THE DAILY DIVERSION

Well, my wife and I celebrated four months of marital bliss last night. I know a lot of people don't pay attention to anything but annual anniversaries, but we're goofy like that. Also, it gave us a reason to leave work on time so we could spend a little more time together.

In honor of our anniversary we did the usual things: haircut, pick up a couple things at Wal-mart, look for Adrianne a shirt at Marshalls, etc. Obviously I'm joking about that, but it did lead us to something much better. While we were waiting for me to get a haircut we heard a commercial on the radio that reminded us of a friend we hadn't talked to in a while. So, before I hopped in the chair, I called him up, only to get his voicemail.

He called me back while I was being sheared, so Adrianne took the call. We quickly changed our plans from eating at Red Lobster to Bluefin downtown. This is a big difference, but a good one. Bluefin is a sushi bar just down the street from us that Adrianne never gets to go to, mostly because I'm not a big fan of sushi. However, she'll go anytime someone else wants to, and I just get dragged along. This time, however, I didn't mind going. I don't get too much time with my friend, or my wife for that matter, so it was good company. I had also heard that Bluefin's pizzas were pretty good.

We met up with John just after 7 pm at Bluefin. It was a nice evening, so we decided to enjoy the great outdoors for our meal. I wanted a tasty libation, so I ordered a Young's Double Chocolate Stout. Adrianne had a glass of Reisling, and John had his usual Miller Lite. Well they didn't have my beer, so I had to order something different. I ended up getting a Xingu, which is a Brazilian beer, which is black, but isn't a stout. It's pretty tasty regardless.

Adrianne and John discussed the various types of sushi they wanted while I went over the checklist of options for my pizza. I decided on the tomato sauce, with mozzarella & parmesan cheese, spicy Italian sausage, pepperoni, capicola ham, and mushrooms. They chose the Hurricane, Tornado, Spicy Crawfish, Crunchy Crab, Eel, and two other kinds of sushi. I tried all of them except the eel. The Crawfish and crab were both good, and I could probably eat them again. I've found out that it's the cream cheese in a lot of them that I just don't like. As long as there is no cream cheese, then I'll probably like sushi. I think I was ruined a long time ago by trying some really, really bad sushi at a place that was not known for sushi. At that time, however, the options for sushi where I lived were less than stellar.

So, we sat around, ate, drank, and were married/merry (okay, I stole the eat, drink, and be married from a wedding we went to over the weekend. I really liked that phrase and have wanted to sneak it in some conversation since I saw it). It was fun catching up with John. He's about 1,000 times busier than myself, and works more hours than he should. Adrianne is working on hooking him up though, so we'll see how that goes.

The food was really good, of course, but it had some lastly after effects. I had the craziest night of dreams that I've had in a long time. I slept really well too, so that helped it out. I know I had at least five dreams, but I was having mini-dreams in between me hitting the snooze button on my alarm clock this morning, so I probably had close to ten or more dreams. Unfortunately, I only remember two of them. I'll try to keep them short and sweet (but don't count on it):

Dream #1: I'm somehow in the middle of the movie Texas Chainsaw Massacre. It's not the old one, nor the remake, nor the new one coming out. It's my own special version of the movie. It ends up that it's Adrianne, Jennifer Love Hewitt, and myself starring in the movie. Leatherface is actually a teenage boy who is a little off his rocker, to say the least. There was a lot of things that happened prior to the starting of the chainsaw killings. I ended up trying to fight off Leatherface with a golf club (a putter to be exact). I'm not sure how it worked out for us, but I know I said "Run... Bitches... Run..." at least five times in the movie. I can't remember how the movie ended.

Dream #2: Adrianne, John, and myself are back at Bluefin. We're sitting outside in the exact spot where we sat last night for dinner. The patio is full of fellow patrons. We're doing exactly what we were doing while eating dinner. All of sudden this guy comes walking down Main street. He's got a baseball cap on and has his t-shirt pulled up over his nose and mouth. He's shouting about polish sausages and something, but I can't make it out. Our server walks over to him and says something (trying to keep him from bothering us) and the guy just says "Fuck you!"

