Frosty

As some of you may know, Columbus, Ohio is often times a hot-bed of fast food test marketing. Take today’s lunch as a case in point. 2 co-workers and I went to Wendy’s (headquartered in Dublin, Ohio just down the road from us) for a cheap fast lunch. This was one of those Wendy’s with a Tim Horton’s glued to the side of it. 2 of us went to Wendy’s and the 3rd of our “party” went to Tim Horton’s for some wrappy kind of sandwich. Anyway… There on the 99¢ menu board taunting me was Small Frosty…… Chocolate or Vanilla. WHAT THE?!?!?!?!?!?! VANILLA?!?!?!? You BASTARDS!!!!!!!

This is what I was planning on having a baked potato, side salad and their el-cheapo chicken sammich. Now I had to add a Frosty. A Vanilla Frosty, to be exact. You see, going to Wendy’s had always been a safe haven for me. Their frosties were never a big draw for me, because they were only “kind of” chocolate flavored. In my opinion “kind of chocolate” has no place in the spectrum of soft-serve ice-cream flavors, or even in the kind-of-like-soft-serve-ice-cream consistency where frosties seem to exist (thicker than a milkshake, but thinner than soft-serve). But vanilla… ah vanilla is another matter entirely.

Ah, Vanilla, my love, my sweet, the only edible portion of any orchid, you taunt me with your flavory goodness. You are the mild necessity of desserty flavor. You are the basis of all other flavors. One cannot even make chocolate without first adding vanilla. I love you like I love no other flavoring…

Ummm... Where was I? Oh, yes, now I have to add on a Vanilla Frosty into the repertoire. Oh, and where a typical chocolate frosty goes all wrong for me, the vanilla one was just right. I hate you Vanilla Frosty, but only because I love you soooo much. Now I hate you Wendy’s because you introduced me to the Vanilla Frosty. Damn you Wendy’s, Damn you to Hell!!!!

I am sure that some of you (okay, just one of you) are wondering if this supplants the Arby’s Chocolate Peanut Butter Cup Shake. Well, in some ways “yes,” but in others, “No.” You see the Arby’s Chocolate Peanut Butter Cup Shake whilst having been pure heaven in a cup for about $2.50 seems to be no more… I failed in my mission. The small vanilla Frosty is a mere 99¢. One was pure indulgent pleasure for pleasure’s sake, and the other is just a little bit of decadence at less than half the price.

To recap:
I hate you Wendy’s
I love you Vanilla Frosty!
Little Man freaked himself out by pooping in the tub last night
Hopefully there will not be a repeat of that tonight
It took him a loooong time to recover
Hopefully we will be off the housing market by Monday of next week
Friday of next week Wifey and I will be taking a much needed vacation
It will be a very good thing
I hate you Vanilla Frosty!
Have a good weekend everyone

Spork

I truly think that the most under-used of all plastic utensils is the spork. Sure it is a hybrid of the spoon and the fork, but it does its job and it does it effectively. It is not meant to be used to eat soup or cereal. It is not intended to stab a steak, it is meant for the spiking scoop necessary for coleslaw and other saucy side dishes. The spork is a perfect for purely utilitarian reasons. It is not pretty. There is nothing flashy about it. It has no pretensions. But, the spork has its reasons for existing: gloppy food and the need for something to stab and scoop it effectively and efficiently.

The issue is that these brave eating utensils are getting harder and harder to come by due to the monopoly imposed by the Trinary utensil system. Ah the monopoly of the fork, knife, and ever-present spoon. The Eating Triad. So where in the cosmos of the national American foodscape can one bank on the usage of the adorable spork? The only national chain I have found is Taco Bell. Kentucky Fried Chicken used to be the home of the spork, but that weak place caved into the pressure of using forks “like the rest of modern society.” Hey, KFC, what are you saying about Taco Bell? Huh? There is word on the street of Sonic using the lovable spork, but is Sonic truly a “national” fast food chain? I mean really, there are like 3 of the places.

To recap:
Why won’t the fast food industry show the spork some love?
It is perfect for them
Work was insane today
There is word out there of other hybrid utensils called the foon and the knork
What the hell is a foon?
What the hell is a knork?

Squeak

I have walked on many a tile floor in my days. Linoleum tiles, ceramic tiles, clay tiles, stone, etc… I have walked on them bunches. I have walked on these different tiled floor surfaces in many a different shoe and occasionally, when my shoes are wet, my walking will cause a squeak.

That is occasionally if the floor is anyway other than in my office. If I so much as look at any of the hard surface flooring within my office my shoes will squeak. Heck, even on some of the carpet, you can hear my shoes. It is quite frustrating and annoying. I like to consider myself a quiet walker. I like to consider myself rather un-obtrusive whence I am going to and fro, but in my office, no matter what shoe I choose to wear, I am a squeaky walking annoyance to everyone. In the halls, on the stairs, in the break room (sans toaster oven), in the bathrooms, etc…


Here comes SRH:

squeak, squeak, squeak, Squeak, Squeak, Squeak, SQUEAK, SQUEAK, SQUEAK, SQUEAK, SQUEAK, SQUEAK, SQUEAK, Squeak, Squeak, Squeak, squeak, squeak, squeak

There goes SRH

Heck, there are some hallways in this office, where if I am merely wearing any of three particular pairs of shoes, I will squeak like I am a basketball time down by 4 with 2 minutes to go. I just don’t understand why I squeak here in the office. I am sure that it isn’t because of the wax they use to polish the floors. I am not sure that these floors have been polished within my 7 years at this company. Sure they might have been mopped twice, but never polished.

Makes me think about just getting some soft soled slippers for the workplace, but if I did that I might as well get a light blue cardigan sweater and go all Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood on my company. I don’t think the company would mind until I started doing all the voices for the Land of Make Believe. Well, that and hallucinating Trolley to get out of meetings.

To Recap:
It is a bit rainy today
Here comes SRH:
squeak, squeak, squeak, Squeak, Squeak, Squeak, SQUEAK, SQUEAK, SQUEAK, SQUEAK, SQUEAK, SQUEAK, SQUEAK, Squeak, Squeak, Squeak, squeak, squeak, squeak
There goes SRH
If you can’t tell, it is kind of rainy this evening
Not much planned for the weekend
We have another open house on Sunday
I so want this house stuff to be finished: sale or no sale, it really doesn’t matter to me
I just want it done
I swear to GOD, I sound like a dog’s chew toy in the stair wells
Funny thing about writing "squeak" so much, the first time you spell it, you know that it is spelled correctly, but after 50 times, you question how it looks...

A little bird told me...

Would it be so wrong to have some roughage in sesame chicken or sweet and sour pork? I mean really, there are no vegetables associated with those 2 Chinese dishes. I get a bit tired of just having breaded meat in a wonderful sauce with rice. I need some veggies. Need them, I say. Wifey and I went to our favorite local Chinese place this weekend for lunch on Saturday whilst we were picking up the last bits of presents and gifts for Little Man. My sweet and sour pork lunch special was wonderfully tasty, but pineapples don’t hack it as the non-meat portion of a meal. I think sugar snap peas would work wonderfully with sweet and sour dishes. Whether it be chicken, shrimp, or pork. They have a crispness to them that would be necessary in a rather saucy meal and they also have a sweetness that would compliment the savory-ness of the meat of choice. Sure, one could still have the typical pineapples and carrots, but put something green in there as well. Especially since we know that this is not anywhere near an “authentic” Chinese dish. As for the sesame chicken, throw in some broccoli at the last second, and you have yourself a damn fine meal. Work with me restaurant, work with me.

Okay, On the eve of my little boy’s official 3rd birthday I feel it necessary to spend some time on Little Man:

This weekend whilst on our way to Big Walk (a hike at a local Metropark, Highbanks, where we strap Little Man into our Kelty Journey and walk a 2+ mile trail (3.5+ km) before we set him loose on the playground in the groomed park area) Little Man is in his car seat with his stuffed animal that is appropriately named “Bird.” It is a stuffed animal bird that he talked his Mimma into getting him during one of their many trips to the zoo. Anyway… Little Man is singing along with Weezer when all of the sudden …

Little Man: Screams as if he’s been shot

Me: What’s wrong? I was ready to slam the brakes and get the car headed to Children’s Hospital.

Wifey: Dear God, what’s wrong?

Little Man: Bird hurt his tail.


It seems that Little Man caused bird to wrench his tail a bit and Bird, not Little Man, vocalized the Ow!

Our mistake. “Bird” screamed out a couple more times on the drive and had a couple more accidents during the Big Walk. Bird fall down. Bird hit door. Bird clumsy…

There is some fear in the family about Bird and Little Man’s abusive relationship, but Bird is clearly bringing this on. Bird knows what buttons to push and likes to push them. If Bird wanted to leave this relationship, he could. Nothing is stopping the green, red, and blue plush doll from leaving. We think the avian stuffed animal must like to be abused…why else would he stay? What we can’t figure out is why Bird keeps flying into doorknobs when we’re not around – doesn’t he know this gives him a black eye?

To Recap:
Little Man’s unofficial birthday was yesterday
We consider yesterday as Little Man’s Birthday (observed)
I do not often recommend changes to Chinese food, seeing as how I am not Chinese
Nor am I food for that matter
At least, I do not consider myself food, when Wifey and I were on our honeymoon in DC (we were poor and nerdy, both at the same time) a Tiger did seem to want to gnaw on our bones whilst we were at the National Zoo
It was a bit disconcerting
Tomorrow will be 20 Questions Tuesday:2 (as answered by Little Man due to his birthday)
Not sure where he picked up his abuse issues
Wifey did work in the DV movement for a bunch of time
And Little Man did go to work with her for the first 6 months of his life…
Not to mention his time spent with DV professionals whilst in utero
It all makes so much sense now….

French Bread Pizzas

The problem with microwave frozen French bread pizzas is that they are not really on any real semblance of French bread and they are not really all that pizza like. Oh, and they always burn the roof of my mouth.

