Best Of

Best of 2009

January

Metal

Friday the 2nd

On our bicycling route to work there is one house we pass that has a small screened-in porch. On that porch are two large dogs, I haven’t seen them because of the way the porch is situated, but they sound large and I’m glad they are kept inside. Definitely on the way to work and most times on the way home, we are the only traffic on the road this house is on, but we can not get within 25 yards of it before the dogs start barking. They bark continuously until we are probably 25 yards down the road past them. We are not usually talking at this point in the ride, it is flat so we aren’t doing any gear shifting, we are just pedaling along with the only sound being the whir of the chain and invariably those two dogs start raising a ruckus long before we get anywhere near them.

I think James Cameron must have been a bicyclist and had similar experiences with dogs hearing him coming a long way off because he includes a bit in the Terminator movies about humans using dogs to detect the cyborgs (AKA Metal.) If dogs can hear a component of the high pitched bicycle chain noise from a ways off it stands to reason that they also can pick up the sound of a motor moving a metal joint encased in a layer of human flesh.

February

Red Shirt

Monday the 2nd

Although originating in Star Trek, the term “redshirt” has been used in commentary on other action adventure stories, particularly serialized television. As a plot device, redshirts are most commonly used on shows which focus on characters who are prominent members of a larger group. In terms of plot function, redshirts serve to highlight the danger of a situation without forcing writers to sacrifice lead characters.

February is National Heart Month and this coming Friday is Wear Red Day 2009 to support the fight against heart disease in women.

For whatever convoluted reason our company nurse decided to pass around a memo last week to try and get everyone to wear red today, Monday, February 2nd and in spite of what happened to Frogurt while wearing a red shirt in last week’s episode of TDTVS…

…I took my life into my hands and wore a red sweater to work today. Obviously because I am home sitting on the couch in a yellow shirt, nothing bad happened to me on today’s “away mission.”

March

Nice One

Tuesday the 3rd

Way back in January I converted the PAL DVDs of all three series of William & Mary I had bought from across the pond to NTSC for watching here. Donna and I had already seen the first two series via Netflix, so we just watched Series 3 and put the box away.

Last week I asked my manager at work, who is actually from Jolly O’l England, if he was interested in seeing the show. He said yeah, he already had it in his Netflix queue, but why wait. I brought him the boxed set. Sunday was a cold and rainy day so he and his wife, lit a fire in the fireplace and settled in on the couch to watch the show. He popped in Disc 1 that contained the first three episodes and nothing happened, the DVD player just sat there. To say they were a bit disappointed was an understatement.

He brought me the discs back on Monday and told be it wouldn’t play. I said I was sorry, I reminded him I told him it might not work because I couldn’t get past the intro stuff on my Sony DVD player before it stopped and told me it was the wrong Region Code for that player. He said his was a Daewoo and that it would do anything.

I brought the discs home and tried the first in my DVD players, the JVC, the Sony, the PC, the laptop, nothing. The PCs didn’t say no disc, but didn’t show any VOB files or any files for that matter. I tried the second disc and it worked as expected in all four places.

Can you guess what the problem was? Yup, that’s right I had labeled the DVD,but neglected to actually burn the files to it. DOH!

April

New Napkin Holder

Monday the 6th

I took the caliper bracket that had the frozen slider pin in to work. An engineer there just knew it would be simple to fix. He toyed with it for awhile without success before giving it to the tool room for them to try. They turned a torch to it while hammering madly. It got so violent their supervisor told them to stop. A day later the engineer went back, put the bracket in a vice, clamped down on the hex head with a 12? monkey wrench and twisted, the pin loosened and was removed. I tossed out the slider pin, but couldn’t bring myself to throw out the bracket for two reasons; 1) that sucker was expensive and 2) turns out it is ambidextrous – fits both driver & passenger sides. Bead blasting made it clean & shiny and I have found a new use for it.

May

Kamakazie Kricket

Friday the 15th

I was just out in the garage giving the Emperor a little sponge bath in preparation for tomorrow’s MMC event when I spotted a cricket watching me. I’m not even positive crickets have eyes, but this one sure seemed like it was giving me the once over. There were several large splats on the nose of the car that I was Quick Detailing off and maybe this cricket felt I was being disrespectful of a dead relative or something.

It was no ordinary cricket either, it was big one, about the size my friend Mark might use as bait while fishing for kayak sized catfish. Well, all that staring kind of unnerved me a little, so I slipped off my sneaker and moved slowly that direction to flatten Jiminy out.

In some places it is believed if you kill a cricket it is bad luck, but with the way my luck is running recently, who would notice. I’ve also heard that if kill a cricket it’ll rain, but with the weather we’ve had, and are predicted to have, who would notice.

As I swung my Nike with deadly intent at our giant cricket, it leaped out of the way at the last minute. Did he jump away from me, no, he jumped AT me!

I am proud to say that I didn’t squeal like a little girl as it bounced off my arm, then my chest and then who knows where. I did however flail my arms and upper body around in a pathetic attempt to get away like an uncoordinated spaz who just stepped on a banana peel.

June

When The Going Gets Tough

Friday the 19th

…the tough go shopping.

The FRS were on TV tonight because they were playing the Braves and if you live in the south every Braves game is on TV. The Red Sox had their 13 Trillion Yen Man (Daisuke Matsuzaka) pitching and there was much excitement in the Land of the Rising Sun because he was facing off against the Brave’s Japanese starter Kenshin Kawakami. Both guys have had rough starts to the season, but tonight’s rough start award went to Boston’s Dice-K as his first pitch of the game was belted into the bullpen for a home run. Then it went downhill from there. By the end of the 5th inning the Sox were down 6-0, so we went out to do our weekly grocery shopping.

For the second time in seven days we have left a store leaving our selected purchases behind.

I got in a checkout line behind what I thought was a woman who was nearly finished as she had a full cart and about a dozen items left on the belt. After unloading 2/3rds of the cart onto the nearly empty belt I realized it hadn’t moved and there were now two cashiers fiddling around at the scanner. I think they were trying to take an item off the woman’s order, they’d swipe something and the machine would boop and they’d both look up at the screen in unison, shake the heads, repeat. After the forth time I think it worked because one cashier left and the remaining one scanned another item and then immediately starting asking for the first cashier to come back. It was now becoming clear that she didn’t know what she was doing. And it also became clear that the shopper was separating the final 10 items into 2 separate orders and she had a paycheck to cash or maybe a substance check and that we were going to standing here awhile. There was one other check out line open, but there was no way that I was off loading the belt to put it in my cart to move over two slots. We looked at each other, shrugged and headed for the door.

We drove a mile down the street to another store, probably spent $25 more dollars than we would have at the first store, but we were in and out and on the way home like we should have been at Store #1.

The game was mercifully over by the time we got back, both teams each scored 2 uneventful runs, so they FRS lost by a score of 8-2. They play each other twice more over the weekend, so it is not too late to save face.

July

Insect Food

Tuesday the 7th

About two weeks ago I got two insect bites on both sides of my right leg just above the knee. They itched, swelled and oozed clear stuff, staying that way for about three days until a scab formed. I’ve never reacted to mosquito bites that way, so I guessed they were from a spider, but whatever they were from they were unpleasant.

Then a week ago I got bit 4 times. Back of the right side of my neck, about four inches further down on my back, near the waist on the left side and on my left ankle. I don’t feel the initial bite, but then I’ll notice something itching and scratch a bump.

Those four had just about cleared up when on Monday morning I had an itchy bump on my left forearm. Then later that morning I noticed an itch under my left arm and then one further down the back on the same side.

It is just me, Donna hasn’t been bothered a bit. They could only be coming from a couple places, my dresser or I’m getting bit each time we venture into Hitchcock Woods. My plan of attack to combat this issue was to wait until I had had been bitten enough that my body developed an immunity to what ever was feeding on my, but it didn’t seem to be working. So last night my wife saiid let’s take everything out of my dresser and wash it. Then in the morning you can spray the drawers and everything down with some bug spray.

Washed, sprayed, replaced, we’ll see how it works out.

August

I Know It When I See It

Wednesday the 5th

Let’s talk porn, in honor of my two recent posts on the subject thanks to io9, the scifi (not syfy) site I read every day. They are part of network of sites that cover various subjects, one of which is about the biggest money maker on the net, porn. So every time there is anything remotely about science fiction over on Fleshbot it gets cross posted on io9.

At my age pornography has lost a lot of its luster. Notice I didn’t say all of it, I’m not above checking out some of the posts on Fleshbot when io9 links them, but I don’t have the site bookmarked or anything. There is nothing like that first thrill of finding your dad’s Playboy at 12 or several years later a friend discovers some black and white 8mm stag films in his basement. When I was in the Navy there was a co-worker who knew where you could get XXX on VHS. On Saturdays I would carry my VCR over to his house and we would both make a copy a movie. He was trying to amass a collection, I was just using the same tape and copying over last weeks movie.

It was the last six months in the Navy that removed most of the luster off of porn for me. My final duty station was aboard the U.S.S. Iwo Jima as an E6, or Petty Officer First Class. We had a 1st Class Mess, which was basically a small room on the Mess Deck, where we could eat our meals, take a coffee/smoke break or just spend our downtime reading or playing Acey Duecy. There was a TV mounted high up in one corner of the room, so we could watch Armed Forces TV. The TV also had a VCR attached so we could watch movies. There was a selection of current releases if you were interested, but by far the largest collection of tapes were of the XXX variety.

Who ever the guy was that was in charge of movies really liked the hard core stuff. Every, and any, time you went into the mess that corner of the room was filled with incessant moaning and close ups of genitalia. Try to eat eggs over easy and sausage links at 5 AM or hot dogs at lunch with that going on in the background, it sort of takes the pleasure out of both activities…

September

Food For Thought

Thursday the 24th

Venture capital needed for a new company that Mark, Jim and I are forming to make food fun and easy. Jim’s first request is help in making a PB&J sandwich without ruining your nice fresh, soft white bread. Peanut butter and jelly formed into slices and individually wrapped, ala Kraft Singles. I thought that once that product takes off our next release should be a Fluff ‘n’ Nutter variation.

After our new company is making money hand over fist we will be getting into genetically engineering fruit. Mark likes apples, but hates the skin, so our first venture in that direction be be to create an apple that will peel like a banana. I thought why stop there, we should make it so that alternating sections are either dense intertwined fuzz or little bitty hook things so that when reeled down and pushed together below the apple they become a stick like handle.

October

The Emperor Takes A Drink

Monday the 19th

Because we burnt nearly the whole tank of gas on Saturday, the low fuel light came on on the way to work this morning. After dinner we headed over to Kroger to fill up do a little shopping. As we pulled in, the gas station was jammed, every pump had a car at it and every aisle had at least one car waiting. I suggested we go inside and buy the couple items we needed, then maybe the lines would die down. They didn’t.

I voted we just get in line and wait. She countered with, “Just go to the Shell on Price Ave. and pay the extra.” I don’t usually shop for price, but Kroger is usually 15-20 cents cheaper than the Shell station and I just hate to pay that much more. I actually hate waiting in line more than paying two bucks more for a tank of gas, so off to Price we go.

As the the gallon total flew past the 11 mark, simultaneously to my thinking to myself, man it was really empty, the sound of splashing and the smell of gas keyed me to reach down and manually shut off the pump. Perfect, not only am I paying 20¢ extra, I’m pouring it on the ground. The only possible thing that could make this worse would be if I have to go inside to get the receipt…

Bingo!

November

Sex, TV & Spam

Tuesday the 3rd

There were 89 spam messages caught by my spam filter at work this morning and quite a few dealt with trying to sell magic pills to improve my sex life. I am amazed at the creative titles and thought that they could be broken down into which Cable TV channel they would be shown on if they were the titles of infomercials instead of the subject lines of spam.

