Or more specifically, my mother. And now my father. And how do I know this? My mom suggested my dad as a friend for Matt. But not me! I'm calling DYFS.

As predicted, a tv was stolen. In the we paid a much lower price than we should have sense.

http://www.sonystyle.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ProductDisplay?catalogId=10551&storeId=10151&langId=-1&productId=8198552921665378963

C'est magnifique, n'est pas? Best Buy currently has it on sale for $799, which is a good price to begin with (a few places are currently having the same promotion, but most of them are sold out). I found one in the open box pile that was marked down to $719. The Jew/lawyer in me just couldn't accept the opening offer, so I offered a nearby sales clerk $650. She looked at me, looked at the box, and said she'd go ask her manager. When she returned with him and asked, he nearly broke out in laughter. He offered $699. I countered at $697, but he wouldn't budge. Fine then. Deal!

To put this in perspective, Costco is currently selling the non-XBR version for $699.

And then Matt held up a video game that he wanted. The manager looked like he was going to cry just at the thought of having to walk all the way across the store and back to get the damn game. I took that as an opportunity to go sneaking around the dvd section. I found exactly what I was looking for and declared it to be mine. Being in no place to object to a $9 Doctor Who dvd, he succumbed to the power of the TARDIS.

For those who think I have no semblance of patience, let this be a lesson to you. Since we moved the bedroom tv into the atrium, I have wanted to get a replacement for the bedroom. I waited for over ONE YEAR. That's more than twelve months, or forever in Sharon-time. We waited for a great deal, and then waited some more, and then realized this weekend that there is no better time than now. So there. I HAVE PATIENCE!

Last Wednesday I got a call for a same-day interview, leaving me with exactly 3 hours to come up with business attire. I didn't have the suggested suit, so I made due with dress pants and a button-down shirt. At the same time, Matt discovered that his suit pants walked away and would not be able to attend his USC interview.

After some poking around on the internet, Matt decided the solution would be found at Brooks Brothers. Apparently MBA students are expected to dress nicely for many occasions, and personal appearance is important. And off we went.

It was pretty much guaranteed that Matt would not be leaving without a suit, especially after he discovered the best fitting jacket of his life. I intended to poke around, but my current lack of employment means that it isn't exactly prudent to spend gobs of money to remedy the situation. Of course, I had no idea how willing the clerks would be to give away the clothes.

By the end of it, if we each bought a suit, it was 15% off everything, free alterations, free leather date book, plus some other discounts. Matt's suit was originally going to be about $1000 (he hasn't even started classes yet, and grad school is already obscenely expensive). Mine would have been another $800. And that's before alterations. Matt needed minimal changes, but I intended to keep the tailor busy for quite some time. With tax, we left for less than $1500. Obscene, no?

Next stop, see if we can steal a tv for the bedroom.

The sun is out, the sky is blue, it's beautiful, so I win.

Since getting my resume in front of as many employers as possible is my ultimate goal, posting it on every job site is a must. Aside from being incredibly repetitive, this task is easily accomplished on most sites. CareerBuilder.com is NOT one of those sites. The idiots in charge seem to have forgotten that without job seekers, their site will shrivel and die a horrible death. Instead of the typical ads atop or beside the page, CareerBuilder likes to use mind tricks. On pages with forms, such as entering personal information or job experience, forms for online schools, namely University of Phoenix, are slipped in. Many of the fields are prefilled from existing data that you provide and the main submit buttons include sending the info to these schools. These have to be actively avoided, unless you want to begin training for your new career in health services, making up to $32000 your first year!

Seeing an entire page devoted to this drivel upon account creation was bad enough, but constantly bombarding users with this crap every time they apply for a job or update their resume is just not cool. Autofilling these forms and leaving the employer requested fields blank when applying for a job is borderline malicious. And the last straw. I no longer have any compucture to use their hostile website, and I have to recommend avoiding the mental abuse they inflict, if you can.

To continue the family tradition, it has been deemed necessary to go to the opening game at Citi Field. Sadly, that isn't enough to convince certain team owners to just fork over tickets, so I need to do this the old fashion way by entering the lottery. The winners get to buy tickets for the game. One entry per person, no credit card required. Sooo.... anyone who would like to enter, even if they don't plan on attending, should go here: http://newyork.mets.mlb.com/nym/ticketing/tixop_season09_form.jsp

Merci beaucoup.

On Valentines Day, Matt took me to Sushi Roku. Among other seafood delights, he ordered sweet shrimp sushi. What he didn't order were the deep fried shrimp heads. Each with an armada of tentacles. And eyes that were staring at me. But that was nothing compared to the tentacles falling out of Matt's mouth when he took a huge, crunchy bite.

Last night Zero decided to reboard the eating-things-that-just-shouldn't-be train. He was very interested in my dinner, so I gave him one of the olives that I picked off of my pizza. In the process of making funny faces, he dropped the olive on the carpet multiple times, but he eventually got it down. Okay, that wasn't supposed to happen.

"Tawny, would you like an olive?"
"Excuse me? You want me to eat that nasty thing? How about you pet instead?"

At least one dog is sane-ish.

Later that evening, the plot thickened. What used to be a pile of discarded olives had miraculously become three lonesome discarded olives. I considered this odd since olives aren't known to spontaneously combust. Oh look, a small doggie trying to blend in with the floor. The investigation is still pending.

Being unemployed, I have plenty of time to do silly things. Such as continuously update my profile and resume on every job site in the galaxy (I'm only willing to relocate up to a point). Today I decided to add interests/hobbies and education on monster.com. Not sure how I missed education. Anyway, monster likes to give helpful suggestions as you type. Here are the most perplexing:

golf - baseball
mets - cat acrobatics/firing range
video games - biology
economics - acupuncture/astrology

What's worse than having your direct flight canceled and replaced with a layover in Dallas Fort Worth? Having the flight out of DFW canceled! Zero and I spent some quality time touring three different terminals and two Admirals Clubs during five hours of boredom.

As far as airports go, DFW is nothing special, and no one can truly enjoy spending more time there than they have to. However, the Skylink between terminals is inside the sterile side, so you don't have to traverse the TSA dungeons to switch terminals. The other redeeming quality is an Admirals Club in every terminal and a chicken in every pot. We had lunch in the D terminal club since I had this silly idea that my flight would actually depart from D17. After much disappointment and swearing in both English and Muttese, we reboarded the Skylink for the C terminal club, as I was handed a new ticket proclaiming there to be a flight to EWR from terminal C.

Remember when I claimed that the Skylink is a redeeming value? Well, it was for 2/3 of our trips. It's one of those conductorless monorail type deals where everything is automatic. This is done purely to lure unsuspecting riders into a false sense of security. One might assume that with computers running everything, there would be no backups outside stations, no trains colliding, and all that other fun and schedulable stuff. Which is exactly why everyone in the car went flying when the train came to a very sudden stop. I was one of the lucky few who actually met the ground, face to face. I even have the bruises to prove it on my arm and knee.

In summation, DFW and its Skylink of Terror are stupid.