To recap:
I hate frozen lunches
Especially without my lovely toaster oven
Microwave stuff is always crappy
I am not in a good mood today
And I just don’t feel like waxing poetic about the minutiae in my life at the moment

Signs...

So on the way to work this morning I ran across 2 signs that just puzzled me greatly. Since I do not carry a digital camera with me at all times, and since it is not really all that wise to snap off pictures whilst driving, I do not have any photo evidence as proof of these 2 signs, but I will do my best to relay them to you.

Sign 1: This sign was in the alley that runs behind my house. It was a sign made from a card board side of a box with its message written in ball point pen. The sign reads “Free” and is decorated by some stars. The text of the sign is made legible by the repeated scratching of the letters and stars over themselves until readable by a passing car. Nope, no markers are being used for this sign. Anyway, the issue is not so much with the construction of the sign as much as it is for the pile of crap that the sign was referring to.

The sign was referring to a pile of trash that was waiting to be picked up on this coming Friday (our current trash pick-up day). It was trash that the previous owners felt that someone might want. Thank you very much, but I do not want your discarded pizza boxes and/or empty 40’s.

Photoshop Rendering (not actual sign)

Sign 2: This sign was again on the remnants of a large card board box that had been heedlessly torn and stapled onto a telephone pole. The cardboard was that light yellow colored cardboard and the crappily penned message of “PitBull 4 sale” sprayed on in light gray spray paint. Quite eloquent in its simplicity, really. It is a straightforward message with no areas to question. There is a pit-bull terrier for sale somewhere within this area.

There was no contact information associated with this hastily scrawled advertisement, so if one were in the market for a pit-bull one would find this piece of cardboard really more taunting than helpful.

Photoshop Rendering (again, not actual sign)

This advertisement does bring up some other questions. Torn cardboard with poorly written sales pitches using light gray spray-paint without any contact information does not a registered breeder make.

All in all the viewing of these particular marketing devices has led me to ponder about them all day. In a way, I guess their marketing campaigns are working, in a fashion…

To Recap:
I think I could help them in their marketing campaigns
Just with my Photoshop skilz alone
I cannot believe that Little Man will be 3 this Tuesday
That is plain scary
The Cleveland renderings are raising their ugly heads again
I have a hang nail
It hurts
A bunch
The poison ivy rash is still there
On my forearm
It is annoying, but it doesn’t hurt
Pancakes and sausage for dinner
Mmmmmm pancakes
But that is how it looked
I even wrote more legibly

Ivy

I mentioned yesterday that I have a couple of small patches of poison ivy on my forearms. Well, I feel it might be good of me to elaborate further. ( I mean, who doesn’t want to hear about my poison ivy? Anyone? Anyone?) I have two patches of the rash on my left arm and a couple of dots on my right forearm. I think I got them from weeding the area around the air conditioner – yet another completely useless task I have been doing to sell my house.

Anyway… I have had poison ivy before. I have had it bad enough that I needed a super steroid shot to help clear it up. It was bad, bad, bad. This time, things are really bizarre. I did the weeding on Saturday and the rash did not show up until Monday morning. Maybe it was a mutant strain of poison ivy that I was dealing with. One that has a rash dormancy period. Natural selection would do this, right? Any biologists out there that can confirm this? Dermatologists? Anyone?

The really bad thing about getting poison ivy after not having had it for at least 12 years is that you really forget how itchy it is.

To Recap:
The space between the deck and the house looks really well-groomed now
House still hasn’t sold
But my forearms are rather itchy
Meeting with Super Realtor Traci tonight to discuss
Catherine the Great’s first name was really Sofia
While cooking bread in your house is supposed to make it sell better, cooking cabbage doesn’t seem to help
Stupid poison ivy
Not “le stupid poisson ivre”
Different meaning entirely
Ivy-Dry works great, by the way
But I think they should update their photos of the family hiking
Number 1: All of them have external frame packs
Number 2: All of them are wearing cotton
Number 3: Their sleeping bags are huge
This pic is from the late 80’s, I mean look at the kids glasses

Number 5 is Alive

I usually do not participate in the whole meme thing. Occasionally I will go in search of a good questionnaire to answer, but I do not really respond to memes. Typically memes are long, laborious, and take too much effort to copy, paste, and clean. This meme is a fairly easy one as far as the format is concerned and allows for more of a free-flowing writing experience than most of the other ones I have seen.

I will do this meme, Dustin, but not because you tagged me for it, but because I feel like it.

Top Five Nouns I want to Fight!

Well, the first 2 easy answers would be Hippos and Yetis. So lets consider them to be given, much like the “R,” “S,” “T,” “L,” “N” and “E” are given to Wheel of Fortune contestants now in the bonus round. So without further ado

Top Five Nouns I want to Fight, Excepting Hippos and Yetis

1. Packet: Not necessarily the actual physical object, but the spoken word “packet.” I HATE that word. It is just a bad combination of letters. Use the words file, package, or something even more specific like folder or envelope. The word “packet” is an abomination and should never be used in polite company.