Release your inside beast! on Animal Planet
African temper in amour on BET
Your prescription for success on Discovery Health
Become arousal athlete! on ESPN
Pumper for pant muscle on Fit TV
Recipe for hot nights on FOOD
Invest in your wang! on CNBC
Be her volcano on National Geographic
Just be a male! on Spike
Right spell for your ‘magic wand’ on SyFy
No sad accidents in bed on Tru TV
Be furious in bed on Versus

I’m not sure what channel these last three belong on, maybe you have some channels I don’t get, let me know what you think:
Be good at humping!
Become a lech instantly
Flaccidity is not for you

December

Got Me There

Sunday the 27th

We went shopping in Staples this afternoon, we needed a new shredder and some other stuff, chief among them, paper. It was time to buy our bi-annual ream of it. We walked into the store and I immediately headed off to the right side where the paper-like office supplies were. I looked along the wall and up and down every aisle (even though paper was not on the sign telling me what was down them.)

My wife suggested that I ask a kid in the red shirt where it was, but just like a man, I couldn’t bring myself to do it. On my second pass down the last aisle a woman who was arranging items on a shelf looked at me and asked, “Can I help you find something?” I can’t ask for directions, but I can’t lie and say no to someone offering help, so I said, “Where is the paper?” She looked at me with a twinkle in her eye and replied, “I hate to sound condescending, but (pointing to the wall on the other side of the store) do you see that big sign over there that says paper?” (the lettering was only about 4 foot high…) “Man,” I said, “It always used to be over on this side of the store, why did it get moved?” “Don’t tell me, I know. The paper is over there for the same reason all stores move stuff around, to keep the customer in the store longer while he searches for something, hoping for an impulse buy.”

About this time Donna walked up, so I said to the lady, “Or maybe it is like my wife who moves stuff around in the kitchen every six months just to make me feel inadequate. She’ll ask me to get her something, I’ll look in the spot I think it used to be, it won’t be there, and I have to ask her, so she gets to sigh that sigh that means, ‘Men are so helpless’.”

Without missing a beat, Donna says, “I never move anything, You don’t know where anything is at because you only come there to help me once every six months.”

Ouch.

Best of 2008

January

Juror #6…

Thursday the 3rd

…didn’t get picked.

I was glad I didn’t get selected, but would not have been disappointed had I been. This wasn’t for a regular trial session jury, but for Grand Jury duty. You would have to report one Thursday per month (more if needed) to decide if the prosecution’s case had merit for trial and if it did, hand down indictments. There are 18 Grand Jurors, 12 picked today for the year of 2008 and 6 returning members from 2007. So, although today’s lucky selectees were chosen to serve for one year, half of them would get held over and serve a second year.

First, all of us assembled in an unused court room and then at the appointed time we were guided into the actual court room. The judge came in and then the Clerk called the role. We were numbered alphabetically, so because my last name starts with a B I was a low number. As the clerk called our number, starting at #1 and going all the way up to #99, we had to stand and say aloud our name. They skipped quite a few numbers/names, leading me to believe some folks had called in with excuses already.

After everyone had sounded off, the clerk informed the judge he had 64 perspective jurors with one no-show. He asked the missing persons name and then told his bailiff to inform the Sheriff’s Office that he wanted a bench warrant issued for that person to be before him next Monday at 9:30. The judge then read a series of questions that if you could answer yes to you might be excused from duty. One person was excused because they had moved to Augusta (last weekend) and two more were excused for medical reasons. There were about a half dozen who had hardships that made it inconvenient to serve once a month and they got swapped into the regular jury pool for a two week session later in the year.

This left about 55 people eligible for the 15 spots (twelve plus three alternates) giving me a 27% chance of getting chosen. Our juror number and names were written on small slips of paper and loaded into a “high tech’ metal box the size of a cigar box and professional shaken up by the Assistant Clerk of Court. The slips of paper were then drawn out one at a time.

The first number called was for a woman seated right behind me. She muttered an expletive under her breath as she made her way up front. The woman sitting next to me went “Oh my,” in mock surprise. I whispered to her, “Yeah, she didn’t seem to happy about that.” About halfway through calling the 12 Grand Jurors, the clerk called out, “Juror number six – ty seven.” My heart skipped a beat there. I figured for sure that I was going to get picked as one of three alternates, but didn’t.

All of us unwanted jurors were directed back to the original room where we were given a written excuse for work and a check for $20.

Thanks Aiken County for buying my wife and I BBQ at Bobby’s for tonight’s dinner.

February

Scratch and Sniff Post

Wednesday the 20th

Smell MeWhen I entered the garage this morning to get in the car I was struck by an odd smell. A very chemical smell. I opened the garage door and it was quickly disbursed.

I didn’t recognize it, wasn’t motor oil, wasn’t gasoline and it was not anti-freeze. Wasn’t coming from the car at all. It really only smelled right on the stairs from the house to the garage. I opened the cabinet doors one by one and sniffed. It was faintly there, but I was unable to pinpoint it. Didn’t smell like paint and it wasn’t natural gas. It had a sweet odor, so it certainly wasn’t a dead critter under the house.

As I pulled into the garage tonight after work the smell was still there, so I started a more thorough search of the garage. Wasn’t the fire ant killer or the potting soil. Not the 3 in 1 oil or the liquid wrench. Didn’t come from the car wax or Amour-All. Not the Simple Green nor the tire shine. Wasn’t coming from the bicycle chain lube. Ditto the “clean” rags. Not the wallpaper paste or the wallpaper remover. Kind of smells like it was coming from the spray paint area. Didn’t smell like paint, but I started pulling out the dozen cans of partially full cans. What’s this?

AH HA! A pint can of Paint & Varnish Remover way in the back. As soon as I put it on the counter I knew I’d found the culprit. I don’t remember ever buying this. Probably purchased when we first moved into the place to clean paint off the molding or something. Pretty toxic stuff I guess, only took 18 years to eat right through the metal can.

March

Happy Daylight Savings Time Day

Saturday the 8th

If your family is anything like my family, today is a big day and celebrated by exchanging gifts. We are biding our time signing carols and drinking the traditional aqua vitae until the appointed hour when we gather around and watch the lower right of the PC screen as the hour magically jumps back from 2:00 AM to 1:00 AM.

Now excuse me while I go change all the other clocks in the house to tomorrow already.

April

That Was Unexpected

Thursday the 24th

Did you ever have a really cool idea for a joke and have it go horribly wrong, but still be worth it?

A co-worker (Hi Mark) and his sister are always trading gotchas and he has been after me to take some cheesy steering wheel cover on vacation out west and mail it to her so she won’t have a clue who sent it to her. Seeing as we are redoing bathrooms in lieu of going west this year he cooked up a different plan that I could help with. And it fit right into Donna and my Post Office picture taking.

Mark bought a deck of cards, a box of envelopes and 3 books of stamps. We would put one playing card in an envelope and mail it to his sister from each Post Office we visited. I used a laser printer and addressed 55 envelopes to his sister with a return address of John Smith, 123 Main St, Anytown, USA 123456. The first envelope contained the box so she would have a place to put the cards when they arrived. To ensure she kept the box I printed out a little note to go in the envelope with the help of the Ransom Note Generator. Two weekends ago Donna and I made a trip up to Greenwood, SC to mail the box. We picked Greenwood, the sister’s hometown, so she wouldn’t immediately suspect Mark (even though he knew she would think it was him anyway.) Mark didn’t even tell his wife what we were up to because he knew his sister would call her and get the truth out of her.

Because I didn’t want to just put a playing card in an envelope, I was going to put a piece of blank paper in with it. Then I thought maybe I’d put one word on the paper and when she had all the pieces of paper there would be a sentence that explained the whole gag. But I thought that was a little too much, so Plan B was to gather 52 quotes from the internet and put one on each page. For extra fun I made sure to get a quote that included a bolded word matching the card, i.e. “When I have to choose between two evils, I always try to pick the one I haven’t tried before.” – Mae West went in with the two of clubs.

This weekend when we went on our PO photo trip we mailed an envelope from nearly every Post Office on Saturday and a couple more on Sunday. Because the Post Offices were all closed when we got to them we mailed them inside when we could, but most ended up in the blue box outside. Because the blue boxes don’t get emptied until late in the day, almost all our “letters” didn’t make it into the system until Monday night.

Yesterday Mark’s sister got 11 pieces of mail that included a playing card and a quote. Now here is where it went off course, instead of thinking it was her brother having a little fun, she thought someone was harassing her and went to the local police. That’s right – the police.

This morning Mark’s sister called Mark’s wife to tell her about the ordeal she was going through. Now because Mark’s wife knows nothing of the prank she can only listen with concern about the problem. Naturally when they get off the phone with each other, Mark’s wife calls him. She tells him about his sister going to the police with these harassing letters and how the officer has told her it looks like the work of a sexual predator and if she gets anymore (which she will tomorrow) to bring them right in and they’ll try and get some fingerprints off them. At this point Mark realizes the jig is up and confesses to his wife that he was behind the letters.

Mark then came up front to tell Donna and I the story where we all had a great big laugh about it. Then, because both Donna and my fingerprints are on file from being in the military, and not being real sure how serious the detective was taking the case and not wanting to really worry his sister Mark emailed the quote file to her and then called to tell her to check her email while he was on the phone with her. She was somewhat relieved at not being stalked, but somewhat mad. We are hoping in a couple weeks she will see the humor in the whole thing.

May

Hail To The Emperor

Tuesday the 20th

There was a 40% chance of afternoon thunder showers. We took the umbrella to work, but left it in the trunk. My job was to keep track of the radar and if it looked like thunder rolling our way I was to go out, take off the cockpit cover, raise the top and bring the umbrella back in.

I failed miserably at my job. When it was time to go home at 4:00 PM I got up from my desk and walked down to the other end of the plant to get Donna. As I passed by some windows it looked very dark. Uh-oh! As we left the plant someone was walking in with an umbrella saying that it had just started raining. He was right and they were big fat drops too. As we walked quickly to the car the rain intensity picked up rapidly. We started running (this is the only time I regret parking in the north forty), it was coming down at a pretty good clip by the time we reached the car. I popped the trunk tossed in everything I was carrying and started to take off the cockpit cover. Tossed the roof up and Donna tried valiantly to click it down while I wadded up the soaking wet cockpit cover and tossed it too into the trunk. I started the car and raised the windows as the rain poured down. The interior was pretty dry, but we were pretty wet.

About a mile from the plant the skies really opened up, even with the wipers on high I had to slow down because of visibility. Then it sounded like somebody was shooting at us. Pow! Bam! Rat-A-Tat-Tat! Call 911 we’re under fire. It was hailing. Pea-sized up to grape-sized frozen water was pelting us. With absolutely no place to hide I just kept driving. I’m afraid to go out in the garage to look at the car and see if there are any little dents, but not as afraid as I was during the storm that the hail would get big enough to start tearing through the canvas roof and start hitting me on my noggin. After a couple more miles, and a couple more cloud bursts, the skies cleared, the rain stopped and we donned our sunglasses for the rest of the trip.

June

Cash Back

Monday the 30th

We did our weekly grocery shopping yesterday and as our custom I load the conveyor and Donna moves to the end and will start bagging if there is no one there. I have the coupons in my pocket (Donna hands them to me as we buy the item the coupon is for) and the loyalty card for the store in my wallet, plus I have the debit card for paying, so I stop opposite the cashier.

When the cashier was done scanning our items and deducting the coupons, I swiped the debit card. At this point, knowing my wallet is empty, Donna says, “Take out a couple extra bucks.” This is unnerving because I am used to requests for specific amounts. I ask Donna what she means by a couple. Her answer was even more unsettling, “Just round up the total.” Our bill was at that point ninety-four dollars and fourteen cents. Crap! She expected me to do math under pressure, the cashier was waiting, the woman behind me had her stuff on the conveyor belt…I couldn’t do it, I just knew I’d subtract wrong, forgetting to carry the one or something, and the bill would come to $101 or $99.

I punted, figured I would just take out ten bucks, that should be easy. I push the other key, hit the 1 and the 0 and hit OK. Your total is $94.24. Damn that’s ten cents! Cancel. Back. Cancel. Panic.

