Awesome munkee thing of the day

Mary at work found this:

Monk-e-mail!

That's right, e-mail messages featuring talking monkeys! That say whatever you want them to say! Including:

Munkee? Munkee! (Though it's better if you spell it the conventional way.)

With inflections and everything. You can dress them and accessorize them and use different voices and stuff.

And send them to friends! Yay!

I hate spring

When people ask me my favorite season, I say crushed red pepper.

Oh, wait, that's my favorite seasoning.

My favorite season is fall.

I like the leaves. Hockey's starting. Football's in full swing. Baseball is into its pennant races. And it's not too cold, and definitely not too hot. And not as much rain as spring.

And no goddamn allergies.

I hate spring (or as I'm saying it these days, "I haype sbrig.")

My allergies are all out of whack this year because of the early heat and stuff. They were getting better after I moved from Pennsylvania (which has plants and stuff) to Jersey (which has malls and stuff). But not this year, no.

Why do I hate spring? Let me count the ways.

1. I can't breathe through my nose.
2. I sneeze all the time.
3. My eyes water so bad I literally can't see sometimes.
4. Nosebleeds.

From all that sneezing and crap - I woke up the other day just literally fountaining blood. By the time I blinked into the bathroom mirror, I looked like an assault victim.

5. Lack of sleep from aforementioned breathing issues. So I'm prone to being tired anyway.
6. I can't take allergy medicine.

That's right. I can't. It puts me right to sleep, even the daytime stuff. I took two pills the other day and fell asleep at work four times in eight hours. It was a joy driving home, let me tell you.

I took a different pill Saturday and it worked great. Sunday, not so much. Today, not at all, really.

And my two weeks of allergies are about up, but there's no sign of abation this year.

(Is "abation" a word? Don't expect me to look it up.)

7. Chapped lips - from mouth-breathing all the time.
8. Watery eyes mean constant rubbing mean oily hands on face mean zits.
9. Did I mention my eyes itch like hell?
10. Sinus headaches, from being all stuffed up.

Yeah, that's fair. Either my nose is running, bleeding or completely clogged, and because all the snot is backing up, my freakin' head hurts. Right where I have to rub it to get the crap out of my eyes.

Insert string of profanities here.

11. My glasses are constantly filthy.

Don't ask how sneezing and rubbing my eyes gets them so damn dirty. Backwash, I guess.

12. I can't roll down the windows in my car or open the sunroof.

Takes the joy out of the nice weather and the long commute. Insert second string of profanities here.

I hate spring.

Links:
• Seasonal allergies
• The joy of nosebleeds
• Allergy medicines

And yes, the people I hung out with this weekend really saw me at my finest. Not.

I'm famous!

Well, kind of.

I was at the NFL Draft this weekend, covering it for Raiderfans.net and I got interviewed for another sports Web site.

Check it out!
• Sports Business Simulators' blog

Sports Business Simulators is pretty cool - they're based out of Oakland, so they were interested in the Raiders among other things. And they've got an XFL business simulator. I ran the trial version and did shockingly well after an initial dropoff. Certainly better than Mr. McMahon!

My Mom thought I was good. So I must've been. Yay!

That's the fourth time I've been on TV or video in my life, that I know of.

First, when I was little, I got to sign off the local evening news when they came to my summer arts program. That was neat, and neatest of all was that I got to stay up late to see!

Second, in college, when some of my fraternity brothers were on trial, I got caught on camera (and had a wee altercation with a cameraman) leaving the district magistrate's office. Not quite so cool, especially since it had to do with the (accidental) death of one of my brothers, but the altercation was fun, and there was a priceless moment later when a quasi-friend of mine remarked that I'd "walked right into her bedroom" in front of her quasi-boyfriend. (She neglected to mention it was on TV.)

Third, when I worked in Atown, one of the sports guys had a local sports-talk show on the local TV station. And my first weekend in sports, he brought me and two others from the department on. (That's how I met Steph, more or less, she was one of the others.) That was pretty cool, even if I called the national championship game wrong, I had the right idea. (It was the year Virginia Tech played Florida State, and I said the key was, Florida State had to find a way to get the ball into Peter Warrick's hands because he was a wideout, while Virginia Tech put the ball in *its* best player's hands every snap, because Mike Vick was a quarterback. So FSU killed Tech, but they found ways to get the ball to Warrick, including on a punt return for a TD, and that's why they won.)

So this makes No. 4, even if it's not quite really TV, it's still a video. That almost counts.

And for the curious, you want to know how posh Radio City Music Hall is, that's a comfortable couch, in front of an art-deco wall, in a 20x30-foot lounge... in the men's room! So when you see me trying not to crack up, somebody just flushed in the next room. Or, in one case, um, broke wind.

Very, very loudly.

It's actually a serious interview, and I shouldn't tease Zennie (the interviewer), who was a great guy. But, Zen, when I suggested the men's room lounge, I was joking!

I really did want to do it in front of the giant naked woman statue.