2. Bug-Bite: I want to collectively beat the ever living snot out of bug-bites. Sweet Jesus and Mary Jane I hate bug-bites. Right now Little Man has 4 gigantic bug-bites on his right hip and leg, and I hate them for that. If I saw a bug-bite in a dark alley, I would give it what it had coming to it. I haven’t been watching Kung-Fu movies since I was a kid to sit idly by while a bug-bite sits undisturbed in a dark alley. Oh, No. If there were a bug-bite in a dark alley, even if it were minding its own business, I would jump that bustard and give it a beat down… Old School!

That, and I have a bug-bite on my ass right now, and it is not that comfortable. You might have won this round, Bug-Bite, but I will have my revenge…

3. Paradise: We all know that you don’t exist, so why don’t you let me remove you from our list of nouns. Paradise is simply a made up construct of a fictitious place that cannot exist. There is no such thing as a true paradise, so I think we should give the noun “paradise” the beating of its life to commemorate all of our dead dreams about “paradise.” Jerk, out there giving false hopes to everyone. Nobody wants you around here anymore. You don’t and can’t exist, so… “You better move your feet, If you don’t want to eat a meal they call Fist City.” 10 points to anyone who knows this reference without googling it, Wifey is excluded from this contest.

4. People: People suck. I mean it, they really really suck. The very concept of people annoys me. If I ever catch some people in a dark alley, oh, they sooo gonna get it. And not a good “it” either. I mean a bad “it.” The baddest of the bad “it”’s. Sweet mother of God and all that is Holy, if those people happen to have bug-bites, then it ain’t gonna be pretty.

5. The People who Green-Light crappy movies: Not only are they people (see above) they are also people doing their best to actively annoy the piss out of me. Fast and the Furious 2, 2 Fast, 2 Furious? What in Beelzebub’s beard made you think it was a good idea to give this movie a go? Arena? Arena? Why did you make someone waste film on this? Friday the 13th’s 2 through whatever number we are at now. Sweet Baby Jesus, what in God’s name made you think these were good ideas? Kung Pow: Enter the Fist, you bastards made kittens cry because of this movie. Cruel Intentions!?!?!?!?!?!??!?!?!?!? Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot!?!?!?!!?!?!? I will so beat the ever living snot of you for those. You guys owe me, and you owe me in blood now. Money will not hack it anymore, I require a limb with which to beat you…

To Recap:
Memes, go figure
I am not tagging anyone, but if my 5 loyal readers would like to take this on, let me know in comments
Please feel free to comment on your least favorite movies
We have another open house this Sunday
Right in the middle of the World Cup Final
I am hungry
Stupid frozen lunches
Hippos and Yetis are really on the top of my list though…

Block Party

I have writer’s block pretty severely. I mean it is a bad case of it. So far I have started this entry 6 times.

Attempt 1: A post about how a middle of the week holiday sucks

So did the beginnings of that post

Attempt 2: A post waxing nostalgic about blowing up snap together models with my brother on July 5th with left over fireworks

Just could not come together

Attempt 3: The complete uselessness of fireworks

They aren’t even pretty, but they are pretty smelly

Attempt 4: How holidays without gifts are kind of silly when they art(e) in the middle of the week

Very similar to Attempt 1, same issues

Attempt 5: Something about witches and warlocks

Really didn’t work… at all

Here we are at attempt 6 and I have nothing. Absolutely nothing. I think it has something to do with the sleep debt I constantly live with. Stupid sleep debt.

So I asked my darling wife for some help with the writer’s block and this is the email I got back:

From: Wifey [mailto:xxxx@xxx.xxx]
Sent: Wednesday, July 05, 2006 1:38 PM
To: SRH
Subject: RE: wednesday

Well, you may compare your dislike of fireworks and the associated farfalle of the holidays with my hatred of numbers. I don’t think they’ll compare – and I know that’s an inappropriate use of “farfalle” but it was fun – but you may try. You can typically call up strong hatred for minutiae like nobody’s business.

So, I do not even know how to take that and I cannot come up with a topic for a post. I can “typically call up strong hatred for minutiae like nobody’s business?” Is this a positive thing, or a negative? I cannot tell. So I asked Wifey for some examples of my minutiae hating ways. She responded with

From: Wifey [mailto:xxxx@xxx.xxx]
Sent: Wednesday, July 05, 2006 3:18 PM
To: SRH
Subject: RE: wednesday

Well, your hatred of hippos, your anger at not having a variety of food in the vending machines, your hatred of the yeti and all he stands for, you don’t like it when people eat part of the ham they are giving as a gift to someone, and you don’t’ care for san serif fonts.

To name a few.

I guess I do hate minutiae.

To Recap:
Writer’s block sucks
Even for a blogger
Attempt 6: A post about how I cannot come up with topics for a post
It didn’t go great either
I still posted it
We are having some kind of Turkey and bean thing for dinner
France v Portugal right now
I am too post weary to link all my various tirades about minutiae

Origins of Man

Tomorrow I get to be a handsome, svelte, well-groomed, successful, tan, enviable man… relatively speaking, of course.