I just know everyone around is staring at the doofus who can’t operate the card console. In my head I imagine the kid at the service desk is making an announcement, “Attention Kroger shoppers. Gather around Register #5 and watch an old guy try to operate the credit card reader. Grab a latte at the Starbucks counter and come on up front because next he’ll be trying to pay using the change from one of those little rubber things with a split in it that even your grandfather is too cool to use anymore.”

Miraculously all my button pushing has brought me back to the “Would you like cash back?” screen without having to swipe the card again. Alright, I want ten bucks, not ten cents. I push the key opposite other and push the one and the zero keys, then the big green Yes button. There. That wasn’t so hard was it?

Apparently it was hard, because the cashier hands me my receipt and my dime change.

And while I’m sure she was trying to be helpful by pointing me to the ATM machine near the service desk, I wasn’t listening to the cashier, I mumbled rudely, “No thanks. I don’t really need it.” I just wanted out of the store.

My very supportive wife waited until we got outside in the parking lot before she started laughing at me…

July

Goo Goo Eyes

Wednesday the 16th

Today we rode the tandem into work and our arrival time was around 15 minutes before the opening bell, so to speak, for most of the hourly employees, so quite a few of them were sitting under the break area awning getting in one last smoke before going to work. Unfortunately the bike rack where we are supposed to park is like 15 feet from the awning, so Donna and I have to unload our lunches and change of clothes right in front of the crowd.

Now a person on a bicycle is a rare enough sight as it is, but put two people on a long ass bike and we are talking parade level attention. One of the engineers was arriving at the same time and as he walked up to the building he noticed us unloading, but what he found most eye-catching was not us, but the looks of all the other employees openly gawking at Donna and I. He said nearly everyone was looking in our direction with sort of an incredulous look, as if they were thinking to themselves that no sane person would ride that thing.

Yesterday we had a very busy day, so instead of coming home and cooking something we dined out at what used to be one of our favorite south side eateries, Wing Place (why it “used to be” is the subject of another post.) When we were finished eating and heading for the door there was also a mom leaving with her daughter just in front of us. The girl was somewhere between to ages of seven and ten, very cute, with long curly light colored hair, a big ol’ smile and the largest eyes you ever saw. I really noticed the eyes because they were aimed directly at me. This girl was staring at me like I was a movie star or a pony.

As it turned out, mom and daughter were parked next to us in the parking lot, so we were more or less following them. About half way towards the cars I got another look from the little girl. Donna wondered if I dripped a bunch of ranch dipping sauce down the front of my shirt and she hadn’t noticed. Mom loaded the little girl in the back of their Jeep Wrangler as we got into the Miata. The girl was looking over at me, with an almost wistful expression, like maybe she was wishing it was her getting into the Miata instead of Donna. As the mom was going around to the driver’s side of their vehicle we put the top down. The girl was still looking our way with her big eyes and her chin in her hands with her elbows on the side of the Jeep and I could swear she let out a sigh of regret, it was almost creepy.

August

What Is Love?

Monday the 10th

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 friend 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 friend is true love.

September

Wild Life

Sunday the 7th

Sung to the tune of Scott McKenzie’s San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Some Flowers in Your Hair):
“If you’re going to walk Hitchcock Woods
You’ll be sure to get spiders in your hair
If you’re going hiking in the woods
You’re gonna see lots of animals in there”

On our walk in the woods this morning we saw several humans, some with dogs, some on horses and a couple on foot. We saw a fox squirrel and lots of spider webs, even some with spiders still in them. We heard several different species of birds. We saw a toad, a salamander and a snake. A SNAKE!?!

He was a decent size one too. just lying there across the trail, probably 4 foot long. When I first noticed him he looked like a little krinkle french fry, all wavy like. Must have been asleep because when I poked him lightly with the end of my walking stick he smoothed right out and kind of looked up at me. Flicked his little red tongue at me several times and just stayed where he was. I’m thinking he was kinda pissed at me for waking him up because he pulled his head back like he was going to strike. I was still standing back away, just close enough to poke him again with my 4′ walking stick.

He didn’t like me poking him, but he still didn’t move off the trail until I kicked sand at him for the second time. He looked up at me once more, as if to remember my face, and slithered away slowly biding his time, probably planning when he could catch me unawares at another time.

Just after he left the trail Donna said, “Take it’s picture.” Good idea I thought, if I only had a camera. I did, like I always do, it was right there on the end of my walking stick. I just didn’t think to use that end of the stick; I was too busy poking with the other end.

October

Cash Back II

Thursday the 9th

On our way to get our monthly haircut Donna wanted to stop at Walgreen’s, she had a couple coupons that were burning a hole in her pocket. Of the three, there was only one we ended up using, eight Halloween themed pencils for a buck. With tax, $1.07. Donna asked for five or ten dollars cash back because she would need a few bucks in a couple days when she went out to lunch with her department. I figured if I just rounded up the bill to $10 that would do it. Donna agreed because that would give her some singles for a tip. I skillfully guided myself to the other amount screen for cash back while subtracting a dollar seven from ten. I typed in the amount I wanted back, hit OK and OK again. The cashier handed me my receipt and change and we headed for the door. When I looked down at the receipt total it was then that I realized the math tutoring from Jethro Bodine might have been a mistake.

I had asked for $8.83 back making my total debit purchase $9.90!

Oh, so close.

November

Oh Goody

Thursday the 13th

At work a big chunk of the productive part of today was spent staring at nearly worthless PC. Half of everything that most people need to do their jobs and one major item, email, are controlled through servers in New Jersey and it seemed like maybe somebody parked their truck on the network hose and didn’t realize it. Started sometime mid morning and after lunch we got partial connectivity back and received this email:

From: Xxxxxx, Xxxxxxx [INDAUTO/ASCONUM/FP]
Sent: Thursday, November 13, 2008 1:08 PM
Subject: NETWORK OUTAGE

All Employees:

Our Datacenter is still experiencing network problems as a result of several outages by our local telecom carrier. We have failed-over to a backup link and will continue to work on restoring the primary link. We are severely limited in bandwidth so please suspend all non-work related web/internet activities until our primary link is restored. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and thank you for your patience and understanding. If you have any questions, please call me at the numbers listed below.

Xxxxxx Xxxxxxx
Manager, Network Systems

The highlighting is just as it came from the sender. My favorite part is the red letter words, “please suspend all non-work related web/internet activities” because I could swear that every employee has to sign off on a computer usage policy that expressly forbids using the net for anything non-business. I’m thinking that because this manager has to remind us not to use it for non-work, that perhaps he must think it is OK in other times to use it that way.

December

Identity Crisis

Tuesday the 16th

On our trip down I-95 in Florida on last Thursday I saw a most interesting car. I was in the center of the three lanes when I noticed a small black sedan with dark tinted windows approaching fast. In the center of the grill was a shiny oval badge with a large L in the center. The car was a Lexus. It looked smaller than their smallest cars the IS and as it passed by I didn’t recognize it. Now I’m a car guy, I read practically every major car magazine and check AutoBlog every day, so if Lexus has a car below the IS I would known about it. Once the car was past me I could see the back of the car and right there on the left of the trunk was a chrome Lexus badge, in the center of the rear panel was another oval Lexus logo where they were supposed to be. On the right side of the trunk was the clincher, a chrome IS250. A neighbor used to have an IS250 and this was definitely not one.

I wasn’t real sure what it was, but I had an idea and it was confirmed after I had internet access, it was a Toyota Yaris sedan. Props to the owner for a nearly thoroughly convincing job, he even stayed in the family so to speak. If he had just combined two badges on the back to give the car two letters that weren’t on a known model, like say IC250, I might have actually though I spotted a prototype.

Best of 2007

January

Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?

Wednesday the 17th

Ahhhh, me!

As part of our comprehensive retirement plan Donna and I play the Powerball Lottery every drawing. We will plop down $10 and get a quick pick set of numbers that are good for the next 5 weeks of Wednesday and Friday drawings.

Letting the machine pick the numbers for us is the best way to go. We used to play some family birthdays, but never won anything so what good are they. Besides, we had more than 6 birthdays to choose from, so we had to leave some numbers off. Then what would have happened if we were to miss the jackpot by one number and that one number was one of the omitted birthdays. How would we feel towards the person who had the birthday number that was wrong? How would we feel towards the person whose birthday we left off and would have won it for us?

When you go to a Chinese restaurant and you get a fortune cookie now a days they include a set of “lucky” numbers for the lottery. Well, a couple of years ago I got a fortune that said, “Financial prosperity is coming your way!” Seeing this as a good omen, I tucked it into my wallet with the intention of giving those numbers a try, but never got around to it.

Yesterday while chatting with a co-worker (Hi, Mark) I mentioned that seeing as the Powerball was up to 180 million that just maybe I’d go buy an extra shot at the prize. I told him about my lucky numbers and he asked to see my fortune slip. I thought he was kidding when he wrote them down and said he was going to play them. This morning he told me that he really bought a ticket using those numbers.

Tonight on the way home from getting our hair cut I stopped at a quick mart and bought a ticket using the “lucky” numbers too. Had to. Just imagine how I would have felt if he hit with those numbers that I had been carrying around in my wallet for years and never played. That’s right, the only thing left to do at that point would be Seppuku.

February

Life of the Party or Annoying Guest?

Monday the 5th

When I went for my esophagogastroduodenoscopy (I just love that word, I can’t say it, but boy does it look impressive written down) on Friday, I had a hospital arrival time of 7:30 and a procedure time of 8:30. Donna dropped me off about 7:15 so she could get to work at her normal hour. The patient registration clerks were ready and efficient, so when I entered the Endoscopy Lab where I was to have my procedure, I was very early. All the nurses were sitting in a big circle drinking coffee, cutting up and laughing. When I was noticed, everyone quieted down and one of the nurses directed me to the waiting room and told me they would call me when they were ready for me. They were probably having a morning staff meeting or something, but they sure were a happy bunch with all that laughing.

Whatever the feel good juice is that they give you before the scoping, it is awesome. One of the nurses stuck the needle in the IV and said this will take about 5 minutes to kick in. I looked up at the clock and saw that it was 9:05 and I thought that I better remind the doctor that I wanted a picture of my insides, when the next thing I knew I was in the recovery area and a nurse asked if I wanted a Coke to drink. Memories of the next hour or two are very scattered, for me. My wife will tell you different. Apparently I babbled on and on, repeating everything I said two or three times. Donna even tells me I was tormenting the other patients, particularly a woman who was in for a colonoscopy. I have zero recall of any of this. I wonder what else I was saying?

Over the weekend I figured out what all those nurses were laughing at when I walked in on them Friday morning and why they went so silent so fast. They were probably comparing notes on how their patients had acted and what they said while under the influence of the anesthesia the day before.

I expect they all had a pretty good laugh about me at this morning’s meeting.

March

Nimrod Lane

Saturday the 24th

We went for a nice long walk in Hitchcock Woods this morning and boy was it crowded. We saw 4 people on horses and three people walking their dogs. One of our favorite pastimes while walking is to make up elaborate histories of people who have trails named after them. Mrs. Knox, Mr. Fletcher, Willie Barton, etc. This “lane” is named for the great Civil War General Beauregard Nimrod who died in 1864 while either defending Aiken from the vile northern aggressors or from friendly fire after berating the beloved company mess sergeant because he felt his grits were undercooked.

From Ask Yahoo:

The American Heritage Dictionary offers two distinct definitions of a nimrod — either a hunter, or a person regarded as silly or foolish. The dictionary goes on to explain that the second meaning probably originated with the cartoon character Bugs Bunny. The wily Bugs used the term in its original sense to refer to dithering hunter Elmer Fudd, whom he called a “poor little Nimrod.” Over time, however, the “hunter” meaning got dropped, and the “dithering” connotation stuck.

