An uneventful week followed by a nice weekend.

Watched movies, went out to eat, gave up on the Human Predator book, went out to eat again, celebrated friends' birthdays, subbed in a library, got a haircut, had a meeting, met with a retirement financial guy to try to roll over all the $$ I have at AIG because I've given up on being their ever-patient client, went to a painful television preview focus group, and wondered where the week went.

I finally gave up on the forensic science/serial murder book. I read half of it, and today while reading at B's I found myself starting to flip through pages and skimming. I took that as a sign that I was done. It's not that the subject matter or writing was graphic or anything, it's there was just so MUCH of it. I just couldn't take any more descriptions of these people and their backgrounds and what happened to them. Even if the forensic science part was interesting, I just couldn't take any more information about the history of these people. We only really hear about the big names: John Wayne Gacy, Ted Bundy, etc... you can't believe how many others on a smaller scale there have been over hundreds of years of history. Bleh.

Fri night B and I went to a television preview focus group-- with tickets give to me by KF. He and his sister were also supposed to go but their plans changed at the last minute. I told him later he should be glad they did.

There were about 250 people there in the group, and the people running it were really not the "in charge" kind of people. I told B they all looked and acted like the kind of people that attended Star Trek conventions. I should know, I've been to enough of them!

The purpose of the function was to watch a half hour of a television show that might be a pilot at some point, including commercials. After the half hour we filled out a short survey about the show, and then a REALLY long survey ( read to us word for word) about toothpaste, bathroom tissue, and other personal care items. Same thing for the second show-- half hour preview then a ton of marketing questions.The first show was a drama, and it was terrible. The second show was a comedy and it while some of the people enjoyed it, both B and I thought it was ridiculous. Today I googled it and found SO many blogs that had posts about this same preview and how horrible it was. And the dates went back to 2004! I realize now after reading the blogs and a news article that this was actually about marketing research, and the television preview was a ploy to get people there. In fact, I found out both shows were "pilots" that never made it, and were purchased by this marketing company for this purpose. What a waste of a Friday night!

Oh--I almost forgot. I bought a new SLR digital camera yesterday. :-)