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Wednesday, 31 August 2005, 21:19:37 EDT

Today! Today!
Another year gone by.
Twenty and six
have come and gone.
Twenty-seven
is on the run.

This is being posted later, way later, than I intended. I wanted to post this earlier in the day instead of an hour before it ends but the day conspired against me. I came up with that little "poem" a couple weeks ago and really wanted to use it for this post; I am not the poet, that would be my brother, so that is why my poem sucks. I'm not even sure how that one came to me. I was trying to get to sleep and it popped into my head. Any way, I left the poem at home this morning so I couldn't post from work. Then, when I got home my room mate and I went out to dinner and over to Best Buy where he surprised me by buying Midnight Club 3 for me; that, of course, sucked up the rest of my evening. The game rocks! So, here I am writing my birthday post at the end of the day. This turns out to be a good thing because it has given me an idea for these birthday posts. I am now going to try and write something about what has happened in the world on this day every year. Well, for as long as I keep this up any way.

First, I would like to thank everyone for making this birthday another good one. As I have already mentioned, James, my room mate, hooked me up with a game I have been wanting for quite some time. So, on with the others. When I got to work this morning I was told to seek out one of my old supervisors because she had something for me. It turns out she was baking me some delicious chocolate chip cookies. After lunch, my current supervisor walked into the office carrying a Great American Cookie Company cookie cake; I love those things. This evening, my Dad called to with me happy birthday, actually calling on my birthday for the first time in a long time; not that it bothers me when he doesn't, but it was still nice. Lots of other people wished me a happy one as well. I can't link to all of you or this post would go on for days, but you all know who you are. And, finally, me, my Mother, Grandfather, Grandmother, and little brother all went out last night for dinner at Pilgreen's (I got home too late tonight to have such a dinner on the actual day). There you have it. Lots of nice personal stuff that made the day nice.

Now for the "what happened today" part of the post. This morning it was announced that the major Atlanta area had been using fuel from its ten day reserve for the past two days. Hurricane Katrina knocked out power to a couple pumps that pump fuel through a couple supply lines that feed into Atlanta. These supply lines evidently provide a majority of the fuel in Atlanta. Upon hearing this news the major Atlanta area collective lost its mind. Everyone started running to the gas stations to fill up before the commodity became extinct in the area. It seems that when the governor says "There's no reason to panic. There's plenty of gas on the way and the only way we'll have problems locally is if we rush out and hoard. Stay calm and conserve, don't just run out to top off your tank. Just continue with normal fueling habits," that really means, "OMFG!!!1 Run out and buy gas cans and fill them with as much gas as you can!" Meanwhile, the gas stations took the opportunity to exploit the free market system for every dime they could. The stations, on my way to and from work, that are normally cheap were charging outrageous prices ($3.99) and the, usually, expensive stations were charging somewhat sane prices (~$2.87) considering the illogical panic. The places that were charging sane prices had lines stretching out into the roads while the money grubbers got the people who didn't want to wait in line. Me? I shook my head in disbelief and kept driving. So, on this thirty-first day of August, 2005 there was, or at least began, a miniature gas crisis in Atlanta. Cheers!