April

I Know Why He Did It

Tuesday the 17th

While in DC the other week, after we walked to a lot of the war memorials in West Potomac Park we headed over to the Tidal Basin to see if we could find any cherry trees that still had blossoms on it. Unfortunately there were only a few. There are about three or four varieties of cherry trees planted around the basin so that some of them bloom at different times, but during our walk we only came across about three trees that looked like they were at their peak. Because of the great distances between bloomed trees, my dream of a sweeping panorama of blooming trees with the Jefferson Memorial in the background (very postcard-like) was squashed. I did take a couple of close ups of one blooming tree. As we strolled along I was looking down reviewing my last pictures when – SMACK -my head hit a low hanging branch. I know now why George Washington chopped down that cherry tree. It wasn’t bad enough to make me see stars, but I did decide from then forward that I would wait until I was stopped to look down at the camera’s LCD.

May

I Can See Still See In The Dark

Wednesday the 23rd

Today was Donna and my annual eye exams. Good news is that neither of us have any issues nor have our eyes changed enough to warrant getting new glasses.

We went mid afternoon and some six hours later the drops they put in your eyes to dilate them has not entirely worn off. I think I could take a book into a closet and read it with the light off. You know your pupils are open wide when the little WinXP screensaver (bouncing logo on black background) has a bright rainbow hued halo around it.

I remember a couple of years ago we went late afternoon and by the time we left the Eye Guy’s place it was dusk. The sun was down but the sky was still light. Most cars were driving with their lights on and both headlights and taillights were giving off these awesome starburst patterns. Even the traffic signals looked like they were being viewed through a starburst filter. Very cool effect, but it was difficult to concentrate on actually driving and not running into anything while looking at all the pretty lights.

June

Sunday Stuff

Sunday the 3rd

We expected a Sebring for our convertible rental in Seattle, but ended up in a PT Cruiser. Not a lot of trunk room in it, more than a Miata, but nowhere near as much space as in a Sebring. It was a smaller car than we normally get, so you would have thunk it would be easier to maneuver in tight spots, but you would be wrong. It had the turning radius of a bus, which I guess goes right along with the very high seating position. I’ve always kind of liked the looks of the PT Cruiser and the convertible has only 2-doors which I think looks even better than the standard 4-door version, but apparently it is not as distinctive as I thought. On one of our ferry rides we were stopped next to a car load of twenty-something females and the driver asked me what kind of car we were in. I replied, “PT Cruiser.” “Oh,” she says, “I thought it was a Beetle.”

July

Un Happy Meal

Monday the 16th

On our way back to the hospital in Florence on Saturday, Susie asked if I would stop at a McDonald’s so young Katlin could get a Happy Meal. Ever the obliging driver I spotted a Mickie D’s and got in the drive up line. Susie also wanted a Snack Wrap or something for herself. Because the only thing I have ordered at a McDonald’s Drive Up in the last three decades is a Hot Fudge Sundae, Susie would tell me what to repeat into the microphone; in essence translating McDonald’s speak through me. After we ordered and the team member inside told us, “Dat ill be foe six dee.” I got to repay the earlier favor by translating Southern for Susie, and told her that the total for the food was four dollars and sixty cents.

At the second window we received our two bags of stuff. Susie’s wrap in one and the Happy Meal in the other. When Susie pulled out the toy from the Happy Meal bag it was a Monster Wheel obviously intended for a boy. I tried to hand it back to the team member in the window saying, “Could we get a girl’s toy?” She wouldn’t take it back; they were all out of girl’s toys. With no Hello Kitty toy on the horizon and rather than get
nothing, Katlin excepted the neon green wheel thing with a frown.

To try and lighten the moment I told Katlin that I guess she didn’t get a Happy Meal after all, but instead she got an Un Happy Meal.

Well, I thought it was funny.

August

Lost Time

Thursday the 9th

Yesterday at 2:35 PM I scraped my arm. The nurse and I spent 20 minutes treating it. We then spent the next 15 minutes examining the scene of the crime and recreating the event. We then called in the maintenance supervisor to have him look at the offending junction box cover and he then got a maintenance guy to remove the cover, smooth off the sharp edge and then replace it. Another 30 minutes used up. From there we ended up in my boss’s office while he, the nurse, and I filled out the accident report, spending another half hour. Pretty much killing the rest of the work day.

Today the nurse spent almost 2-1/2 hours with me, driving me to two different doctor’s offices, so I could get my tetanus shot. (At the first place we went, the front office person “couldn’t get me in the computer”, so we left after an hour.) Back at the plant we spent the next 45 minutes together to 1) re bandage the cut because the doctor did a lackluster job after he spent all of 10 seconds looking at it, 2) filling out the appropriate paperwork to have me take a drug test and 3) me peeing in a cup and her testing it. Later my boss brought around the accident report for me to sign (anther 2 minutes, but who knows how long it took to complete it.)

Next week the Director of Operations, the Facilities Manager, the HR Manager, my supervisor, his Manager, the supervisor of the department I was passing through and his manager will meet to discuss how to prevent this from happening again. More than likely after all of these folks spend an hour in a room, a maintenance man will be dispatched to reroute the offending junction box and it’s associated conduit, another maintenance man will be dispatched to place yellow tape on the floor to designate an official aisle and the department supervisor will spend a half an hour instructing his people not to place pallets in the new aisle.

This was not considered a lost time accident, even though over 8 man hours have been spent on it so far, with lots more to come, because I did not “miss” any work.

As a bonus, as far as OSHA is concerned it is not a recordable accident because I did not require stitches, x-rays, or antibiotics (tetanus shots don’t count) so our company’s accident free hours numbers don’t get reset.

September

Dedo de la Mantequilla

Tuesday the 4th

Once every couple of weeks I’ll have a snack attack and head into the cafeteria to quench it. My usual extinguisher of choice is Lance’s Peanut Butter on Nekot cookies. These have two draws, 1) I like ’em and 2) they are only 50¢. Today I opted to go wild and get a candy bar of some kind. It had been awhile since I had a Butterfinger bar, so I pressed E9. I know it had been awhile because the last time I bought one it was 65 cents, today the price tag below my selection said 75¢.

The only problem with buying a Butterfinger from a vending machine is you don’t usually get to bite off pieces to eat; falling from the E Row always busts the bar up into a bunch of uneven chunks. When I got back to my desk, I opened up the wrapper and sure enough there were 3 big pieces and one small piece inside.

As I savored that crispety and crunchety candy I read the label and discovered that each English word was followed immediately by its Spanish counterpart – Bar followed by Barra on the front for example. I’ve noticed some of the larger chain stores around here have gotten into the same act, Wal-Mart, Lowes, etc. Men with a smaller Hombres underneath. Doors -> Puertas.

I don’t like it. Not for the reason you think either, I don’t like the cacophony (ruido) of it, English and Spanish. Just pick one. Hell, I don’t even care if you pick Spanish. With immersion, I’ll figure it out.

Butterfinger in Spanish is still Butterfinger.

October

Isn’t That Special?

Thursday the 11th

At work there are 4 of us in the “Car Guys” group. We each subscribe to a car magazine and then pass it around among us. Thank goodness the magazine people don’t have a RIAA like group looking out after them, we’d be in trouble.

Today the latest Motor Trend was sitting on my desk. You couldn’t see the cover because of the card stock overwrap announcing your chance to get two subscriptions for the price of one, your renewal and a gift subscription for someone, just in time for the holidays.

The tear out card has the current subscribers name already on it, it served as the mailing label, so all you have to do is fill out the blanks for your friend and send it back, just check the box marked bill me later. To the left of the address area is the text reading, “Yes, I accept! Extend my subscription for 1 year (12 issues) at the preferred subscriber rate of only $20 and enter my 1-year gift subscription to the person listed above – that’s two subscriptions for the price of one!”

Sounds great, until you realized that you can subscribe to Motor Trend for $10 a year from a bunch of places, including the Motor Trend site itself…

I wonder what their non-preferred rate is?

November

The Most Fun I’ve Had At Work In A Long Time

Tuesday the 13th

We are getting a front office update, no new cubical panels or furniture, just some new carpet, wallpaper and the trim painted a different color. They did Human Resources first and now they are continuing through the plant from right to left.

Yippee my area will be second. There really is nothing wrong with the way it looks now, sure there are a few places where the existing stuff is stained from use and there are a few holes, but we are a manufacturing facility, not a lawyer’s office. Six months from now the place will look nearly as well used as it does now.

I guess I should go pay attention to how HR looks to see what is in store for me, but it has got to be fairly blah, because I have been in there several times since their update and cannot bring to mind what it looks like.

I know no one else in the office is sure what the new wallpaper looks like! The room next door is first to get the rework, last night the contractor came in and removed the old two-tone gray wallpaper. All that was up this morning was the white liner paper covering the still older paneling. For giggles I printed out two colors of ‘wallpaper samples’ and tacked them to wall next to the door into my area. I snagged the background from the Boston Red Sox home page on MLB.com. One was the stock background, dark blue with white-ish socks and in the other I colored the socks red.

The idea came from my fellow front office FRS fan (thanks Gerry) and got the expected reaction from my MFY loving manager. The best part was the reactions from all the other people that pass that way each day. Quite a bit of them are obviously not baseball fans because hardly anyone noticed the real connection. I bet about half of them were actual arguing the merits of the all blue paper vs. the blue with red in it. Some noticed the socks in the pattern, but couldn’t figure out why they might be there.

The folks in the room that is all tore up, that the “samples” are in, were good sports about it and with as straight a face as they could muster, explained that that really is the choice of paper for the office remodel. Sometime in the afternoon one of the USC fans had made up a small sample with Gamecock logos all over it to add to the mix.

At the end of the day they must have tired of all the people asking about the redo because they published an FAQ and pinned it to the wall as well. It consisted of one question and one answer:
Q. Are y’all remodeling?
A. Yes

December

Monk Moment

Wednesday the 26th

We spent a frustrating 2 hours tonight searching several stores for a 32oz insulated water bottle with a big enough opening on top to except ice cubes. They are in every store, on numerous aisles as long as it isn’t Christmas time and Donna had the misfortune of dropping her water bottle and breaking it this morning December 27th.

To ease our suffering we dined on Carnitas at Marias. We were seated at a booth by the window with a lovely view of the laundromat next building over. As I looked through the faux wood blinds, it came to my attention that several of the slats were tilted different from the majority. Reflexively, I nudged the offending slats into line with the rest.

Adrian would have been so proud.

Best of 2006

January

Yeah, Go Baby!

Thursday the 26th

The local High School is only about a mile from my house and because ours is a nice quiet neighborhood the track team uses it as part of their training runs a couple times a week. Tonight I passed several groups of runners in both directions on my rollerblading excursion.

On the way to the Odell Weeks track for my middle mile loop, I passed from behind, a small group of guys who I smiled at as if to say, “I may be old, but I’m faster than you.” This is easy if you are on eight wheels instead of two sneakers.

On the way back from my loop I came across a group of a half dozen girls. We were traveling in opposite directions on the same side of the street, so I looked up as we approached so as to not bump into anyone. A cute brunette near the back made eye contact and shouted, “Yeah, Go Baby!” I smiled to myself and thought, I still got it, 50 years-old and the chicks still swoon.

It was then that I remembered I was wearing a blue sweatshirt with large bright yellow letters that I bought at the gift shop on Annapolis a few years ago. She was saying. “Yeah, Go NAVY!”

February

Non Conforming Material Report

Friday the 3rd

Donna and I work in a manufacturing plant and our Quality Assurance department uses what they call an NCMR to flag parts that are bad. NCMR stands for Non Conforming Material Report which is the politically correct term for crap parts. Like the parts that aren’t up to spec would have its feelings hurt if we called them scrap or something.

Today at work the Activities Committee had a bake sale to raise money for projects they do during the year (and perhaps to help defray the cost of psychiatric help for the fragile egos of non conforming parts.) Donna volunteered to bake some of her renowned chocolate chip cookies for them to sell. Last night we made around 10 dozen cookies. As always there are a few that get baked a little too long or crack and break when they are removed from the cookie sheet. Wanting to put only her best cookies on sale we took a paper plate full of the rejects to work to give away on my side of the plant.