It is that time of year again. It is gaming convention time.

Other than going to Wal-Mart, nothing makes me feel better about myself than going to a gaming convention. There is nothing like being surrounded by a convention of pear-shaped, black clad, basement dwelling, scraggly bearded, long-oily-haired, balding, gaming geeks, to make yourself feel better about your life choices. There I am a god! And it feels good. So tomorrow whilst in the midst of these light-fearing dorks, and while casually listening in on conversations about how the D-20 system has ruined pen & paper RPG’s, I will be resplendent in my married to a hotty, un-obese, salaried professional ways, and no one can take that away from me. On a slightly less me-centric topic (but only slightly less), there is also news on the home sale front. Unfortunately it is not news on our home sale, but news on our stupid neighbor’s house. Our crappy neighbor’s house has gone into contract, which means that with his un-aggressive marketing and our aggressive marketing, we basically sold the jerk’s place for him. Let me tell you, that leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I really wish we would have gone into contract prior to him, but that was not in the cards. We are still getting a good amount of traffic through the house, but no one has even offered up a crappy bid. Anyway, that is about all I have today. To recap:

In a room full of über-geeks, I am a enviable by those very über-geeks for my lack of über-geekdom

Ëvërÿthïng ïs bëttër wïth ümläüts

It is a good thing to embrace one’s inner geek every once and a while

Our neighbor sucks

Hopefully with him out of the way we can sell our house faster

We just hope he didn’t undersell his place and undercut our potential sale

Steamed chicken with potatoes, green beans, onions, and corn for dinner tonight

It is both healthy and tasty, but it takes forever to cook

Short post today

Next week will be better

But I will not swear to that

For some reason, Blogger has decided to bork up my paragraphs, I apologize on its behalf

Toaster Oven

So where the Hell did the toaster oven go?!?! Now, I am not one to vehemently complain about barbaric office conditions in the land of cubes, but this has gone too far. Too far I say!

I hate eating lunches at the office. I abhor the whole process of nuking something in the microwave so I can slop down some craptastic “meal” just so I can make it to dinner. Lunch in the office always sucks. Always. The only times it does not just absolutely blow is when I can finagle myself into a lunch meeting where lunch is provided.

At least that was the case until they brought in the toaster oven. Ah, the glorious toaster oven. An oft maligned and misunderstood piece of kitchen equipment. It works like an electric oven, but it is small enough that you do not have to worry about preheating. It is a wonderfully glorious device that browns and crisps frozen food while cooking it all the way through. Instead of getting from a frozen stick to a floppy eggroll in 5 minutes, I got crispy wonderful tasty Asian morsels in 15 minutes. Instead of getting rubbery French bread pizzas that taste like soggy pieces of cardboard, I got a toasty delectable French bread pizzas that tasted like firmer, non set out in the rain pieces of cardboard. Anyway… the machination of my bearable frozen lunches is now gone. Gone I tell you…. Gone

I do not care who says that Lean Pockets now have a crispier flakier crust. They can go straight to Hell, those lying bastards! Those microwave foodstuffs can not hold a candle to a frozen burrito lovingly brought to its gooey warm pinnacle by the workhorse toaster oven. I cannot help it if the other employees of the company did not understand how the toaster oven worked or how much better it was than their gimme-my-crappy-food-now-now-now microwave. You stopped the warm embrace of the toaster oven to my eggrolls by turning it off thinking the egg rolls were done and no one was watching them. I did not complain, even though I was constantly checking on them. You always thought something was burning whenever I turned on the toaster oven, but that fragrance you were detecting was a direct result of a little something called “cooking.”

They have taken my toaster oven away, and now I must sink to the level of a common grad student. Easy Mac it is…

To Recap:
Microwaves heat food by twisting water molecules back and forth and having those water molecules rub against one another to experience a molecular form of "friction"
Toaster ovens heat food because the heating element in the oven starts to glow red-hot, much like a conventional electric oven, the way God intended
I think I must have a tapeworm
I am stunningly hungry and I just ate lunch
I was hungry yesterday immediately after eating lunch
What’s up with that?
And what was up with Spain losing to France?

Minty Fresh

I did not eat enough lunch and I am still quite hungry. Unfortunately, it is the kind of hunger that free mints will not satiate. Although I have been giving it my best to quell the hunger with breath mints. So, as a consequence, I am still quite hungry, but my breath is full of pepperminty goodness. So, I at least got that going for me.

The odd thing is that I ate breakfast and a pretty good lunch. It should have been satisfying but, alas and alack, not satisfying at all. In fact, quite unsatisfying. If you haven’t noticed, I am a bit on the hungry side. To help things along, I just got my monthly email from the “Friends of Krsipey Kreme” program. Bastards. Don’t they know I am hungry? Actually, they probably are counting on it. Anyway… today’s installment of the Krispy Kreme newsletter is all about different shapes of doughnuts. Different shapes of the delectable doughnuts. Different shapes of their glistening, warmly glazed delectable doughnuts. Different shapes of their stunningly easy to eat glistening glazed lovingly deep fried doughnuts… mmmm… umm, where was I? oh yes, “hungry.” Jerks. I reiterate. Don’t they know that I am hungry?

The other problem with attempting to subsist off of mints is the fact that even if I do find some food to tide me over till dinner, I will need to wait until the indelible taste of peppermint leaves (“leaves” the verb not “leaves” the tree foliage.) my mouth. That being the case, I think I just found some crackers in one of my drawers, and now I have to wait until the burning coolness of 21 Eclipse mints consumed over a 2 hour period subsides before I can dig into the stale Ritz-y goodness of unknown age that I just found in my desk drawer. I have at least 10 more minutes before I can crack open the Ritz without them becoming some kind of gooey pepperminty paste. Yep, that doesn’t sound that appealing to me either.

Man, my life is hard

To Recap:
I am wholeheartedly uninspired today
I need to take containers home from work
They are disgusting and need to be washed badly
I still need more new music
Too bad most of the new stuff sucks
Damn you, Krispy Kreme! Damn you to Hell!
Almost out of Eclipse mints
My sinuses are clear and my breath is ultra-minty
Mint plants think my breath is minty
I can’t feel my tongue in some places
And the roof of my mouth is still coolly on fire
Too bad mints are not filling
Spain is up 1 - 0 versus France in the 40th

Everybody feels better making fun of someone

Everybody feels better when they are making fun of someone. It is a tautology that is completely irrefutable, like "space takes up space" or "you'll shoot your eye out." Luckily everyone has someone to make fun of. In the US most people can make fun of Alabamians, Alabamians can make fun of Mississippians, Mississippians can make fun of Arkansans (Arkansawers?), Arkansans make fun of Louisianans, Louisianans can make fun of West Virginians, and West Virginians either don't get it or they make fun of their neighbors or Alabamians. The point is, no matter how bad we have it, there is always someone worse off than we are, and we should make fun of them (I am lookin' your way 'Bama).

Anyway.... I have a shit-ton of work that has to get done, in a relatively short amount of time, and my list seems to get longer and longer. This list keeps lengthening because of incidents like the one I had happen to me yesterday. One of the Board of Directors dropped by my office yesterday with a retired employee in tow. I have had the displeasure of working with this old coot before, and it was not pretty. One cannot in any good measure say "no" to one of the Board and expect not to do the work eventually.* So anyway the geezerly gentleman with no life other than his past employer** needs us to add his pointless busy work tasks to our already bloated checklist of activities. Whence I have had the displeasure of working with this particular relic of engineering's past, it has always taken much much longer and much more work than was initially described. So far we have just finished his initial request, but I am waiting with baited breath for the old codger to come back and ask for the impossible. It will come tomorrow around 10 AM, if my "Old Coot Schedule" is correct. Oh well, this mountain of work will not complete itself, no matter how long I ignore it.


*I could have said, "No, we really do not have the time to make this dotery old fool some maps pro bono. So, if you would please, shove off." but the Board guy would have gone to my boss or my boss's boss and said make him do this. This way I cut out the middle man and look like I am a happy team player. We are, after all "All one Team.

** When I retire, there is literally no chance anyone will ever see me again at the office from which I will retire. Work is an unfortunate necessity in my life that I would easily forego if I had the means to.***

*** I need my wife to make us independently wealthy. She is our only hope seeing as how much brighter than I am she is and all. Maybe my child will pull us into a life of leisure...

A boot on your head

Lately, there just have not been the "opportunities" to spout out tons of vitriolic prose due to a single occurrence. In other words, there have not been any singular specific incidents for me to blog about with tons of caustic remarks. The stuff that has been going on lately is more of the moderate systemic stuff that just grinds on one until they are a weeping puddle of melted Jell-o brand pudding pops. Unfortunately for you reader folk, that does not make for the most interesting of blog entries. I am sure you were all touched and awed by the "Silly things I do not like" but that post lacked a certain bit of magic in it, a certain "je ne sais quoi." Please do not mistake this as complaining on my part. I am rather happy that nothing particularly untoward has occurred that has been directed at me or those around me. It makes for a much more pleasant existence, but it also make it a bit difficult to write sarcasm. This, of course, leads me into today's entry...

Nothing in the world says "Do not touch," "Does not play well with others," or "Bat-shit crazy" like someone wearing a boot on their head. If you see someone who has footwear atop their skull, give them a wide berth, for they are indeed bat-shit crazy. I am sure you are saying to yourselves, "I am of above average intelligence, I know things, I do not think that someone wearing a boot on their head is the strongest indicator of someone's break with reality." Well let me make my case for you.

Firstly, 75% of Americans think they are "above average intelligence," so we cannot all be correct in that assumption, you pompous jerks. Personally, I would be happy if I am above median intelligence. There are some nasty statistical outliers pulling the "average" IQ to a rather low number. For example, someone wearing a boot on their head will pull the average IQ down more than a newly minted PhD physicist can bring it up. In truth, someone with a boot on their head will actually draw people's IQ's down as they get closer to the boot-headed individual. This decrease of IQ in proximity to someone with footwear on their noggin is due to the increasing puzzlement of why someone has a boot on their head. The progression looks something like...