The shouting guy doesn't say a word as he walks by all of the people at Bluefin. However, once he rounds the corner, four more guys dressed the same way come around another corner toward all of us. They have guns and stick us up. John says something sarcastic toward the guy looking over our table. I tell him to "chill out" and that we should just give him our money.

Personally, I didn't think I had any cash on me. I didn't that night, so why would it be any different in my dream. However, as I reached into my pocket, I had several twenties and a few fives. I tried to only give the guy some of it, but he saw my wallet (which had some bills sticking out of it) and snatched it out of my hand. Once he opened it up he saw that I had pictures of our ringbearer and flower girls in there. He asked me "Are these your kids?" I looked at Adrianne and then looked up at him and said "Yeah, that's two of them. We don't get to go out very often, and don't make much money, so this is a big treat for us to be out tonight."

The guy feels sorry for us and says "Well, I can't take food out of these kids mouths, and I can't steal your money, so here you go." He gives me back my wallet and a bunch of twenties he had taken from everyone. I actually think it was more than he had taken from me.

Next thing you know, they all run off back around the corner they came from. I look at John and Adrianne and say "I wonder how long it'll take the cops to get here?" No sooner had I gotten the words out of my mouth, at least four police cars came flying by us. They stopped right at the corner where the robbers ran off, which was still in plain sight of us. A UPS type truck backed out onto Main Street, crashing into one of the police cars. They peeled out as they took off, but didn't get to far when one of the police cars t-boned them, stopping them in their tracks. All of the people at the restaurant stood up and clapped. It was insane.

There's actually more to this dream, but I've gotta get to work. That's all the best parts of it though!

This just goes to show you... Lying can get you through life!!

By the way, I posted a new "Rule" today, finally. You can check it out HERE. Have a great day!

I get stuck working with some of the biggest idiots out there. Actually, it's not that they're idiots, they just can't follow simple directions. Unfortunately, this does not have anything to do with the people that work here in Memphis with me. We have people across the state that do my job also. We all work together and intermingle work.

For the project I've been working on, I had all of our people working together. This means that I had to coordinate each and every person and make sure they have plenty of work and completed their work on time. Neither of these things ended up being problems, as all of the work was turned in on time (which was a monumental feat in and of itself). However, the work that was turned in was less than stellar.

These guys all know what they are doing, since they've been doing it longer than I have (and longer than I've been alive in a few cases). However, when I make assignments to everyone, I set them up automated information, that is filled in with the pertinent information, that should not be changed under any circumstances. If that information is changed, then all of my reports that I have to do after the fact will not match back to my original information.

Well, I thought we "nipped this muthafucka in the bud" early on, after I noticed one of the guys putting different dollar figures on his final product than what came with the automated information. I talked to my boss and we specifically addressed it. Problem solved, right?

Not so fast my dear... Now, after everything has been turned in, I've started trying to build my reports from the information. Doing this means I have to take the information our assistant has gathered during the process. In the perfect scenario, everything would match back to the original stuff. Well, I've spent a day and a half double-checking the information, and I haven't been able to finish the first page (of SIX). Once I get everything corrected it shouldn't take much time to push out the rest of the reports. However, I can't even start on the reports until everything is corrected. It's just a vicious circle.

Anyway, I feel like I've wasted two working days, since I've gotten absolutely no where. I'm going to start from scratch tomorrow with our assistant and, hopefully, we can make some headway tomorrow. In the meantime, I'll work on formatting issues, which are few, and think about how this should be tackled.

I'm heading out shortly and I'm thinking about taking out my frustrations on NCAA College Football 2007 (season #3 of my Dynasty -- yes, back to back National Champions for The Fighting Irish) and a bottle of Crown Royal. Wish me luck!! I hope I win!

PS -- I'm hoping to get back to posting regularly here soon. I've actually been working my ass off (if you saw me you'd notice that I have no ass) lately, and I haven't been able to squeeze it in my working day. Once I'm done with this piece of shit (AKA "project") I'll have some free time to do the things I want to do. In the meantime, I'm still here in Memphis while all of my coworkers head to either San Diego, Seattle, or San Francisco for work. Yeah for me!

