eBay is evil.

It really is. These last six weeks it's been sucking the contents of my soul and my pocket-book $5-$15 at a time.

Sure, I've bought things from eBay in the past. Mainly hard to find Mike Farrell videos. But it's only been a few things here and there.

However, over the last month and a half, I've been an eBay maniac. Videos, pictures, magazines, all these things have been bid on and most of them have been won. PayPal is rapidly becoming my best friend and my saviour. Nearly every day I rush home during lunch, hoping to see a little USPS package propping open my screen door. When there is a package I'm all happy and rush to open it, to see what the wonders of eBay and the United States Postal Service have brought me. And when my front door is looking forlorn and empty without such a package, I pout and think to myself, in an annoyingly precious voice, "There's no prezzies today." And then I pout some more.

I'm an addict and it's all Matt Frewer's fault.

Oh, I can (and do) say that it's research and material for my new site. Because it really is. All of that stuff is going to end up, one way or another, on the site. But let's face it. Frewer's turned me into some weird collector, the type that I haven't been for many, many years (but back then it was Star Trek and Sherlock Holmes stuff). Damn that man!

But it hurts so good.

We had a nice little mandatory conference call at work yesterday, headed by our Big Kahuna in New York (a really nice guy, I might add). Guess what it was about? Yep, on the nose. Kahuna told us who in our group (which consists of about four departments) has opted into the separation package. And out of the roughly 60 people in the entire division that have taken the package, about 10 of them came from our group, including all but one person in one of the departments. I feel really sorry for that lone person.

The atmosphere in the conference room was funereal, everyone either staring at their hands, the table or the walls, with no one seeming to want to look at those who are leaving. Kahuna seemed to be having trouble getting though the call. His voice was steady for the most part, but every once in a while I'd hear some wavering on the phone, and felt deeply for this man whose going to have to rebuild a group without hiring more people. He's going to have a tough time over the next month or so.

I've talked with a few of the people since, and all seem rather happy to be leaving, with plans to relocate, take care of sick relatives or just get away for a month, but I can't imagine what it's going to be like for them once they start looking for new jobs. I wish them only the best. And I still stick by my earlier decision to stay (though there's a part of me that wishes I were relocating or going away for a month).

How appropriate that right now, on my CD player, Gwen Stefani is singing about the "Tragic Kingdom". "His dreams are frozen stiff/icicles drip from his eyes" indeed.

Gratuitous Sherlock Holmes trivia: On May 4th, 1891, Holmes supposedly took a header off the Reichenbach Falls with his arch-enemy, Professor James Moriarty. Three years later he revealed to Watson that he was not, nor ever had been, dead. The poor doctor's reaction? He fainted. (Well, how would you react if you saw your best friend risen from the dead?)

Isn't your weekend all the richer for knowing that?