To be cute I placed a little sign over the cookies that read:
Non Conforming Cookie Report.
Failed inspection for the following reasons:
1) Heat treated to long
2) Rough edges
3) General workmanship

Within a half an hour the cookies were all gone, but someone had placed a sign over the top of mine:
Second sample of 24 required to make final determination. Submit to Engineering Department. Day shift only.

March

It Can’t Come Soon Enough

Sunday the 26th

While I read on one end of the couch, Donna was on the other watching TV. Mostly the reruns of yesterday’s World Ice Skating Championships, but during commercials and lapses in excitement she would surf the channels. At one point she nudged me to remove my headphones. CNN was doing an interview with someone involved with a new IMAX movie called “Wired to Win: Surviving the Tour de France.” Looks interesting, but it is not playing at any IMAX theater within 600 miles of us. Sigh.

After the movie segment we hopped to the other CNN where they were into something about the increasing number of major hurricanes. Seems it might be because since the 70’s the surface temperature of the oceans has risen 1 degree Celsius. Last winter was the warmest on record. Glaciers melting! Global Warming! The reporter pinned down one scientist to say that it is because of human actions that this happening. We are ruining the very environment we need to survive.

From there she jumped to Bravo where “Real Housewives of Orange County” was on. After watching a couple of minutes of this very weird show I came to the conclusion that if this is what life is all about, causing our own extinction via global warming can’t come soon enough.

April

Buying Beer For The Neighborhood Kids

Thursday the 27th

Every morning when I get to work I fire up the PC and wander into our “cafeteria” to fill my mug full of ice and water while the computer boots up. Donna and I start work at 7:30 and the production and assembly folks start at 7:00, so the place is usually deserted.

This morning as I approached the ice machine I hear, “Psst. Bri-yan.” Over by the water fountain, just inside the door, is one of the women who work on the assembly line motioning me over. She hands me 50¢ and asks, “Can you go buy me a large cappuccino?” So I put my mug on top of the ice machine and get her a hot cappuccino out of the coffee machine. As I bring her cup, another woman shows up and asks if I could do the same for her. I say, “Sure.” So she hands me 2 quarters and I head back to the coffee machine. After they have both poured their paper cups of steaming cappuccino into their approved, covered mugs, they thank me profusely and go back out to their respective assembly lines.

I’m guessing that they are allowed into the cafeteria as far as the fountain so they can get water, but can’t go anywhere near the snack or drink machines unless it is during breaks or lunch. It felt just a little like going into the package store to buy a six-pack for some high schoolers…

May

Hope She Thinks They’re From Me

Tuesday the 9th

Sub-Titled: That’s The Last Time Donna’ll Let Me Do That Unsupervised
It’s coming up on Mother’s Day, so if you’ve got one, better start planning a gift. It is time for us to pick out some flowers or a plant to be delivered to my Mom in Connecticut. We always used to do flowers, but somewhere along the way Mom mentioned she hated to throw away the flowers after they got all ooey. She suggested we get her a plant, something that could be transplanted and enjoyed for more than a week or so.

For the last couple of years we have been buying and sending the Mother’s Day plant using the internet. Usually we do this together, because being a guy, I can’t always be relied upon to pick out the best gift. This year Donna let me try on my own, after all it is for my Mom. Not being much of a shopper when it comes to these sorts of things, I usually pick whoever has an ad running on the front page of Yahoo. This year’s lucky recipient of our business was proflowers.com. I picked out a nice large 6″ potted Ventricosa Heather plant in a decorative tin basket for $30 (+ $10 for delivery.) When I showed Donna what I had bought she was pleased. Then she asked me what I put on the card I told her, “Happy Mother’s Day, what did you think?” She then replied, “Did you put ‘Love Brian & Donna’ on it?”

Oooops.

June

Now We’re Even

Friday the 23rd

A few weeks back Donna sent me out for a small Wendy’s Frosty. They cost 99 cents and with our local 6% sales tax my total was a buck five. I went through the drive up and I didn’t have the nickel, so I gave the cashier a dollar bill and a quarter. She handed me my Frosty and then gave me my 15 cents change. By the time I realized I had been cheated out of a nickel; it wasn’t worth going back to get it.

Tonight she wanted another Frosty. Back to the drive up I go. Cost was the same as before, $1.05, so I gave the cashier a dollar and then rummaged around in the center console looking for the 5 cents. After watching me struggle for a bit, she finally said, “I’ve a got a nickel, just go ahead.”

Now we’re even.

July

Brian Buys .06 Gallons Of Gas

Saturday the 15th

We wanted to do our weekly grocery shopping late tonight to avoid the heat, so we left the house at 10PM mainly because that is when the Trading Spaces Donna was watching ended. We shop at Kroger because it is convenient and they sell gas too. Because we have a customer loyalty card I get to save an extra dime off the per gallon cost of their gas. This is usually a good deal as most times their price per gallon is a nickel or so less than the surrounding stations to begin with.

I dropped Donna in front of the store, so she could start shopping while I went and filled up the tank. When I got around the side of the store where the gas is it looked kind of dark. The overhead lights of the gas station were off, but the pump lights were on bright, so I went over. As I pulled in there was an attendant in the booth, so I stopped and opened the gas cap. I scanned my loyalty card and then inserted my debit card. When it told me to lift the nozzle and select a grade, I did just that. I started pumping and it was coming out really slow and then stopped at 17 cents. Hmmm. maybe they are out of premium. I walked over to the window and asked the attendant if they were out of gas or something, when she told me they were closed and that must have been all that was left in the hose.

I went back to the pump replaced the nozzle and closed my gas cap. The little LCD window on the pump asked if I wanted a receipt and I replied yes, to which it told me to see the cashier. Back to the window I go. The attendant said that she couldn’t get me a receipt because she had already closed the register. Sigh.

August

My World Is Empty Without You Babe

Wednesday the 23rd

I had been sharing my cubicle/workspace with college kid/summer help, Adam, since May, but he is gone now and the silence has been deafening. Now it is echoing.

A few days before Adam left ASCO’s employ, the Department Manager and the IT guy showed up and asked, “Your last day
is Friday the 11th, right?” Adam assumed that they were coming to say nice working with you, you’ve been a big help, come back next time, etc. His bubble was popped when the IT guy said, “That PC should work.” The manager said, “I’ll get Maintenance to move the desk on Saturday.”

Seems the new departmental Industrial Engineer was starting on Monday and they needed some stuff so the new guy wouldn’t come in to an empty cubicle. Turns out the new IE doesn’t start until this Monday, so the PC got moved last Friday and Maintenance didn’t come to get the desk until today. For good measure those guys also grabbed the side table and the trash can. They left behind only a chair and lots of dust.

September

The Lost Weekend

Friday the 8th

Starring Brian Bogardus as Don Birnam and introducing Donna Bogardus as Helen St. James.

We went to the video store this evening and spent $25 renting all 7 DVDs of the TV show LOST. Twice.

The first time we went into the store and found the TV section where they had the Lost discs all lined up. I grabbed the first three thinking that would be enough to keep us busy for a while. Donna said, “No get all of them.” Checked out all seven and came home. Donna took a quick nap and about 5:30 we thought we would start our marathon. Each disc has 4 episodes and each episode lasts about 42 minutes, so we figured we would watch one disc tonight leaving 3 for Saturday and 3 for Sunday. When I opened up the case for disc one, I realized it was a Season One disc. WTF? All of them were Season One…

We didn’t pay attention in the store, we just figured that the second season’s stuff would right up front because it just came out on Tuesday. Nope. Donna called the store up and asked if they had Season Two in stock. They did. She asked them to put the whole set aside for and we would be in later to get them.

As we were checking out we asked for the “Stupid Renters Discount” and explained what we had done. The manager was there and had the clerk call up our account. She could see we had picked out 7 DVDs just two hours before and took pity on us. She did a swap thing and we didn’t have to pay for them the second time. Nice.

October

Mother Would Be So Proud

Wednesday the18th

Daily, I am emailed a PowerPoint presentation with a chart on it that shows how as a plant we are doing towards our goal of shipping out product. Weekly, I get another PowerPoint presentation with 3 lines on it, manufacturing, assembly and total, tracking our service levels (on time delivery.) The reason I get these presentations is not because I need to be keeping abreast of this sort of stuff, but in my capacity as the Arts & Crafts Engineer at ASCO.

I print these charts out on in full technicolor on an 18 x 24 piece of paper and post them outside the cafeteria. These are placed there in the hopes that my fellow associates will be inspired to work harder towards our common goals, but mostly they are ignored by the troops as they file in and out during breaks and lunch.

For the first year or so I sprayed some artists adhesive to the backs of the charts and stuck them to a larger piece of cardboard supported by an easel. About six months ago management decide that the cardboard thing just wasn’t professional enough, so they commissioned a very nice set of wooden frames. The frames even have a, hinged at the top, second frame with a piece of Plexiglas in the middle to protect the charts from outside damage and keep them looking nice. These were hung on the same wall that the easel used to sit in front of with the tops of the frames about 6″ off the ground. Inside the frames I have some miracle of modern science mounting system, it is made of a sort of rubbery sheet that has the same low tack long lasting stickum that is on post-it notes.

My daily routine is to print out my chart and go out to the frame and lift the hinged cover and prop it open on top of my head while I peel the old chart off the sticky mount and carefully smooth out the new chart while balancing the lid up with my head. Because I do this usually at mid morning break for a lot of people, I get some weird looks and comments from folks on their way to the cafeteria for break. Every chance I get I tell them that my mother would be so proud because she was always saying to me, “I wish you would use your head for something besides a hat rack.”

November

The Democratic Process

Monday the 6th

Tomorrow is Election Day and while I just love the bumper sticker, “I don’t vote, it just encourages them” I usually do just the opposite, I vote to encourage them. In my own little protest against mainstream politicians, I typically vote for the Libertarian, the Green Party guy or some other third party candidates.

This election my voting will be guided by another bumper sticker I saw just the other day, “It’s broke, so let’s fix it. Vote Democratic.”

I mean what have I been thinking all these years, voting that way. The Democratic Party is the way to go, always was, I mean they don’t call voting “The Republican Process” do they?

December

Getting the Carpet to Match the Drapes

Tuesday the 19th

For those of you who are not regular readers, Donna and I get our haircut every 4 weeks from a friend, Sheri, who owns her own salon. Today was haircut day an on our way out tonight of the shop I spotted something on display that made me do a double take.

Remember in the movie M*A*S*H where everyone gathers around the woman’s shower tent and they are taking bets as to whether or not Major Hot Lips O’Houlihan is a natural blonde? Let’s just say that with modern technology she would have no worries about the truth now.

Introducing Betty Beauty – The first safe color specially formulated for the hair down there. Colors naturally, covers gray, and enhances to match your glorious locks above. Whether you’re blonde (be a true blonde now!), radiant auburn, brunette, or black, our easy-to-use, no-drip formula gives you the perfect finishing touch. From now on, when you highlight or color your hair, don’t forget your betty color for the hair down there.

Or as Sheri said, “Now you can get the carpet to match the drapes.”

Best of 2005

January

Hot For Teacher

Friday the 7th

Due to yesterday’s train derailment and toxic chlorine gas spill, today was a day off for the Aiken County school kids because several local schools are now housing the displaced folks of Graniteville. But it was a teacher work-day, where the teachers reported to school to do, uh, work. On teacher workdays they get a lot longer lunch break so they can leave the school grounds and dine in local restaurants. I found this out when Donna and I walked into our favorite Friday afternoon off lunch place and it was packed. Several clues tipped us off that all these extra people were teachers, but what amazed me most was that a lot of these young women were very attractive, especially in their jeans and t-shirts. Funny, I don’t remember my elementary school teachers as being this hot. They were all old ladies.

Then logic took hold and I realized that when I was in elementary school my teachers were at least 20 years older than me, which would make them right about as old as these “girls.”

