Well, I didn’t pass. And it’s not so much the embarassment of walking into work this morning and having people automatically blurt out, “Congratulations!” before I’ve had a chance to say anything, but rather the fact that I’m just pissed off at myself that’s the problem. It’s amazing how a little screw-up like this - because, let’s face it, nothing was really riding on this test, not like the Series 7 - can make me want to pack up and ship off back to my mom’s house in Virginia. Gah. I hate this self-pity bullshit, but I can’t help it sometimes. It frustrates me. But anyway, Big Boss Man just wandered by and asked me what happened. “I choked,” I said, “but rest assured I will get it done in the next week or so.” He looked at me gravely. “You know you only have two attempts.” I nodded. “Just two. Two.” I nodded again. And then he said, “Don’t do this to me,” kind of helplessly as he strode off. I guess he’s frustrated as well because of the extremely high fail rate of trainees in this branch of the Firm. I would be. Oh my god. Now I’m going to be freaking out about this test. The pressure again! Ah!

To top it off, I really think my car is about to die. My dad emailed me the other day and said that one of the problems - the humming when the car is in reverse - is the result of some kind of belt that he’s had to replace before … at “a couple hundred bucks a pop.” *sighs* Just what I need. At least I managed to find a decent dress this weekend for my mom’s wedding, $69 on sale. Not bad.

I just need to stop being so materialistic. Just because I don’t have ‘the next cool thing’ doesn’t mean I’m lacking in any way. It is written in The Millionaire Next Door that “most people have it all wrong about wealth in America. Wealth is not the same as income. If you make a good income each year and spend it all you are not getting wealthier. You are just living high. Wealth is what you accumulate, not what you spend.” And I want to be wealthy one day. I must begin to start living, as Dawn of Frugal for Life puts it, “below [my] means” and “seeing treasure in items with as much as you can imagine using [my] creativity.” So I don’t have that awesome iPod dock/speaker set that Chris has. I’ve got fifteen dollar computer speakers that work just as well for the size of my room, and it cost me almost three hundred dollars less. That’s not to say that I won’t buy myself that toy one day … but I have to really work for it.

Ugh. I just want to go to bed and stay there for a couple of weeks. Make it late July, and I’ll be a happy camper.

On an unrelated tangent, Chris and her brother had a party on Friday night at their house in celebration of the fact that their parents were down in Atlantic City. To be honest, initially I wasn’t up for a party, but I hadn’t seen Chris in what felt like a really long time, so I agreed to make an appearance. Meg was still kind of suffering from her stomach thing and, though she insisted I go to Chris’s party without her, got into a bit of a pissy mood when I agreed to it. Whoops. Ultimately, though, she called me over to her house and jumped into my car. It turned out to be a gorgeous evening, not too hot and not too many bugs, with a bunch of twenty-somethings shooting the breeze, playing beer pong, and basically just hanging out. I got a bit drunk somewhere in there, but it soon passed with the drinking of a can of Red Bull, and even managed to hold my own somewhat in beer pong. Amazing. It had been awhile since I’d be sociable, and this felt really, really good. And as an added bonus: no hangover! Woot!

Also … ladies (and gents who love the women in their life), if you have a moment, take a look at this video. I must admit that I usually don’t pay very much attention to breast cancer stuff, but this report about IBC, which was sent to me via the Firm’s office manager, was pretty shocking. Like many in the video, I’d never heard of it, or if I had (which is possible, given that I have the memory of a goldfish), I didn’t know any of the details. The fact that such a disease killed a 16-year-old who was, as they put it, “too embarrassed to tell her mother that her breasts looked weird,” is a scary enough thought as it is. Just take a look. It could be worth your while.

I had probably the worst night’s sleep in a really, really long time last night, so I’m extremely thankful it’s Friday and I can make up for it this weekend. Something was dreadfully wrong with Meg’s stomach, in that she felt an extremely sharp, immobilizing, tear-inducing pain, almost as though “someone [was] running through me with a spear,” she said. We both thought that by making herself sick, she might feel better - didn’t work. Eating a piece of plain bread to soothe her stomach - didn’t work. Drinking water - didn’t work. I was all out of ideas, plus I’d taken some Tylenol PM before I got into bed in an effort to curb my cold-and-ladyfriend-induced headache, so I was rather too doped up at three in the morning to be of any real help.

We never did figure out what was wrong. Meg looked up her symptoms online and has decided that her gall bladder exploded and she’s going to die. Somehow I doubt that, though the look of pain that often appeared on her face last night definitely concerned me. She went home this morning to get some rest. Apparently both her mom and her brother are home sick too; her brother has a 102 fever. Not nice!

Last night, some of the roommate’s friends came over and we ended up hanging out for quite a while. Jeff had gone to the Yankees game and was absolutely wasted, but hysterical as always. As drunk boys do, he ended up alone in the garage jamming along with Staind for about an hour. I’m sure it made sense to him at the time. I decided it was time for me to go to bed when a) we ran out of wine and only had Bud Lite left (bleugh), and b) Dan set fire to Jeff’s Yankees hat using a bit of citronella from the tiki torches in the backyard as fuel. After less than five minutes, only the charred brim was left smoldering on the patio. Jeff didn’t seem too fazed by this.

So, tonight … if Meg’s feeling better then we’ll either head over to Chris’s house to hang, or go play pool with Anita and her girlfriend. If she’s still unwell, I don’t know what’ll happen. I guess we’ll just play it by ear.

