Month: August 2008

What Is Love?

Sunday nights from 6 PM until whenever, Bravo runs a Law & Order: Criminal Intent mini-marathon and I like to watch the repeats of older shows until 9 PM when USA runs a new episode. The original L & O is still the best (although sometimes their twists at the end stretch credibility), occasionally L & O:SVU leaves me feeling like a voyeuristic pervert, but L & O:CI is a guilty pleasure with Goren, it’s quirky lead detective and Eames his sneaky hot partner poking and prying until they get to the bottom of the crime.

I’m sure because of contractual obligations Bravo only gets to show certain seasons of the show, so nearly all the time I will recognize the episode as one I’ve seen and watch it again anyway. Sometimes I get real lucky and I won’t have seen it for a while, meaning I have forgotten who the killer is, so the show is a real treat. Rarely, I will stumble on an episode I haven’t ever seen at all before. Tonight at 7 o’clock that happened and it was exciting.

At ten minutes after seven my wife came into the living room and asked if she could have the TV, the Olympics were on and there was going to be swimming, diving and gymnastics tonight. I said, “Sure, go ahead.” That my friends is love.

When it turns out they were showing synchronized diving right then I didn’t make her turn it back to L & O:CI. That my friends is true love.

Started down, still down.
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80,000 Nothings

Tonight was the annual Bug Splat Rally for the MMC. Our slightly early start and the two brief rain showers we ran through on the loop conspired to make bugs scarce. Prize awarding was sketchy at best and as a matter of fact the Cleanest Car and Most Bugs Awards were given out based on pre-rally car conditions.

The rain was obviously my fault as I washed the car this morning to make the Emperor look pretty for tonight’s Club gathering. In mid Bug Splat loop His Highness crossed the Savannah River and crossed the 80K mile mark at about the same time.

Started down, went up, back down, still down.
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What’s Behind Door Number VQ-1

I really didn’t have anything I wanted to write about tonight. It was a Friday off from work, and besides from some everyday heroics, fixing a toilet & helping a neighbor trim a tree, nothing blogworthy happened. I was going to cop out, scan a picture from the past and use just it as my thousand words. But this comes from one of my stints in a detachment aboard the U.S.S. Midway during my Navy days and needs a little explaining.

All the spaces assigned to the squadrons of the air wing were on the two levels just below the flight deck. Along the passageways there, you passed the doors belonging to the numerous work centers required for the upkeep the aircraft, all painted with the squadron insignia and colors.

Wanting to show our squadron pride we decided to paint our door too. We didn’t have “official” colors, but we did have several spray cans of blue paint laying around that we used to identify our tie down chains. Someone scrounged a can of yellow from another squadron and we were in business. We taped up 1″ metal letter stencils of all our work centers, airframe, hydraulics, avionics, etc. and pretty soon we looked just like the rest of the air wing. Almost. While all the other squadrons had a different space for each different work center, all of ours were behind this one door. Look inside!

Started up, went down, still down.
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It Was A Misunderstanding

Its ten o’clock at night and you and a friend are out driving. On a 4 lane lane road you come to a red light. You’re in the left lane, and in the right, already stopped when you arrive, is a Krispy Kreme delivery van.

Your friend is is starring out his window at the van, probably trying (and failing) to do the math in his head of finding the difference between between the gross vehicle weight and the curb weight to determine how many doughnuts constitute a full load. Because you are driving an older car, say a 1987 Camaro, the throttle linkage is a little loose or something and if you idle too long at a light it will stall. To prevent this, the gas pedal needs to be blipped at regular intervals. While this probably reduces your gas mileage a bit, you don’t really mind as the V-8 sounds pretty cool when you do this.

The light turns green and the next thing you hear is the roar of an engine and you see the tail lights of a doughnut truck shrinking in front of you. Your pony car is being dusted by a large bread box on wheels. Your friend looks back over at you and says, “You’re not gonna let him get away with that are you?” So you floor it and take off in hot pursuit.

About a 1/4 mile later, just as you are catching the van, you notice that you are traveling at around 75 MPH (in a 45 zone) so discretion being the better part of valor you back off the gas and let him go. You rationalize the defeat; it was a misunderstanding on his part, he jumped you unawares and his truck was empty. Besides, if you got pulled over, whose story would the cop believe, yours or a guy driving a doughnut truck?

Started down, went up, still up.
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It’s Olympic Time!

Right now in Beijing it is:

 

And it’s Aiken Time too! Beijing is exactly 12 hours different, so all you have to do is change the A to P or vice versa to make it right for here on the east coast. Or in the case of this clock, do nothing:

Never Assume Men Understand

A woman was in a coma. She had been in it for months. Nurses were in her room giving her a sponge bath. One of them was washing her private area and noticed that there was a slight response on the monitor whenever she touched her there. They tried it again and sure enough, there was definite movement.

They went to her husband and explained what happened, telling him, “As crazy as this sounds, maybe a little ‘Oral Sex’ will do the trick & bring her out of the coma.”

The husband was skeptical, but they assured him that they would close the curtains for privacy. The husband finally agreed and went into his wife’s room.

After a few minutes the woman’s monitor flat lined, no pulse, no heart rate.

The nurses ran back into the room. “What happened!?” they cried.

The husband said, “I’m not sure; maybe she choked.”

Gallimaufry

Sometime in the last month or so my 5 month old monitor at work has started to lose it’s focus. At first I thought it was my eyes (hey, I’m getting old), but other stuff that far away was clear. It was slight at first, but a couple weeks ago it got so bad that now the first thing I have to do in the morning after logging on is to right click the desktop, select Properties, hit the Settings tab and change the color quality from 32 bit to 16 bit. I then change it back to 32 bit and everything becomes crisp and clear. What’s really weird is, I can drag that properties dialog box from one side of the monitor to the other, and on the left side it is fuzzy, on the right, crystal clear.

The city of Aiken must have a very strong tennis lobby. Five years ago there were six tennis courts and four basketball courts at the main recreation center. Three years ago they built 7 more tennis courts, including one really nice clay court. Two years ago they converted half of the basketball courts into a skate park with 8 or 10 aluminum half pipes, ramp, jumps and railings. Tonight on our way out to get an ice cream cone we passed by the rec center and I noticed they are resurfacing the skate park. Where do you think they moved all the aluminum apparatuses? On to a couple of the old tennis courts? Nope, they put them on one of the two remaining basketball courts…

I wish Mark had a blog, because he had a perfect post for tonight. He told me a little story this morning about buying a 12 pack of sodas on the way to work. I’d try and tell you about it, but I know I wouldn’t do it justice, let’s just say it involved a torn cardboard box and corralling errant cans in the parking lot of a quickie mart. Not just once, not twice, but three times, with it culminating with a pinhole in one can causing it to do what firemen call a wild hose.

Tomorrow — Racing A Doughnut Truck (and losing.)

Started up, went down, back up, back down, still down.
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