Another pleasant Fourth of July has come and gone.

CarmelFest was okay, even though all I did was volunteer. The parking monitor job went well - you'd be surprised how often people are actually pleasant about being told they can't park somewhere. As for the race marshal job, I wound up getting there 20 minutes late, so I didn't get to do that. Instead, I got to hand out t-shirts. Yee-ha.

After that, a group of us waited at the finish line for people to finish. The runners had timing chips fastened to their shoes with plastic twist ties, and we would cut the ties off of their shoes. That went well, although I almost got thrown up on by a kid whose stomach was a little upset after running a 4K.

I spent the weekend relaxing after that, in addition to watching the fireworks, and going to an impromptu barbecue at my parent's house. During that time, I helped my brother write a resume. I was happy to help him, since I've been in that position before.

Starting today, I have four days off!

I won't be spending them being completely lazy, of course, since there's CarmelFest Friday night and Saturday morning. And I will be catching up with some things I've let slide around the house. (It's actually an apartment, but it's faster to type "house.")

So what to do first? Probably sleep.

This past week has just been strange.

( DANGER! Long post ahead )

Now I'm just waiting for the weekend, which could turn out to be very, very good.

I'm actually going into work early today - as in 12:30. We'll see how that goes. I'll be driving a rental car, as mine is in the shop. It has a busted A/C compressor, which I'm guessing has something to do with the air conditioning. (As I've mentioned before on here, I know nothing about cars besides how to drive them, and how to put gas in them.)

Meanwhile, I've signed up for CarmelFest again! Friday evening I volunteered for parking monitor, and Saturday morning I'll be a Course Marshall for a 4K run. The Marshalls are supposed to guide runners along the race course, and also cheer them on. That's a perfect fit. I can't run fast, but I can guide, and I can definitely cheer.

Ever since the warm weather started, my air conditioning has been working...too well. If I had it set on 78, it would cool my apartment down to 70. If I set it on 72, it would become almost sweater weather inside.

So a maintenance man put in a new thermostat today. And, right on cue, just like a bad sitcom laugh track, the AC stops working. It's now 81 degrees in here and rising. Too hot.

This does make me very glad I got my haircut yesterday. Imagine being hot and shaggy-haired - not in the Andy Samberg way, of course.

EDIT: It's working again. It turned out to be a defective unit.

I am finally excavating cleaning my dining room table. It's a nice place to let things pile up, and that's a problem. In doing so, I found two things of interest:

1. A new Kohl's credit card, that was sent to me SIX MONTHS AGO! I've had a new Kohl's card for all this time. Fortunately, I was able to activate it with no problem.

2. Lots and lots of ketchup packets. I suppose I should throw these out, but it just seems so incredibly wasteful to do that. Any suggestions on what I should do with them?

Today is the day, finally, when we switch to digital TV. Of course, about 99.5 percent of the population won't be affected, but it's still pretty significant.

I'm sure lots of stations will do tributes and sign-offs, like this one:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sCGryfeinBo

It's a classy sign-off, although there's something about a station saying "This WAS channel 16" that's slightly off-putting.

I've woken up at 9 a.m. the past two days, which is very unusual. But there were good reasons for doing it: Saturday I had to work most of the day, and Sunday I did so to see Roger Federer play and win (HOORAY!) the French Open.

Tomorrow I'll probably go back to normal, which is waking up between 11 and noon. That could change over the summer, because my editor wants me to keep more of a daytime schedule. In my case, that would be noon to 8 p.m. But the sun will still be out when I go home, so that counts as daytime.

Well, hello! Welcome to my LJ. Do you like this post? It's very dramatic. (Get outta my head, Brenda Dickson!)

Actually, nothing's been dramatic lately. Just very busy. We have one more big Saturday to go with the sports season, and then we'll have the summer to figure out just what we're going to fill the pages with.

My editor has put me in charge of the golf page. That will be interesting, since the golf genes in my family haven't started asserting themselves in me...yet.

