I finally got tired of watching old sitcom reruns on TV and waiting for new DVDs to come in the mail, so I went out yesterday and rented a bunch of movies to watch during the day. So far, I watched The Great New Wonderful (OK), and You, Me and Dupree (acceptable). I also bought Little Miss Wonderful, since it was one of my favorite movies of the year and I’d like to watch it again and again. If you haven’t seen it yet, I highly recommend going out and renting it. Steve Carrell is great, as usual, and does a fine job with the more dramatic role he took on in this film. Also, I thought the kids were really good in this movie, which often makes a big difference in the quality of a movie like this. Paul Dano ("Dwayne") may be someone to watch. I noticed him several years ago in a Lifetime movie and have sort of followed his career, so it’s nice to see him in something so successful.

I have another appointment to see the ENT doctor today. It’s been 10 days now, and I still am in enough pain to be on a constant dose of narcotics. I thought I would be well enough to be off the pain killers by now, and am worried that I won’t be recovered well enough by the time I have to return to work at the beginning of January. At any rate, I thought it would be a good thing to go in just to be reassured that everything is healing properly and that I have nothing to worry about.

I found a cool little application for the Macintosh on the web yesterday. It’s called Lab Tick. Have you ever been annoyed because your Powerbook or Macbook is supposed to have a backlit keypad, but the non-adjustable function doesn’t work properly, and you can hardly see your keys AT ALL when it’s dark? This little freeware application allows you to manually adjust the brightness of your key backlight. It’s one of those stupid little things that just makes your life so much easier.

I'm babysitting my neighbor's Bulldog puppy, Stryder, today, so I'm sure there will be a few photos of the cute little guy tomorrow, with his big buddy Wally.

My friend, KingsFan, mentioned yesterday in the comments section that I should be picking more obscure 80s music for the song of the day. The truth is that in the 80s, I didn't listen to much obscure music. I was in junior high for the most part, and listened to whatever I was spoon fed by the local pop station, and the only remotely obscure stuff I ever saw was because of MTV. My goal in the song for the day has never actually been to pick the most obscure thing. It has actually been to pick something I remembered for one reason or another, regardless of what it was, just because of the memory attached. The song for today is John Cougar's "Pink Houses." The song comes from his 1983 release Uh-Huh, which was BEFORE he decided to revert to his given name, Mellencamp. Mellencamp was well known for the feel-good American rock he performed, and this album is a great example of that.