- Happy Bdays to Amol and Anuj

- Thanks again to Rich, Vira, and Olivia for taking care of a spitting, puking 145 pound rock this weekend. I still don't know what exactly was in those 2 beers and 3 shots at Transit, but in my entire life my body has never reacted the way it did to those 5 drinks on Saturday. I'm not talking about just that night, but the entire day after and even up through this morning. Not that it makes it ok, but I know I have had 3 or 4 times as many drinks as that during more than a few experiences in the past, and not once have I ever:

1. Had completely no memory of significant portions of the night. I'm talking zero recall at all, and not even a sense of familiarity even when people tell me exactly what happened or specific things I said and did.

2. Continued to feel sick for more than 24 hours afterwards. It hasn't felt anything like a normal hangover either (I've had my share of those), but an entirely debilitating feeling of being bedridden for a whole day, while not being able to eat or drink much of anything at all.

So yeah, I don't know if there was something bad in those drinks (other than Miller Lite, 3 Wise Men, or Jaegar), or if I ate something bad earlier in the day, or if I'm just getting too old for any drinking at all. Maybe my liver is collapsed and shriveled or something. But honestly, I don't know how I could have avoided that experience. I think the only way to be sure that never happens again is to cut off alcohol completely. Or at least cut off taking any shots. I don't know what I'll decide to do, but I really don't want to ever go through something like this weekend ever again (let alone put my friends through it with me), so I'm definitely gonna have to make some changes.

- On a lighter note, I hate UPS. They tried delivering a package to my house 3 times and no one was there to sign for it, so they sent a notice in the mail telling me to pick it up. I get the notice about 2 days before the date is listed when it will get returned to sender. So I call the number asking them to forward the package from Westmont (near Darien) to the UPS center in Palatine (which is literally about 1 minute away from the townhouse here). The stupid lady on the phone tells me they can't do that. I'm like, how worthless can a shipping company be, if it doesn't have the ability to even ship a package from one of its own centers to another??

So eventually, I give up on that effort and ask if the lady can just hold the package there for a little bit longer than 2 days, since it's not easy for me to get to Westmont before their daily closing time. She says fine, and extends the Return to Sender date a week. Finally, I find a day when I can go to the stupid Westmont UPS center after work, driving about 50 mins to get there. This is when the high school kid working there informs me that the manager at their location is especially strict about not letting people extend the Return to Sender date. Thus she decided to send it back anyways, overriding my request to extend that date.

In the end, I wasted hours of my time with nothing to show for it. I've given up on getting whatever this package that "Citibank" wants to send me because of all the frustration that they caused me.

- One thing I've been wondering about Donald Trump, why in the world is he doing endorsements? What can they possibly be paying him, a man supposedly worth billions of dollars, to make it worth his while to do a Verizon commercial or whatever? You'd think that to a guy who's used to building huge skyscrapers and owning casinos, getting paid a few million bucks would seem like chump change.

- A quick update on Parry Shen, he says that he'll be at U of I to speak on April 27th (next Tuesday). I won't be able to make it (gotta work), but I'm just letting people know in case they are still interested in going.