Well, it's February, which means one thing... the wierdos have found me yet again. Before I get to that, though, a quick work update.

It blows goats.

We're installing a new timeclock and timekeeping system at the Hospital, which replaces the fossil we've had in there since 1985. Think about it. Imagine you're a business, and you haven't updated your computers since the mid-80's, and it's now 2006. People who are just now becoming legal to drink weren't even born when our current system was installed. It's about as high-tech as an Etch-a-Sketch, and desperately needed to be put out to pasture.

For the past few months, we've been working up to getting the new system in place. Old card-readers with tons of incomprehensible buttons are now replaced with sleek touchscreen readers, and the leap in technology here is like giving a bazooka to a caveman to better hunt mammoths... with pretty much the same results. It's better, it's newer, it's more effective, but I'll be damned if a few dozen cavemen didn't get blown into a chunky red spray trying to figure it out. Since I'm the Human Resources IS specialist, I get to spearhead the HR side of the data conversion process from the old system, cleaning up any errors that may have gone unseen or uncorrected for the past two decades. It's a lot of mind-numbing work, staring at little check-boxes on a laptop screen for hours on end. I just hope it's all worth it in the end, because I'm running ragged trying to get it right.

And now, the wierdos. This time, there are two.

The first one is wierd, in a frightening sort of way. I stopped at Ralph's the other day to pick up a few groceries on the way home, and there was a guy in the parking lot. He was wearing a pair of pajama pants, a bomber jacket, and a bright blue showercap... not necessarily normal attire for a supermarket parking lot. He was running all over the place, hitting up every person in the parking lot for money. And not just pedestrians. In his zeal, he was running in front of moving cars and, after they screeched to a stop, would ask them for money. I know this, because as I was driving out, he darted out from behind an SUV directly into the path of my car, causing me to slam on my brakes sop as not to plow over him... and then, standing directly in front of my now-luckily-stopped car, asked if I had any spare change. Don't get me wrong, I understand panhandling, and sympathize with their situation, but running in front of moving cars is not exactly the best way to get money (or increase your lifespan, for that matter).

Wierdo #2 was much more par for the course, given my history of nutjobs. I was standing in line at the pharmacy of Sav-On Drugs, when I noticed that the guy in front of me was muttering to himself under his breath. He was a short guy, king of balding, with bright red pants pulled up to his armpits, and... oh, he kind of looked like this:



Now, because I was behind him, I could also clearly see the huge vein in the back of his neck pulsing. And pulsing. And pulsing. While he muttered under his breath, and lovingly stroked a teddy bear that sang "That's Amore" when he squeezed it, and occasionally drummed along with the music with his fingers on the top of his head. It gave me the wiggins.

On to the baby part. Jen seems to be getting closer and closer to going into labor, with her contractions coming more often and other signs manifesting themselves as of late (the details are on her journal, since she knows them and can describe them far better than I can). At this time, I'm stopping every so often to clock contractions and see if they're long enough and close enough to start thinking about going to the hospital. Looks like Gabriel's on his way.

Eep.