Renter's Remorse

bethje and I went out to eat at the Olive Garden on Wednesday night, using my gift certificate from my dad to pay for most of the meal. I had the stuffed shells with shrimp, which was very good, as I had expected. Beth had the chicken scampi. What with the soup (I always get the pasta e fagioli), breadsticks, and then the actual entree, I'm always very full after eating there.

An actual Bill O'Reilly quote (as well as I can remember it, anyway): "If you think I'm ideological, you're crazy. I am a watchdog." Well, I guess that would explain why the commercials always say he "dominates cable news."

We've finished watching all of the first season of Arrested Development, thanks to Beth's DVD set. I hadn't seen most of those episodes before. Now that I have, I have to say that I really appreciate the level of continuity in the show. Rarely will they introduce a plot element without it being somehow significant, or there being a callback to it at some point. I wonder how many story elements they had planned out from the beginning.

Last night, I found out that New Jersey's new tourism slogan is "Come see for yourself." Wow, THERE'S something unique and original! I wonder how long it took for someone to come up with THAT! :P

And finally, I dropped off my car at the shop today, and picked up my rental car. It's a Dodge Neon, which is something I test drove when I was first looking for a car, and didn't like much. I still don't like it much, because the damn thing is LOW. It's a really short car, and the steering wheel sometimes hits my legs when I'm turning it. There's also a weird tail fin on the back. It DOES have power windows and locks, though, which my car doesn't. The Enterprise guy tried to talk me into getting the Nissan Sentra for an extra dollar per day. I declined, though, since I don't know how long I'll have to keep the rental. Those extra dollars can add up. Anyway, I hope I don't have to drive the Neon for very long. I don't think they'll even be able to give me an estimate as to how much time it'll take until Monday, though. And they gave the rental car to me with less than a quarter tank of gas, so I had to fill it with overpriced Pennsylvania gas. After that, I got my hair cut and bought some groceries.

In which I complain about everyone being slow

The shop just (as of when I wrote this paragaph, which was several hours ago) called with the estimate, and they said it should be finished around Friday the 27th (two weeks from now). I really wish they could do it more quickly, but I suppose there's nothing I can do about that.

In other annoying news, I made an order from Amazon last week, and it still hadn't been shipped. So I checked my order, and apparently The Art of Discworld "ships in 4 to 6 weeks." What the hell, Amazon? I've seen that book in bookstores, so it shouldn't be that hard to get a hold of. Since I don't want to wait to get my other stuff, though, I replaced it with The Last Hero, which also has a lot of purty pictures.

( Three quiz results )

So, I've probably talked about this before, but does anyone else play the games on MSN Gaming Zone or Yahoo Games (I think they're pretty much the same)? The one I play the most is Bejeweled, but I also will play Alchemy and Collapse on occasion. Today, I started playing Zuma, which is kind of fun. I usually prefer the ones without time limits, though, because then I can also talk on IM and such while I'm playing them. You know, multitasking. {g} Are there any other online games I should be trying?

I'm going to try to buy Belle and Sebastian tickets tomorrow morning. I've heard from people on the bellesebastian community that they've sold out really quickly for other shows, so I'm going to have to get them as soon as I can.