It started with 'I'll never dye my hair.' But I kinda did. Then I swore I'd never go for black, because that'd be wrong.

...as you can see, I kinda did anyway.

Really, this is two 'nevers' in one. I also swore I'd never have hair that was two different colours. But, hey. Why the hell not. I think I'm going to just go ahead and dye the rest of it red. Really, really red. Because, hey, why not.

Also, I may actually be the worst procrastinator known to man. Because I actually went to the trouble of logging back in for the first time in...I don't know how long...instead of doing what I'm supposed to be doing.

I'm supposed to be reading through Lurkers, I think. Or maybe finding the power cable thingy for the outdated Lexmark AIO down in 'the office', because we have a ton of ink for that, so Lurkers can be printed out on a couple hundred pieces of paper that might or might not be around.

Or maybe I'm supposed to be working on a website, instead of staring at the half-goneness of my PSP's battery. Or anything else, instead of playing whatever I just got from Gamefly.

Thinking about it, I don't know what the hell I'm supposed to be doing. Maybe I just shouldn't be awake.

Is it wrong to hope so? Because what I really want to see is how people respond to metal detectors and cops searching people.

When I wasn't posting about spam and pedophiles or chatting, I've mostly been reading about Scientology [still]. Except for those few surprisingly warm days when we went wandering around the local stores.

Except...it wasn't all that warm, and I was noticing that something very important was absent from my coat collection. Something for those transitional seasons, when it was windy and often wet, that wouldn't keep me too warm, but would keep me warm enough.

So, after checking out the new Play-n-Trade, we went over to Kohls. And after trying on every athletic sneaker in the shoe department in the quest for the perfect shoe, [Nike is comfortable, but...not quite perfect. Close, though.] we went digging through the rest of the store looking for coats that weren't entirely useless or completely ugly.

It turns out that coats that are both 'not entirely useless' and 'not completely ugly' are generally kept in the male-gender sections.

I found this in the boy's section, on the clearance rack.

I'm not too thrilled about the colour, but it's not the worst thing in the world. Obviously, I was okay enough with it to buy it.

I'm glad I did, too. I've been wearing it on every trip out since, usually only the outer shell. See, it's got this zip-out liner that's also a fleece that can be worn on its own. The shell then becomes a slightly-warmer-than-expected lightweight springish jacket. With an MP3 pocket. And a hideaway hood that I haven't even tried yet.

The fleece compresses down nicely, and can fit into one of the smaller compartments of my backpack [which I also never leave home without at this point], so when it gets too cold for just the jacket, I can zip the fleece back into it, and be...less cold. Except 'less cold' isn't really the word for it. Depending on what else I'm wearing, 'too fucking warm' might be a better representation.

On Tuesday, we made a nighttime store trip to get a few more cases of soda before the sale ended. Knowing it was below freezing, I wore one of my hoodies along with this Coat of Warm, thus becoming 'Too Fucking Warm.'

Which isn't always a bad thing, I guess.

Backtracking a bit, to pre-coat days, one of our trips to get soda brought us to this very weird scene:

What appears to have happened is that someone [probably a drunk someone] ended up driving on the sidewalk, flattened the speed limit sign [that would be the object opposite the snow], and then continued to drive down the sidewalk until reaching the grocery store parking lot.

The speed limit there is 25, by the way. Just so you know. So you can be the one person aware of it, because nobody else coming around the corner and trying to hit everyone who crosses there seems to be aware of it.

The last time I was down there during the day time, the tracks weren't quite as obvious. I don't know if they've replaced the sign yet, though.

That would be the 'last time I was down there and paid attention', that is. Which, unfortunately, was probably 'when I took those pictures'. Usually, it's night, although there were two day trips very recently.

The first was where I found out that carrying soda back on my bike hurts my delicate female bottom, and the second was when I bought a nice new bike seat, and found out that the bike store near here is actually pretty competitive in its pricing.

This was my old bike seat -- the one that came with the bike. It'd hurt you, too, I'm sure.

This is the new one. I haven't tried it yet, because it's been too cold.

So cold, the aliens are stopping by and leaving funny patterns in the snow.

Also, I'm wary of riding my bike at night. I wouldn't want to end up a smear on the sidewalk between two wheel ruts on my way to the store to get some more soda, or Yan Yan.

I couldn't help myself. They were just sitting there, looking like a chocolatey dipping sauce/cookie stick kids snack that I used to enjoy. And then I found out that there were entertaining engrishey phrases on the cookie sticks....

Which is almost as entertaining as:

Good home my for my gray ferrel cat, must keep indoors, have vet.

Overlooking the 'my for my' thing as much as possible, 'ferrel'? That's one of two things, a typo for feral, or a typo for Ferrell. The cat's either wild, or Will Ferrell.

I wouldn't keep either of them in my house. The feral one would be upset, and the Ferrell might upset Zombi.

I wouldn't want to upset Zombi.

Wouldn't even want to keep her from stuffing her head so far into Gremlin's [empty] cup of milk that she gets it kinda stuck....

I think that's all the images I wanted to use, except for one.

That'd be the size tag of my new coat.

Also, there's that horrible 'why would I ever put my TV where the washer is, because the washer could randomly explode and destroy it' thing. But I could probably get over that if it weren't for the whole 'I have so many movies I could probably build a scale model of the sun, if the sun were made out of DVDs' issue.

Also, I don't really like the idea of re-running wires twice a year. So I'd probably have to have two sets of wires cut all special, and maybe two sets of speaker stands. And at that point, you start wondering why you don't just have one TV upstairs and one downstairs.

I don't want to be the person with more working TVs than people in my house. Bad enough I have more working monitors than currently-running computers. And more DVD players than TVs.

I'm just saying that it'd be nice, but it's a really stupid idea.