February

Every Husband’s Dream

Sunday the 13th

On the eve of Valentine’s Day I received every husband’s dream, wife sanctioned internet porn searching. Donna is a big fan of Trading Spaces and she heard/read somewhere that the hostess of the show, Paige Davis, was canned from the show for the discovery of a Paris Hilton style sex tape that was somewhere on the net. She asked me to try and find it. I answered promptly, “Yes ma’am, I’ll look in every filthy corner of the net for you.”

It didn’t take long to find out that the tape was not really of her. Or maybe it was the greatest cover up ever perpetrated, it was denied it was her, just someone who looks and sounds a lot like her. The tape may (or may not) be real, but apparently racy pictures of Paige at a gay male charity function are not – Paige Davis Gone Wild!

I may have not found anything tonight, but if she ever comes in and I’m looking at internet porn, I can just say I was looking for that Paige Davis tape.

March

Always Hoped That I’d Be An Apostle

Sunday the 27th

Knew that I would make it if I tried.
Then when we retire, we can write the Gospels,
So they’ll still talk about us when we’ve died.

Yesterday evening Donna wanted a nap, so I queued up the DVD of Jesus Christ Superstar and kept the sound down low. I really like this movie. I’m not sure if it just that I’m a child of the early 70’s and that is the style of music of my youth or is it because I saw a Broadway production of the play on a high school field trip and had great time in NYC, in spite of being left behind. Or maybe it is because we get the whole Jesus fable neatly wrapped up in an hour and 45 minutes.

Today on TCM I stumbled on the last 40 minutes of King of Kings and stayed. It was pretty fun to compare this 1961 “serious” take to the more irreverent JCSS telling of the same story.

April

Might As Well Just Say “I’m A Loser”

Thursday the 7th

They say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, so the folks over at Girls Gone Wild HQ must be pretty happy. I stumbled onto an infomercial for a GGW knock-off this morning called Wild Party Girls. Instead of $9.95 for a video, really usually 2 because they throw in a “free” one, these guys are giving you two DVDs for Free!* (*$5.95 shipping and handling)

Not only are the DVDs free, but they are going to toss in a free hat. It is one of those foam trucker hats that have become, for some inexplicable reason, fashionable again. The hat is bright red with a white front panel. On that white front panel, in matching bright red lettering, are the words “Wild Party Girls.”

It might as well just say “I’m A Loser” on it. This thing screams, “Hey look at me, I’m a schlub! My idea of excitement is to watch girls expose their breasts.” The only purchasers of these things that can’t be considered perverts are the people who aren’t supposed to buy them in the first place, boys 17 and under.

Does the buyer of these types of videos think that if he wears that hat around, nubile young women will just lift their shirts and flash him, hoping to get a starring role in the next series of DVDs?

May

Office Supply Milestone

Thursday the 5th

At 7:38AM this morning I used the last staple from the box I was given when I started working here 505,267,200 seconds ago. To put it in easier to understand terms, I started working at ASCO Aiken on May 1st 1989, which was 5,848 days ago. Each box of staples has 5,000 staples, so I have used approximately .85 staples per day during my tenure here.

I know I don’t use too many staples in my job, but that isn’t much at all. I haven’t worked every single day straight through since then, so let’s do some, as my math idol Jethro would say, cipherin’. Assuming a 5 day work week, we can get much closer to a proper work day number by multiplying by 5 and then dividing by 7. This gives us 4177 or 1.20 SPD (staples per day). What about holidays? Good point, we get 9 paid days off here in Aiken, 9 times 16, so subtract 144 days from the total, giving me a 1.24 SPD ranking. How about sick time? I bet I miss on average 3 days a year for colds or flu or doctor things. Then there was the 2 week recovery from knee surgery in 2000. 3 time 16 plus 10, lets take another 58 days off. Best guess is I have used an average 1.26 SPD in my working here. I am so proud.

June

So If You Get Hurt And Miss Work, It Won’t Hurt To Miss Work

Wednesday the 29th

Our friend’s 11-year old son plays on a traveling baseball team. No, not like Bingo Long & 20 other guys in an old bus barnstorming the southeast, but more like 20 Chrysler minivans with rear seat entertainment centers filled with siblings who go from town to town all over the state every other weekend playing more teams just like themselves in tournaments. The teams have to pay to enter the tournaments and there are uniforms to buy and umpires to bribe and all manner of other expenses that are borne by the parents. To help offset these costs, they do what all kids are taught in school to do from an early age, they sell stuff.

The team’s current scheme promotion is selling raffle tickets to win a bat that has been signed by Yogi Berra. When we had a visit from them this evening to ask if we would like to take some chances, I asked, “Yogi Berra, isn’t that the guy from those Aflac commercials?”

Jared, just gave me as world-weary a look as an eleven year old could, like he had heard that a million times before and it wasn’t that funny the first time either, and nodded his head to say just fill out the back of the ticket fool.

July

All I Want For Christmas Is…

Friday the 29th

…is a subscription to People Magazine. Caught a blurb about this while channel surfing the other day and in this morning’s paper there was a small article about it too. Brittany Murphy will be the new Jordache jeans girl. It was said and written with almost breathless excitement, so I know that Brittney Murphy is a famous person, I just don’t know what she is famous for. Singer? Actress? Reality TV Show Star?

I feel so left out.

August

Temporary Exile

Wednesday the 3rd

The Miata is our daily driver, which is both a blessing and a curse. The really good part is that a fun car makes the most mundane drive enjoyable, even the one to work. The curse part occurs after spending the weekend, like we did this last one, driving the windy, twisty roads in the mountains, because when you return home it makes those mundane drives mundane again.

When driving in the mountains you spend a lot of time in 2nd and 3rd gear, winding the engine out close to the redline as the g-forces through you from side to side in the car. As you turn the wheel, the engine is singing and the car goes right where it is aimed. Occasionally you approach the limits of adhesion and the tires start to complain, but then you ease off the wheel and give it bit more gas and you swoop through the curve. Barely time to enjoy your accomplishment when you see which way the road bends next and set up for it.

Then you are home. Shifting gears returns to a more sedate 4,000 RPM level. All the curves are 90 degree bends on city streets taken at 20 MPH so as to not land in the back seat of the minivan in front of you. Sigh. I have said it before (I could have sworn I’ve said it here, but a search turns up nothing) this must be how women feel after giving birth, a sort of post partum depression.

I saw a commercial the other day on TV for Celebrity Cruise Lines. This older couple return from their cruise and all they can do is remember their “celebrity” treatment. “My butler knew just how I took my tea,” he says. “I had fresh cut flowers every day,” says she. My favorite part is the man is obviously back in his office and is trying to open some vertical blinds that aren’t acting right, “I like to think of this as a temporary exile,” he moans. That is what it is like for me to come back from a weekend driving in the mountains…

September

1 + 1 = 0

Wednesday the 21st

We recently had a city council election here in Aiken where there were 4 people running for the two open At-Large spots. It was really a Republican primary, but seeing as there were no Democrats interested in the offices, it turned out to be the actual election and every registered voter was eligible to vote. The hot button issue in the election was the unchecked growth in the city, particularly the south side.

As it shook out, the four candidates became aligned into two groups of two, one pair for limiting the growth somewhat and one pair for encouraging all the growth possible. As usual, quite a few front yards sprouted campaign signs and every lawn that had signs, had them in pairs representing one group or the other.

Usually when a candidate wins an election, the people who had signs up for the winner leave their signs up proudly. It could be to let us know how smart they are for backing a winner or it could be just rubbing the losing supporter’s noses in it. Heck, there are still a few Bush-Chenney bumper stickers on local cars…

How it happened I’ll never know, especially if the sign groupings were actually representative of the voting intent, but in the election, one candidate from each group won a seat. Within a couple of days after the election, 99.99% of the campaign signs were gone. I guess no one felt like admitting they were a half assed political prognosticator.

October

Question For English Majors

Sunday the 2nd

Is irony used correctly in the following sentence?

During a Cleveland Indian at bat in the fifth inning, with a fan pounding rhythmically on an Indian type drum in the outfield supporting an offensive rally, was the public address system operator being ironic by playing a recording of the bugle call Charge at the same time?

November

Shades of Milli Vanilli

Saturday the 12th

Due to circumstances beyond my control I attended the Aiken Kidney Benefit production of Oliver tonight. Cockney accent, nearly incomprehensible. Southern accent, sometimes difficult to understand. Residents of Aiken, South Carolina playing Londoners, unintelligible.

I can only hope there was a good reason for it, Fagin was lip-syncing his songs. At intermission I told Donna that I thought he was doing just that, but I wasn’t positive. In the second act Fagin has several solo numbers and it was confirmed in Ashlee Simpson-like fashion when the actor stumbled on a couple of words and the song never skipped a beat…

December

Lake City, Where?

Thursday the 22nd

When Donna and I planned this little Holiday trip we decide to take two days down and one back up. To pick a place to stay that was about half way I used the scientific method of stretching my finger from Point Aiken to Point Stuart and looked at a spot about half-way for the overnight stay, unfortunately that point was in the middle of the Okefenokee Swamp. Went a little past half, to make the second day’s driving easier, and settled on Lake City, FL. Made a reservation at the Holiday Inn Express there and started counting down the days until I would get a cinnamon bun for breakfast.

After we had eaten lunch and gone for a hike in the Little Ocmulgee State Park, Donna took out the reservation sheet for the Holiday Inn Express and went to check the directions to get there. For the life of her, no matter how hard she looked, she couldn’t find US52 nor US378 anywhere near Lake City, FL. It was then that she noticed the address on the reservation confirmation I had printed out, Lake City, SC. At first I thought it had to be a misprint, but then I noticed the hotel’s phone number and sure enough I recognized it as a SC area code. DOH!

Got on the cell phone and called Lake City, SC and canceled my reservation. Asked the clerk there to give me the phone number of the Holiday Inn Express in Lake City, FL. There was not an Express, but there was a plain ol’ Holiday Inn, with a vacancy, so we reserved a night there. I wasn’t going to get my cinnamon bun, but at least we would be staying in a room on the way to Stuart, FL not 300 miles away in the wrong direction.

Best of 2004

January

Dueling Car Washes

Monday the 19th

On the way home from grocery shopping yesterday afternoon I decided it was time to wash the car. We had just driven home from Hilton Head in the rain that morning and the car looked ugly.

Just a couple of days before I bought the new Miata, our neighbors got themselves a new “car” too (the word car is in quotes because they bought a Dodge Durango.) When we pulled into our driveway, Omar was in his, washing the Durango. He had his bucket and sprayer and was going to town.

I parked the car in the driveway and we unloaded the trunk of groceries. I came in and swapped a load of clothes (taking one out of the dryer, putting the one from the washer into the dryer and reloading the washer.) I then went back outside with my bucket and sponges to wash our car. By now Omar has been at it at least 15 minutes and I didn’t know how far along he was, but as I filled the bucket with water I hollered over saying, “I bet I’m finished before you are.”

I washed the Miata from top to bottom, stem to stern. I rinsed it off a second time with a low pressure stream to aid in sheeting the water. I dried the car. I shook out the mats. I wiped off the interior dust with a damp towel. I washed the windows inside and out with Windex. Finished, I pulled the car into the garage. When I walked back out to get the bucket and reel up the hose, Omar was just finishing up washing the back of the vehicle, all he could do was shake his head and smile.

February

Is That A Snack? Gonna Share?

Thursday the 12th

Every morning for nearly all our married life, my wife packs up my lunch for me. It usually consists of a fresh made sandwich, a soda, some cookies in a plastic sandwich bag, a few ounces of carrots in a sandwich bag, half an apple cut up in slices in a sandwich bag, some raisins or maybe grapes in a plastic sandwich bag and a snack pudding. I kind of graze all day, grabbing a plastic sandwich bag of something every couple of hours. I’m a lucky guy.