It's post-season tournament time, which means I have little time for anything else. Most of the time it's fun, except for the occasional ridiculous e-mail you get from a parent. I don't want to get into that here, it's too ridiculous to believe.

The only big news this week is that I've re-signed my lease for another year. I love living in this area so much. I'm thinking about volunteering at CarmelFest again during the Fourth of July weekend, although it would be nice to sneak out of town for a couple of days. I'll probably wind up doing both.

Hooray!

I've decided that I'm somewhat of an adrenaline junkie. Not in the cliff-diving sense. In the "I'm finishing the paper two minutes before deadline sense." Really, there's no difference between the two.

Meanwhile, this is the big news in Chicago radio today:

http://newsblogs.chicagotribune.com/towerticker/2009/05/wgnam-drops-kathy-judy.html

I never listened to Kathy and Judy that much, but it was kind of a bad way to send them off. They were both well into their 60's, and apparently that's too old for radio. Now that even includes WGN, which is wrongly considered to be the old folks' station. What's also ironic is that 'GN's new program director is encouraging his hosts to be more edgy. Kathy and Judy had some of the strangest topics, and a "Sex Thursday" show. They were probably the edgiest people on the station.

But they were too old. Guess you can't be old anymore.

Drama is fantasy
Love is reality
You and I are in love
And that's where we should be
So tune out the shrieking
It's too high to hear
If we're together
We have nothing to fear

This has nothing to do with anything in my life. I was playing around with these words in my head, and I wanted to write them down somewhere.

Yet another busy weekend, as usual for this time of May. Then I had to get up early to take my car in to have new brake pads installed. It is comforting to use the brakes and not hear a "rat-a-tat" noise.

It might finally be 80 degrees on Wednesday! I am so ready for summer.

I said I was going to try to keep work-related posts to a minimum unless something major happened. Well, I just found out that our paper has posted a little bit of a profit! That's major, don't you think?

Meanwhile, one of my co-workers keeps playing AC/DC songs, and they're now stuck in my head. But he also plays Jason Mraz songs, and good God, that man has a beautiful voice.

I'm going to make new userpics soon. Until then, enjoy the kitty.

Look what I found on Google Books:

Billboard magazines dating back to 1942

I have been an off-and-on Billboard reader since I was 10 years old. The credit goes to Whitney Houston, because I happened to see a little info box on USA Today that mentioned her six consecutive No. 1 hits in Billboard. My mom bought me one a few days later, and I've been reading it ever since.

The first issue I ever got was dated Jan. 16, 1988. This was the No. 1 song:

( I got my mind set on you )

I was awakened this morning by a rather nasty, violent dream that involved skeletons and falling into hot lava. I hate dreams like that, because then if I can't get back to sleep, I'm cranky for the rest of the day.

Fortunately, I was able to get back to sleep, and had much more pleasant dreams. That included one where a fellow LJer called me "Miss April Nightfly." Would that be a good drag name?

Meanwhile, it's still raining here. I don't know if I should get scuba gear or build a boat.

A can of spinach and a bunch of mushrooms with rigatoni pasta and tuna. I feel slimmer already.

This is a nice way of saying I'm re-committing myself to losing weight after backsliding a little bit. It's not healthy, and too damn expensive to buy bigger clothes.

I had a dentist appointment this afternoon, and my teeth are just fine! That's a relief, since I had been dreading going there the past couple of years, since there seemed to be so much fixing that needed to be done in my mouth, and how much it would cost.

Meanwhile, it's not raining and I have the night off. That's it for Monday.

What to say about April: It was rainy and cool and generally blah. We better have lots of May flowers.

For a very fleeting moment I have well over $1200 in my bank account! But that'll change once I pay rent. At least I won't be broke after paying rent, like I have been some other months.

Speaking of rent: My apartment complex is changing it's name to Main Street on the Monon. That happened to be the name of the old complex where I lived. They're owned by the same company, so it wasn't a surprising change.

I have a day of tomorrow and I'm not afraid to use it!