1. Just catches sight of the boot headed individual. "Does that guy have a boot on his head?"
2. Confirms that the person indeed has a boot on their head. "Oh my gosh, that guy really has a boot on his head."
3. Puzzlement. "Why on earth would he choose to wear a boot on his head?"
4. Study. "Is that a new boot or an old one? How is it staying on that man's head? Does it shade his eyes like a hat?..." etc...
5. Obsession. "If I got a boot, could I figure out how to wear it on my head? Do I tie the shoelaces around my chin to hold it in place..." etc...
6. Trial and error. A new person is now wearing a boot on their head.

...and point 6 brings me to my second point, so without further ado...

Secondly, one does not simply place a boot on one's head and have it stay there. One must figure out how to affix the footwear to one's head, indicating forethought and dementia. The boot must be big enough to fit on one's head. So a search must be conducted to find footwear to fill that bill. There has to be a cause to wear a boot on one's head as well. A boot instead of, say, a tin-foil hat that keeps the government's controlling rays out. In short there is trial and error associated with wearing a boot on one's head. I have yet to see any behavior that indicates "Do not touch," "Does not play well with others," or "Bat-shit crazy" better than the person wearing a boot on their head.

In summary... Boot on the head = bat-shit crazy

Silly things I do not like

I cannot stand the word "ointment" written or spoken, but especially spoken. Something about its existence is abhorrent to me. I am fine with the concept of (and this is difficult for me to write due my loathing of it) ointment, just don't refer to it in that horrid way. Poultice, salve, cream, rub, balm, emollient, or lotion, just not "ointment." Puts shivers down my spine just typing the accursed word.

I also am averse to the word "packet." Mostly when it is spoken. I always hate going to informational seminars and conferences because they invariably give you a packet of information. It is usually in a cheap folder, so I think that is how it should be referred. "If you could look at the yellow sheet of paper located in the right pocket of your cheap folder of information." Just call it what it is. The only true packets are data packets being sent and received by computers with this thing that some call the Internet. Everything else is a bag, folder, or some such thing. "Packet" is just that kind of word for me.

I do not like eating cold lunches. Cold cut sandwiches, veggie tray etc... I need my food warmed up, like it has been freshly killed cause that is the kind of badass I am. I do not have a problem eating cold stuff for lunch as long as it is accompanied by something warm. Cold cut sandwich is fine if there is some soup with it. Carrot sticks are perfectly acceptable when associated with a warm sandwich.

I do not like waking up before 9 am. I do it everyday because I am an adult and I have responsibilities that need to be attended to, but I do not like it one iota. I am always tired if I wake up prior to 9. Even if I went to bed at 7 pm the night before, I am tired when I wake up before 9. Oddly enough, I usually do not feel tired when I am fortunate enough to wake up after 9 am even when I did not go to bed until 4 am.

I do not like to get into conversation with people I do not know. At supermarkets, bank lines, stores, etc... I do not know you, don't talk to me. I will be civil (barely if you ask my wife) to the talky stranger, but rarely nice and engaging.

If I continue to outline these dislikes of mine, I am sure all of you who actually know me will start to consider me one boot on my head away from the nut-house, because nothing says crazy like wearing a boot on your head.

I thought of a topic yesterday afternoon

I thought of a topic yesterday afternoon, and then promptly forgot it. It was a killer topic too. The kind which makes all bloggers salivate at its sheer awesomeness. It was a topic that I am sure would be captured in one of those 5 minute CNN Headline News human interest pieces that they do at the end of their 30 minute loops. I would have been on Late Night with Conan O'Brian chatting about how I came up with such an incredibly poigniant and witty post. The post would have gotten me recognized in Google's most viewed websites list for today. It would have crushed Blogger.com's bandwidth, reducing their servers to smoldering ash piles of network equipment. Researchers would have been enlightened to the cure cancer due to this topic. Israelis and Palestinians would eat dinner together (all of them at one gigantic table that ran from Turkey to somewhere in the Nile basin). Our military presence would no longer be necessary in Iraq, Afghanistan, Korea, etc... because World Peace would ensue whence world leaders were given copies of my post to read during their daily briefings. Dog and cats would sit down and play poker. It would have been translated into at least 137 different languages (including Elvish and Klingon, because geeks would hail me as their hero). The planets would have aligned. A harmonic convergence of heavenly forces would have ushered forth from the firmament to push humanity forward evolutionarily. We, as a species would have transcended our mere physical forms to become part of a spiritual universe of calm and peacefulness. There would indeed be doughnuts for all. All of this due to my most magnificent post ever. Alas and alack, the topic was promptly forgotten. So, instead you got this.

I don't want to write today

I do not want to write today, but I decided in October that I was going to write everyday that I was at work. So I will write, but I will not like it.

One of the main reasons I do not want to write is an utter lack of material. You see, even in the most beneficial light, I lead a boring life. What did I have for dinner last night? Spaghetti. Ooh, look how exciting my life is. Spaghetti, I bet you wish you could live that exciting of a life. What did I do last night after eating spaghetti? Cleaned the dining room. Does it get any more exciting than that? I think not. Well at least for me it does not. Spaghetti and cleaning, whoooo-weeee I do know how to live it up. I got up early this morning so I can go with my little one to his allergist appointment. Again, excitement abounds. We are hoping that the Dr. tells us that he is no longer allergic to anything. Then we can get him some more varied dietary choices.

I have 3 active projects that I am working on at work right now. One of those projects just hit me with the insane amounts of work bat yesterday. But that is to be expected with this particular project. The PM on the client side has a problem saying "No" to anyone other than us. He consistently promises things that are nigh impossible to deliver. Somehow we do, but it usually involves just plain wrong levels of work. So I have tons of work to do whilst at the job. Tons of work really cuts into the interesting distractions aspect of work life. Oh well.

I am sure that I will have a rip-snorting good time this evening cleaning the living room. Envious? I thought so. Sorry about the whininess of this post, but I truly have nothing interesting going on for me at the moment. Maybe I will be inspired later on today, or hopefully, at the very least, I will be more inspired tomorrow.

Bad naming convention

So, in a conversation that I had with a friend earlier this morning, He came up with one of the worst names I have ever heard. Luckily it is a fictitious name, so no harm, no foul. The name he came up with was "Percival VonBeatme." Other than some laws on the books, this is the reason that I think he is not allowed to reproduce. His is a genetic line that should die with him, but he has brothers with kids, so it won't. I am holding out that eventually Darwin will end that line or dilute it to the point of obscurity. Thank you Darwin. The existence of his brothers' children is irrefutable evidence that Intelligent Design is not a valid theory. It has to be just dumb luck that has gotten that gene pool mistake this far. If I did not know better his family probably has webbed feet or some such. Mutant. And I say all of that with love and kindness.

This does make me wonder about how bad names could be. My doctor's last name is Butcher. I am glad she never went into surgery. "Paging Dr. Butcher to the O.R. Dr. Butcher to the O.R."
Sounds almost like a crappy super villain. But my docs name does not really enter in to what I am talking about. What I am talking about is just plain bad made up names such as Percival VonBeatme. Just plain horrid names. Not the ones that Bart pranks Moe with, a la "Amanda Hugginkiss." Or those faux authors who wrote faux books, a la "Yellow Snow by I.P. Freely." I'm talking about just plain crappy fictitious names. Everybody comes up with them to talk about people either that we know or people we have encountered that we did not know their names. It’s human nature to make fun of those we know, and especially those we do not.

For example when someone I know does something inherently clumsy, I would call them "Trippy McFallsalot." If someone I do not know does something rather clumsy I refer to them as something like Edna Fumblefoot or Mike Kersplatsky. Absurdly naming those we know and do not know is fun and, typically, funny. Percival VonBeatme would be the kid you did not know who always got their lunch money taken. As a side note, any name with Floyd or Wayne in it is typically comedy gold.

On another note: Little one is on Orapred again. Ergo, he is a cranky little boy now. Oh well, today is his last day of that medicine.

For some reason...

For some reason the little man wanted to be shirtless the other day. (See attached picture below) Far be it from us to deny him that right. So, shirtless he went. At least he was shirtless for a bit, then it went to complete naked time. He loves him some naked time. It usually causes him to dance a bit. I guess if he had bongo drums he could have a scandal, a la Mathew McConaughey. Well, I guess he would need some weed and another naked guy dancing with him as well... oh, and to be famous. It is not really a scandal if one is not famous. It is only a news item from the local police blotter if someone is not famous.

And now for something completely different... ( I really dated myself with that reference)

I cannot believe that it is already February. And that happened yesterday. Speaking of which, I really feel bad for the month of February. It is the tiniest month of the year. I am sure that is why it is black history month, but that is a different story all together, and I will not get into it in this particular forum. I do try to be a-political in this venue. Honestly. No really. Anyways... February is pretty much the left over month of the year.

February is the month that was stolen from by July and August. Everybody remembers Julius Caesar and Augustus Caesar, but Julius's step nephew once removed, Februarius, is not so well renowned. He did good things. He is known for his many and varied inappropriate uses of gravel. I guess that is why his month only has 28 days (typically).

Novelty Posting

Okay, so today I am going to bow to my betters.

Today is all about linking to more sarcastic folk than I am.

Firstly, Weight Watchers has been around for a while, and they really do have a better menu now.

The best part about the Internet, is the wealth of useless and limitless information. Case in point: "The Book of Ratings." This is an amusing sight that rates pretty much anytyhing and everything. I suggest finding the post about the Superfriends.

Speaking of Superfrineds Enjoy ... Might not want to look at this one whilst at work.

Finally, a blog that made me want to blog for myself. This blog belongs to Dusty Scott (sure that seems like it is a soap opera name, but one can not hold that against him). This post is the best post known to man. Ever.

make sure you look at the "next entry" button, for even more covers.

Maybe tomorrow I will be inspired to actually write something for myself.