My buddy just got back from Southern California yesterday so I'm going to head over to his house and help him clean up his car.

Other than that, not too much going on.

I was rather productive today. Mowed the lawn and washed both my dad's Acura and the Santy. They actually needed it due to the few days of rain and generally unfavorable weather we've had over the last few days. Not sure what I'm going to do tonight; all but one of my friends are out of town.

Just watching the news...it appears that Michael Jackson has died.

Regardless of how you feel about his controversial behavior over the past 15 years, the man is an icon and his passing is the end of an era.

Damn, Gary I know how that feels. Government bull at it's finest, eh? Good luck with that.

Today, I'm trying to get a clock to chime correctly. It's a wall clock that we've had in my family since I was only 15 days old and it slowly became forgotten as time went on, despite being a truly memorable and integral part of my childhood. In the past week, I have gotten it wound, set the pendulum so it holds the correct time (it used to lose 35 minutes over a day) and I'm now running the chime to see if it has a self-correcting feature. It's not chiming the correct hour or the correct half hour so we'll see if a day or two running will get it feeling better. If it doesn't, I'm going to take it to a reputable local clock shop to see if they can help. This is the clock: