Friday, 20 December 2002: It's been a helluva long time, but it was so worth the wait... the triumphant return of The Darwinism Missed Me files.

Today's entrants are two men from Vienna, Austria who stole a pricey digital camera from a local camera shop. In their haste to get the hell away from the scene of the crime, they forgot to take the pack of photos that they were having developed by said camera shop. Needless to say that it was quite easy for the shop owner to identify the culprits by looking at their pictures.

Nothing like a stupid criminal story to brighten up my day.

Thursday, 19 December 2002: I did pass my EMT-B final exam last night and I did pretty well on it. Somewhere in the early 80s percentage wise. Good enough to get me the above-80% that I needed to challenge the state certification exam tonight. Which I also hope to God I did well on. I won't know the results of this for a few weeks. But, hey, at least the class is done and I can finally relax. Thank Heaven for small miracles.

Wednesday, 18 December 2002: I have spent the last two days at a University/College conference in Chicago. And, let me tell you, it bored me to tears. Almost literally. I learned absolutely nothing of substance that I didn't already know and it was a complete waste of time. I think the only real positive was that I got to spend some time in Chicago and relive my old Metrarail commuter days. God I love taking the train in the morning and walking around that city to get to and from work. Great exercise, great views, just a damn good time. I really miss it.

Also of note is that I have my EMT-B final exam tonight. Wish me luck. Happily enough, though, with the average that I have so far on my tests, I only need a 26% on this final to pass the class and qualify to take my state certification exam. I hope I'll be able to pull that one off.

Lastly, our Christmas cards are in the process of being made. We snuck into the Santa display at Charlestowne Mall and took our picture sitting in the Claus' throne. The couple of janitors that saw us in there were probably too confused as to why two freaks were taking pics of themselves in the chair to bother trying to stop us. Well, we took one set of photos and went to take them into Walgreen's for developing before I realized that I forgot to put film in the camera. So we returned to the mall for a repeat performance (this time with film in the camera). We should have our cards ready to go sometime tomorrow and in the mail by Friday. Here's hoping. I'll post one on this page for you all to see as well.

Monday, 16 December 2002: From time to time, I like to catch the occasional rerun of the late 80s/early 90s sitcom "Saved by the Bell." Okay, so it's more often than not. TBS plays it every weekday morning at 6:30 (central time) so I tend to tune in while eating my breakfast. Every so often, TBS tends to throw in an episode of "Good Morning, Miss Bliss" which is the precursor to "Bell." I guess the easy way to remember it is as "Saved by the Bell: The Junior High Years." TBS just lumps them all together as "SBTB."

The reason I mention this is because one thing that has always bugged me about this show (aside from the mind-numbing scripting that I just can pull myself away from) is the fact that the junior high episodes feature Zach (Mark-Paul Gosselaar), Screech (Dustin Diamond), Lisa (Lark Voorhies), and Principal Belding (Dennis Haskins). All four of these characters were retained when the move was made to high school. But, they are not the only things to "move," per se. The entire friggin' school moved. If you recall, Kennedy Junior High School, where the kids go, is located in Indiana. They proudly proclaim this several times throughout the series ("Miss Bliss is the best teacher in the state of Indiana!" being just one instance). Funny how, when they became high schoolers, they all became residents of southern California. I never understood how, if at all, they explained this little bit of happenstance. Does anyone else know how it was explained? Let me know.