Donna recently changed purses, replacing an old one with something a little smaller. She used to keep all her make-up stuff in a see-thru case on one side of the old purse for easy access. Donna would take it out and “fix her face” as I drove us to work each day. The see-thru thing was a little too big for the new purse and not wanting to lose the ability to see what she had; Donna put the make-up stuff in a plastic sandwich bag. Now, each morning on the commute when she pulls out that sandwich bag, I, having been conditioned like Pavlov’s dog from years of snacking from those same types of bags, don’t think lipstick, but cookies, etc. I don’t have to see it, just hearing that faint rustling sound and I wonder if she will share some of that food with me.

March

Painting The Town Garnet Red

Monday the 29th

I bought a new car in November. They sent me a survey to fill out rating my experience with the purchase. I thought about throwing it out, I now swear that thought is true, but Mazda thinks I filled it out. As a way of thanking me they sent me a bottle of touch-up paint. That was the end of January. About a week later I got a second bottle, it was packaged differently and included a couple of other items, but the main content was a bottle of touch-up paint. This last Saturday, a familiar envelope arrived in the mail, that’s right, another bottle of touch-up paint. So Sunday I emailed them:

From: “Brian Bogardus”
To:
Sent: Sunday, March 28, 2004 10:35 AM
Subject: Stop it. You are creeping me out.

Dear Mr. Customer Assistance,

November 24, 2003 – Purchase a new 2003 Garnet Red Miata

January 28, 2004 – Receive bottle touch-up paint as a thank you for filling out a survey I swear I threw in the trash, but must have completed.

February 7, 2004 – Receive a second bottle of touch-up paint inside a miniature steering wheel replica along with some other things, including a letter that welcomes me to the “Emotion of Motion.”

March 27, 2004 – Receive a third bottle of touch-up paint with what looks like the exact same letter as accompanied the first bottle.

Thanks for the first bottle as I already have had a use for it, but stop already, one more bottle and I’ll be able to paint my wife’s Civic Garnet Red to match the Miata. If you feel a further need to thank me for buying your product a $10 gas card or similar would be nice to offset the cost of the required premium fuel.

Sincerely,
Brian Bogardus

Today I got a reply:

From: “CustomerAssistance”
To: “Brian Bogardus”
Sent: Monday, March 29, 2004 04:33 PM
Subject: Re: Stop it. You are creeping me out. (KMM203077V95587L0KM)

Dear Brian,

Thank you for contacting Mazda North American Operations. I appreciate the opportunity to respond to you.

Thanks for alerting us to the additional, unintentional mailings that you received. I have forwarded your comments to our Marketing contacts to ensure that no further welcome packages are sent.

Again, thank you for contacting Mazda. It has been my pleasure to assist you. Please feel free to reply to this message with any further questions or comments.

Please take a moment to give us your opinion about our e-mail service. Click the link below to complete a brief, online survey.

http://www.zoomerang.com/survey.zgi?T8SY3YKAT109GH3CPK39V6

Regards,

William Zdan
Specialist, Customer Assistance E-Business

Oh no you don’t, filling out a survey is what got me into this mess to begin with…

April

Lemonade

Wednesday the 7th

On the way home this afternoon when we got to the exit of the parking lot at work, Donna said, “Go left.” As we normally go right, that phrase meant, let’s take the long way home. This is a great stress reliever for both of us, I like the drive and Donna likes the ride.

I proceeded to wind my way home via some of our usual back roads. It was a warm afternoon, but it felt good to be out driving around. The dogwoods are blooming along with the azaleas and everything that is not flowering is turning green. Even though there were a few more cars on our route than usual they didn’t diminish our enjoyment. About 3 miles from home on a relatively lightly trafficked road we passed a little girl selling lemonade along the side of the road. We looked at her as she looked at us as we went by.

It is spring break for the local schools this week and both Donna and I envisioned this little girl telling her mom she was bored and her mom saying, “Why don’t you go sell lemonade out in front of the house,” in an effort to keep her entertained and get her out of mom’s hair.

We got about 200 yards down the road and Donna said, “Do you have anything smaller than that ten?” I pulled out my wallet and sure enough there was a single in there too. We turned around in a driveway a little further along and headed back. The lemonade was 50 cents a glass, so we bought two. We drank it right there at the side of the road and chatted with her a bit. It was from a mix and not too cold, but it did hit spot. When finished we turned around in her driveway and drove off with a wave and toot of the horn.

I think we kind of made her day, I know she made ours.

May

3 Laws of Humanity

Wednesday the 26th

I’ve always been a lover of sci-fi. Growing up I had a few favorite authors and one of them was Isaac Asimov. I was eagerly awaiting this summer’s release of a movie based on his robot stories, I Robot. After seeing the first trailer with it’s The Who soundtrack and it’s Apple-likeness (I wonder how much they had to pay Steve Jobs for that?) I was stoked. But the newer ones aimed at drawing in the action crowd seem so against type from my memories of Asimov’s books/stories that maybe I won’t enjoy the flick at all. That may just be me though, as from all the trailers the movie looks awesome.

All this got me thinking about those 3 Laws of Robotics the Asimov wrote way back when. Maybe, just maybe, this world would be a lot better place if we just changed the word robot in them to human being:
1) A human being may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2) A human being must obey orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3) A human being must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

June

Exciting Day At Work Today

Monday the 21st

I got my new electric pencil sharpener. This puppy’s got a cord, no more wimpy, battery operated, hold it just so, slow poke. This thing will make dust of a full size pencil in just under 2 minutes. I know, I timed it.

July

Of All The Gin Joints…

Saturday the 3rd

…in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine.

The Master’s Miata Club was “hosting” a cruise in at the Sno Cap Drive-In in North Augusta tonight. We had about 8 of our cars and a smattering of other cars in attendance. About halfway through the evening, in pulled a blue Miata that wasn’t a club member. Hey, wait a minute, that car looks familiar. Sure enough, it was our old car. I went over and said hello to the new owner Shannon Vick and her son. She and he were in North Augusta and he suggested going to the Sno Cap for something to eat. They had no clue that we would be there. Boy that sure is a pretty car.

You must remember this;
A car is still a car,
A sigh is just a sigh ?
The fundamental things apply
As time goes by

August

You People Are Pathetic

Sunday the 29th

While watching Fox News this morning I could see some people on the sidewalk out the window behind the anchors. The usual suspects were there, including a couple of folks that deserved to be culled from the gene pool.

Person #1 is holding up a piece of cardboard of about 12″ x 24″ and he is holding it up so his message will be broadcast all over America and possibly the world. Only trouble is that he probably wrote the message in 1″ high letters with a ball-point pen. You couldn’t tell if there was anything on the cardboard all. I didn’t get your message dummy and no one else did either.

Person #2 has a cell phone in her one hand and is waving madly with the other. She has obviously called someone she knows, to tell them she is on TV, because when the camera moves or zooms the person on the other end directs her which way to move so she can still be seen waving madly. It takes them a couple of times to get it right, because when she should move to the left, she goes right first. They finally get very adept at this so she can be seen waving madly constantly in the background whenever the one anchor is talking. She even manages to duck appropriately to get underneath the LIVE banner that appears periodically in the upper right hand corner of the screen. I hope she was on her way to a Cuddle Party because she needs some attention.

September

How Cheap Can You Be?

Wednesday the 8th

As a favor for a friend I sell his Brake Lite Blinker to out of the country buyers. He doesn’t want to make a trip to the Post Office and fill out the customs forms, etc.

Tonight he forwarded me a request from someone in Canada. He had a few questions about size and power, etc. His last question was would I list the value of the item as $10 so he wouldn’t have to pay as much customs duty on them. Come on, the things are $15 to begin with. How much can he be saving on duty? I wrote him back:

I’m sure there is a very miniscule chance of anything bad happening to me if I did that, but for all I know you actually work for the U.S. Customs and are trolling the internet looking for violators of federal law, so, no I won’t do that. They are valued at $15 US each. Sorry.

We’ll see if he still wants them after that…

October

Didn’t You Check That?

Friday the 1st

The Emperor is in the shop for a Technical Service Bulletin relating to the clutch, so I was given a Mazda Tribute as a loaner the other day. When I was driving with it back to my house, about 5 miles from home the low fuel light came on. The light was on, but it still read about a 1/8 of a tank. Not knowing which one of these indicators was more correct, I decided to put $5 worth of gas in it. The 3 gallons approximate, sent the needle to just below a 1/4 tank and ought to be enough to get to work and then to Rader the next day. Not only is this Cute Ute low on gas, but it is filthy too, I think the last person to borrow it was testing it’s off road capabilities. Not only do they not check to see if there is gas in it, they don’t even take enough pride to wash it off or vacuum it out before they loan it out to someone else.

About 8:15 AM this morning Kelly, my service “advisor”, called to say the Miata was ready. Seems as if the technician finished up just before going home yesterday. I told her I’d be over as soon as I got off work and mentioned she should get five bucks from petty cash to reimburse me for the petrol. I made it over to Rader a little after 5 to get my car. Kelly went off to get someone to bring it around. While we waited I popped upstairs to run the Master’s Miata Club newsletters through the postage meter. When I came back down the car was there, but she didn’t have neither the $5 nor the paperwork. She couldn’t find the paperwork because the tech who did my work was not in today (no wonder he finished up yesterday, he knew he wasn’t coming in.) She also said she would have to talk to the service manager on Monday about getting the money to me. We ran through this routine when I wanted to get reimbursed for the tow charges on the 95 when the timing belt broke. I wonder if it will take nearly two weeks again?

When it was time to go, I got in the Miata, dropped the top and crept out of the dealership lot, the clutch felt real smooth. Hung a right onto busy Washington Road and sped off the 1/2 mile before turning off. A short stretch and then right on Riverwatch Parkway to head home. As I got up to speed and shifted into 5th I looked down to check my speed and discovered I was going ZERO MPH! The speedometer cable is hooked to the transmission, I bet my just finishing up in time to go home technician had forgotten to hook up the cable correctly (or not at all.) Hang a right and then another and pull back into the service area. It is 5:35, they go home at 6, so I figure we can get this done and I’ll be on my way. Wrong. The advisors stay until 6, the techs go home at 5:30, so there is no one there to fix my speedometer. Luckily, they work on Saturday morning, so it should be solved tomorrow. I put the top back up on the Miata and Kelly gives me the keys to the Dark Teal Metallic Tribute, again.

I get 5 miles from home and the low fuel light comes on, again…

November

Apologies

Tuesday the 2nd

I feel that I have to post something here tonight besides the joke from earlier. Although I found it extremely funny when I got it via email this morning, I don’t want all 4 of my readers to think that I didn’t take today’s election seriously. In yesterday’s post I recommended you vote an obscure 3rd party candidate, well that was sort of tongue-in-cheek and advice I didn’t follow. Although, I did vote for the candidate that every poll in the country is calling an obscure 2nd party candidate in South Carolina.

I just couldn’t endorse a man who got us into this Iraqi mess just because the whole Middle East war thing worked so well for dad. Instead I picked a guy who supposedly roots for my favorite baseball team, but can’t name anyone on it (and when he tried he combined the first name and last name of two players) and when he threw out a ceremonial first pitch at a Yankee Red Sox game last July, used the pitching motion of a little girl and couldn’t even make it to the plate without bouncing it while throwing from in *front* of the mound.

I leave you with a quote George Will used to lead off his column in this week’s edition of Newsweek:

PRESIDENT, n. The leading figure in a small group of men of whom, and of whom only, it is positively known that immense numbers of their countrymen did not want any of them for President. – Ambrose Bierce, “The Devil’s Dictionary” (1911

December

Dream On

Wednesday the 1st

Just saw a commercial for the new Buick LaCrosse with the background song of Aerosmith’s “Dream On.” Good song, IMHO much better than their more current work, I can only hope that the same is true for Buick. Somehow though I can’t imagine that that car will be the car of anyone’s dream.

This is not the first time Buick’s advertising has dipped into the classic rock bag of tricks to try and sell cars. I don’t know how many more Rendezvous they sold because of the pairing of that SUV with Edgar Winter’s “Frankenstein”, but I thought the song was dead (no pun intended) on right for the vehicle. It looked like it was made various parts of other cars and pieced together to form a whole vehicle, but it wasn’t cohesive.