PS, I am so not a hot weather person. I really want to ditch work and go crash Chris’s pool. But unfortunately I’d feel too guilty about that. Gah. I really am a goody-goody sometimes.

Meg’s mom took her shopping last night for new summer clothes. I’m jealous. I really need to upgrade my wardrobe. Of course, this would be immeasurably easier if I ever felt like going shopping. What I wouldn’t give to have my own personal shopper, a clone of me who could pick out everything and try it on and pay for it, and then just give it to me in the comfort of my own home! Alas, this is not to be. If nothing else, I need to find a swimsuit for this weekend. There’s a picnic on Saturday, and then some sort of party thing on Sunday down at Asbury Park (though the latter is still up in the air). Either way, I need a swimsuit. The only ones I have are either one-pieces, or they were bought in honour of the cheesy girlie holiday to Ayia Napa back in June, back when I was swollen with alcohol and fatty Scottish - read: all-night garage - food. Blegh.

I’ve been taking a few practice exams every day for the past few weeks, and it looks to me as though my average ranges from 86 to 96 percent. We pass with a 70. I’m feeling pretty comfortable about the information, but there are still a few topics on which I need to focus a bit more. Either that, or I need to work on my ‘lucky guessing’ skills, which have so far proved virtually nonexistent. And on the other side of the coin … must stop reading too much into the questions!

I drove home last night - with very little traffic, woot! - and promptly spent two hours playing with Limewire, digging up songs that I loved in the past and had long since forgotten to put on my iPod. I ask you, what’s the use of having a radio (both FM and XM), tape player, and six-disc CD player in your car if you have one of these toys? Obviously I still have use for those things too (when the iPod’s battery dies), but … I’m definitely in love with it. It has become yet another obsession of mine, in a long list of things to occupy my mind.

I went over to my girlfriend’s at nine to pick her up, and ended up staying there for awhile listening to her and her mother discuss some home problems they’ve been having lately. It’s nice to know they feel comfortable doing that around me.

Anyway, we finally got back to mine at about ten thirty; Chris met us there, and Cole came over a bit later, and we watched the new episode of (what else?) “Ghost Hunters” on the SciFi channel. I’m becoming addicted to it. Hell, I just bought the first season on eBay.

I should not have admitted that.

I am clearly disturbed. And a big geek.

But anyway, after Cole and Chris left, my girlfriend and I got a bit caught up watching Final Destination. By the time we’d gotten ready for bed and … everything … it was already pretty late. And anyone who knows me at all knows I do not do well with less than eight hours of sleep.

Unfortunately, as I am a night owl, I am also incapable of going to sleep before midnight. Hence my 6:30AM wake-up call often finds me stumbling blindly into the shower, tripping over the dog, and being insanely jealous every time I walk back into my room because my girlfriend gets to continue sleeping. Ugh. The garish lighting in the office doesn’t help things, either, as it simply accentuates the bloodshot white bits of my eyes. On the upside, this does make my eyes look very green, though.

Speaking of work, we had a meeting this morning, and while the speaker was getting ready to do his spiel (”this will go up, these will go down, this will implode, they need to sign those contracts …”) one of the FAs leaned over to me and said, “Hey, did you hear about MD? He’s no longer with us.” Now, MD has been practically my mentor over the past few weeks, based on the fact that his desk is ten feet from mine and that he has thirty-six years of experience in the business. Plus, he’s a nice guy. Anyway, he’d talked to me recently about going back into a different sector from the one he was in now, and had arranged a tentative ‘interview’ with a guy at another office in the region. Yesterday, he left the Firm at about two, not speaking to anyone.

I guess the interview went well, and he was offered a position. What confuses me, though, is that a) the FAs all received an email about MD this morning, but the details are rather vague, and b) a lot of MD’s stuff is still here, client files and such. The FA at the meeting said afterwards, slightly ominously, “Hey, if you want to talk about [MD], come see me later.”

C’est un … mystery. But I think he’s left. Not passed.

Per Christina’s recommendation, on Saturday night a group of us bundled up and drove out to Bumfuck, Maryland (how I wish that were its real name!), outside of Poolesville, in an effort to attend that which has been rated by AOL City Guide as the fourth best Halloween attraction in the country: Markoff’s Haunted Forest. And it was awesome! Granted, initially it was a bit slow and made us all feel old - there were loads of high school kids, and the wait was considerable - but the walk through the forest made everything totally worth it. It was set-up to feature scenes from various horror films, and may I just say that by far the best one was that of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, when we were actually chased by chainsaw-weilding Leatherfaces - freaky and intense, and got the blood flowin’. It was highly enjoyable, and I know Dom, Gen, and Chris were amused by mine and Greg’s reactions, because of course we were placed at the very front of the group and therefore received the vast majority of the scares. Between Greg’s excessive freaked-out cursing and my high-pitched shrieks, I’m sure we scared the actors just as they scared us. Too funny.

We got a bit lost on the way back to VA and ended up driving through the forest on a dark, one-laned road that didn’t seem to go anywhere (and indeed, some street signs appeared where there were no streets, very “Twilight Zone”-esque). Ultimately, though, we got out of there and found I-495, though we did manage to intrigue ourselves with stories of homicidal maniacs posing as hitchhikers en route … as you do. But all was well and fine in the end, and I found it quite an amusing way to spend a Saturday night.