wisest investment, but I don't care. I love it.

Since my last post, I haven't done much reading up on either candidate. One thing I will say is that I'm really tired of hearing about Sarah Palin. I have to give the McCain campaign credit here; the selection of Palin as VP, whether or not she was the best candidate, was a stroke of genius. The addition of a young, unknown woman governor as VP has generated much needed buzz for the McCain campaign, both positive & negative. It's certainly invigorated my girlfriend enough that I've already let her know that I'm sick of hearing about her. I should note that she's not invigorated positively about her; instead, she sees Palin as exactly the kind of woman she doesn't want to be, but I'll let her discuss that on her blog if she so desires.

The hardest thing for me as a voter is trying to not vote based on simple emotions. Many of the things that I am the most unhappy with this country are a direct result of George W. Bush, a Republican. What's ironic is that the one Republican candidate I felt like I could vote for (aside from Ron Paul) was McCain. The only problem is that McCain now is not the same McCain of two years ago, even a year ago, and I can't help but make the connection between his transformation & his willingness to cater to the same neo-con influences that we've experienced the past 8 years.

But on the other hand, I don't necessarily want to throw my support behind Obama just solely based on the fact that he isn't a Republican. I think there are many positive reasons to support him, but I don't want this to be a repeat of 2004 where I vote Democrat simply because I don't want a Republican in charge.

Enough politics, there's still plenty of time for that.

I still have to finish the final post in my 5 part post from before my birthday. The first four posts I had written beforehand, but not the last part. I've been working on it here & there, but it might take some time. Partly because I haven't been pleased with what I've written thus far, but mostly because I've been lazy.

Time to go spit out some more phlegm.