Best of 2003

January

Naught Plus Naught Equals Double Naught

Wednesday the 1st

Bonus rant today. Just as I was finishing up my last post, my wife told me we had to go to the store, seems we were plum out of plastic sandwich bags. As we were checking out, our cashier was so busy flirting with the bag boy that she didn’t notice my wife had written the check over so we would have a bit of cash. When Donna said I wrote it for $20, the cashier re-opened the draw and took out a 20. Nope, she corrected, the total check was for 20, so I should get the change. Our cashier tries to use the cash register to figure out how much change we should get back, but it would do that because the order was closed.

Now perplexed, our cashier calls for back-up. The new girl shows up and realizes what needs to be done, she gets her pen out and writes 20.00 on the top of the receipt and then puts 14.30 under it and proceeds to subtract – her answer 6.30!?! At this point I say we should get 5.70. Our original cashier says, “Really?” Yes, really. At this point the bag boy pipes in with, “Yeah, 30 plus 70 equals a dollar.” Thanks Einstein. These folks must have studied under the eminent mathematician, Jethro Bodine of Beverly Hills, CA.

February

Holiday Inn III

Friday the 7th

When we check in, the clerk gives us room 231 and some vague directions on how to get there. Off we drove to the back of the complex, noticing that the place is nearly empty. When we get to our room it is right at the top of the stairs. If you walk straight ahead after the last stringer you would bump right into the door of the room. There are 2 room locations in a motel you should never stay in; 1) next to or across from an ice machine and B) at the top or bottom of the stairs. Both spots are notoriously noisy because of the people traffic (they wouldn’t be so bad if people were still considerate of others, but that is a whole ‘nother blog post.) We headed back to the front desk and ask for a room 2 or 3 doors away from this one. The clerk, after making a big show of checking for empty rooms, gives us a key to room 233. When we get back to our new room it is not 2 doors away, but merely one. Not only is it not far from 231, it is an adjoining room! The doors are literally 6″ apart. Seeing as the place was empty we decided not to try for room #3, knowing that if we did he would put us next to the weight room or guest laundry next…

March

If I Only Had A Brain

Friday the 14th

At work they have this bulletin board where they post all kinds of things for public consumption, a list of Activities Committee events, birthdays that month, etc. On the list of heath related items for March are several things, including that this is National Brain Awareness Week (10th – 16th.) Huh? We need to be reminded of that. Well, now that I think of it, I know quite a few people that need constant reminders to use their head for something besides a hat rack.

April

Undetermined Fibers

Sunday the 13th

On a whim we decided to replace the area rug in the dining room. Off we went to our favorite rug store, Lowes. We have hard wood floors and they really need refinishing, but we just cover them up with cheap $100 8 x 10 rugs. All the others are just plain tan/beige things, but this time we went with a pattern that has most of all the colors in the wallpaper and curtains. Fortunately today was sunny so we could get this rolled up rug home in the family pick-up truck, the Miata. On the way home we had to stop in a mini-mart for a quick item. Donna ran in and left me in the car guarding the rug (like anyone would steal a 9\\\’ long, 12? diameter roll.) While lolling around waiting I noticed the tag on the rug, underneath the plastic wrapper, it said, “Contents: 100% undetermined fibers.” Soda bottles? Tires? Mattress stuffing? Barbershop floor clippings? I think I’ll keep my socks on.

May

Every Man Has His Price

Tuesday the 6th

Rainy day. Tonight after work was a busy one, first it is our every 4 week haircut appointment and then we had just time enough to get a bite to eat before going to 2 hour class on the basics of understanding stocks. It was put on by a local Edward Jones Investment Advisor and was intended as an intermediate course in evaluating stocks. I wasn’t interested in going, but Donna said she’d pay me $25 to go with her, so I did. Every man has his price and fortunately for her, mine is really low.

June

Now That’s Italian

Friday the 27th

On our way up north to meet sis and hubby in North Carolina. The most interesting thing of the whole drive occurred just outside of downtown Aiken on Laurens Street. Just as we were passing the post office a small gray object fell rapidly from the sky above us and hit the road a few inches in front of the nose of the car with a splat. As I looked in the rearview mirror I could see the squirrel dash towards the side of the road. I guess he missed a branch. Just imagine if I was 2 secs earlier leaving home or a light changed on a different schedule or the squirrel paused a beat longer thinking about the gap between those branches? I wonder what kind of havoc a squirrel landing in the cockpit of a moving convertible might cause? Would not be pretty!

In our increasingly harder to accomplish task of finding a different way north we crossed into Georgia for a bit of our trip. As luck would have it we were in the small burg of Clarksville, GA around lunchtime. We stopped in the center square and walked around looking for like candidates for a nice meal. We ended up going into the Zanzo Side Door Deli. It was on one side of a building and the regular Italian restaurant was on the other. Donna had a chicken salad plate on some greens with fruit on the side and I opted for the lunch portion of baked ziti. Man it was good. Almost worth the 100 mile drive it would take just to go back. This food was so Italian good and we were so in the middle of nowhere, backwoods Georgia that the folks running the place had to be witness protection relocatees.

July

James Brown Announces Breakup Of Marriage

Thursday the 24th

You may have not noticed this unless you live in LA (Los Angeles) or LA (Lower Augusta) but in today’s newspaper there appeared this blurb in the people in the news section of page 2:

The “Godfather of Soul,” James Brown, has announced his breakup from his wife, Tomi Rea Brown, with a full-page ad in the show-business trade newspaper Variety.

In the July 21-27 weekly edition of the paper, the ad features a photo of the couple and their 2 year-old son, James Joseph Brown II, smiling at Walt Disney World while posing with the costumed character Goofy.

Above the photo, a statement said that because of their “heavy, demanding tour schedule, they have decided to go their separate ways. There are no hard feelings, just a mutual show business decision made by both parties.”
Mrs. Brown is one of Mr. Brown’s background singers.

The pair is touring together in Europe, the newspaper added, and may continue working together despite the breakup.

They are splitting up because of the heavy touring schedule? They’re together! I could understand it is she was home while James toured the world.

They are going their separate ways? Yet she is one of his backup singers and may continue to work together!

I glad to see I wasn’t the only one to find humor in this announcement, why else would have the copy person who culled this from the Variety ad have made room for the part about the whole family posing with Goofy.

August

Praise The Lord, But Get The Hell Out Of My Way

Monday the 11th

For the last couple of months my wife and I have been meeting a few of our fellow Aiken Bicycle Club members for an early morning ride on Sundays. We have been riding more or less 25 miles by picking a loop from the Club’s inventory of past and present Spring Century rides. It is a small group of 4 to 6 riders of around the same abilities and inclinations so no one is dropped and forgotten about, nor is anyone riding at half speed so as not to get too far ahead. The ride is always fun and a nice work out, plus we are home early enough, around 9:30, so as to still have the whole day left for other things.

Start time is at 7:30 for a couple of reasons. One, it is summer in South Carolina and the heat and humidity make later in the day rides unpleasant at best. And two, traffic is very light at the time of day on weekends. The routes take us on a variety of roads in the lighter populated areas of the county, but in the last 1/2 hour of the ride no matter where we are, car traffic picks up. And these are usually the most rude and impatient drivers. They pass us on two lane roads when there is oncoming traffic and/or as close as possible to us.

The strange thing about these folks is they are all dressed very nicely, obviously on their way to church. I’m a non-attendee of church, so I don’t know why they would endanger our lives, their lives and those of the poor unsuspecting occupants in the other car just to ensure they get a good pew. My recollection of Christian beliefs is not so hazy that I wouldn’t have remembered that being late for church was a sin.

September

Dysfunctional Parking Is To The Left

Friday the 26th

While enjoying our ice cream at Brusters this evening we amused ourselves by making fun
of the people already there and the new ones as they pulled up. All in good fun really.

The most fun is watching folks pull in and park, scary. A full size Ford pick up truck pulled into the lot and it looked like he didn’t even try to get in between the lines. Parked at a 60 degree angle to the end of the spots he parked across. The lot wasn’t crowded, so it is not like he was depriving any one of a place to put the car, but what kind of statement was he making? Early to mid 20s couple gets out and saunter over to get in line. (Don’t even get me started on the line and the service we received.)

Next in was a Nissan Maxima. Pulled into the side of the lot in front of us and paused. Started to back up and I thought it was to get more centered in the spot. This is like a 5-foot wide car and it was “in” a 10\\\’ wide spot. In is in quotes because the left tires were mostly on the line with the outside of them in the other parking spot. Instead of straightening out, this car backs up across the aisle, where the canted pickup truck is, and stops in the middle of two parking spots. At least she is perpendicular to the lines. Two youngish (late teens?) couples get out and walk across to get some ice-cream.

Brusters in same lot as a Publix grocery store where Donna and I walk over to after eating dessert. We need dish soap as all our silverware is dirty and even though I offered to eat breakfast with my fingers, Donna insisted on buying some Sunlight. It is 9:30 on a Friday night and the store lot is nearly empty. So as not to tire themselves out by having to walk the extra 20 feet to the door another young couple pull right up front of the store, park and get out. At least he was perfectly parallel to the curb (could have been a little closer though.) The guy must have been raised by his mommy and hasn’t got car guy friends, because if he did, they would certainly have told him by now that the loud squealing coming from his brakes, that goes away when they are applied, is telling him he needs new pads.

October

Naughty Holidays

Friday the 24th

We went out this evening and got a scoop of ice cream and took a stroll around downtown Aiken. We passed by a small women’s clothing boutique and there in the window were some bright red and green bra/panty sets next to a sign that proclaimed Holiday Lingerie. The red ones were crotchless! Santa has been a very good boy this year.

November

Parts Is Parts

Sunday the 16

Blew out a turn signal bulb yesterday. We were on our way to a Miata event at our sponsoring dealer, so when the first parts store I stopped in didn’t have what I needed I figured I could get it at their parts counter. The bulb is a pretty standard automotive bulb, an 1157NA. 1157 is the type, 12 volts, two filaments, one brighter than the other and the NA means it is amber. The parts store had plain 1157s, but because the Miatas turn signals are mounted in a clear lens I needed the yellow bulb.

When I asked the parts counter guy for two 1157NAs he didn’t move, he just looked at me like he was waiting for more information. None was needed, but he asked anyway, “What kind of car is it for?” I sighed internally and said out loud, a Mazda Miata. Off he went to the bulb draw. He rummaged around for a few minutes and came back with two bulbs. When he put them on the counter they were clear. I said, “I wanted NAs, I need them to be amber.” Back to the drawer he went. More rummaging, lots more. Finally after what seemed like 5 minutes he returns with two yellow bulbs. I checked the part number just to be sure. As I’m walking away I heard him say to himself, “I always wondered what NA meant.”

I guess basic automotive knowledge isn’t a prerequisite of working at a part department in a car dealership. To be somewhat fair, this dealership sells both Mercedes-Benz’s and Mazda’s so maybe he needed to know how much to charge me. I paid $2.87 for the pair, I wonder if a Benz owner would have had to fork over $8.59 for his?

December

Toilet Stall Entertainment

Monday the 29th

This morning while sitting in a stall at work (I always go at work. Why do it at home when you can get paid for it?) I noticed a fingernail clipping laying near my shoe. At first, I was somewhat repulsed, but then marveled at the nicely symmetrical nature of the clipping. It was kind of large, so it must have been a thumb…crap! Did it just move? Naw, I must be hallucinating. No wait, there it goes again. WTF? It is then I notice that there is a tiny little ant under one end. He is valiantly trying to get that sucker back to all his buddies back in Antville. First he swings it one way, and then back another. He is struggling mightily. I watch transfixed for a couple of minutes while he makes very little organized progress, he keeps at it, so there must be some good food stuck to the nail. My business is finished, so I leave the ant to his. That was much more entertaining than the occasional folded up sports page…