Okay, I updated the "Rules" today, for the first time in a long time. You can check it out here ---> The Rules of Thumb.

Now, I've been hurt by my favorite sports teams before. You can see the Toppers during the Sun Belt Conference tournament last year and the following game against South Carolina and you can see Notre Dame against Boston College back in 1993 (after beating Florida State). However, this weekend was just horrible. I wouldn't mind too much if Notre Dame had lost to Michigan State this upcoming weekend. At least that game was up there and they've been a thorn in our side before, but... Michigan? Fucking Michigan?

The only thing Lloyd Carr had to do was not lose the game. It was that bad. The Irish gave Michigan every opportunity to destroy us, and they took advantage of every single one. There was not one screw up by us that Michigan didn't capitalize on. For that I give them the utmost credit. They did what they were supposed to do. Kudos. However, if I don't see a fire lit under their asses this weekend (which I probably won't get to see the game), then I'm going to be really, really angry. Fortunately, for Michigan fans, Lloyd Carr has his ass off the hot seat now, and they deserve to have him for another year! Have fun with that!

That's about it for this weekend. Except... My fantasy football teams sucks!!

Okay, so I'm closing on D-Day for my project. We're supposed to have everything turned in by next Friday. Currently, however, we have only turned in 71% of the work we have. A big chunk is finished and will be here Monday morning. I don't think it'll make up 20%, but it'll get us pretty close to the 85% mark or so. That's really important, because it will make the bosses happy. I figure that we'll probably have 90 to 95% of the work turned in by next Friday. That only leaves a few stragglers out there, and my boss has already told me that's okay.

I've actually slept really well the last couple of nights. My wife, on the other hand, has not. It seems that she's fallen victim to "The Car Alarm". It's almost like clockwork now. It goes off at 5:05 every single morning. It's also started going off just after 10 pm too. I haven't talked to our building manager about it since I gave her the information, but I need to. It's really getting tiresome and the guy doesn't know it, but he may find his car without the entire front half one day soon if he doesn't fix that piece of shit.

Oh, I almost forgot... I've slept well because I've started wearing my earplugs to bed at night. I used to not be able to sleep through the night with them in, but it hasn't bothered me lately. I just have to be sure that my wife comes in and makes sure I take them out before she leaves for work. Otherwise, I'd probably never hear my alarm and I wouldn't make it to work by my usually late 8:15 or so. By the way, I was early today! It was only 8:05!

My in-laws are here with us this weekend. I've decided that I don't like the term "in-laws". It just has a negative connotation to me. Any time that I have ever heard the term it's usually said like this "My fuckin' in-laws are visiting". Mine aren't like that. I like Adrianne's Mom and Stepdad. They're good people!

Larry and I are actually going to hang out on Saturday and watch football while the girls go do girly things (and probably cost me an arm and a leg shopping). I'm planning on watching the big Notre Dame-Michigan tilt on Saturday. It's been a while since I've been this excited about a college football season. I'm hopeful that the Irish can be in the mix for the national title. If they can pull it off this weekend, then the road gets a little easier. They still have Michigan State next weekend, but after that, until the final week against USC, it should be smooth sailing.

I posted a "Rule" a couple of weeks ago that stated "Truth is stranger than fiction" or something along those lines. Yesterday I got an email from a buddy of mine that really brought that point home. It was just pictures, but man, it's just crazy. Here they are:


Okay, this one scares the shit out of me. The only reason it really does is not because horses just randomly jump through car windshields, but we've got a bunch of horses roaming around downtown Memphis. Everyone who drives should fear for their lives. Luckily I don't drive very often.


Really, I'm shocked and awed by this. I mean, really, who hasn't had a boulder drop through their ceiling before? However, to crush a perfectly good recliner is beyond the call of good taste!


These two pictures prove one thing, and one thing only... There are a lot of people with money that are far too stupid to have that money. What's next? An idiot as our President? (okay that was a low blow, even for me)


This is frightening, yet funny. First of all, I never load my bombs on forklifts. I always just use a handtruck (commonly called a dolley). Secondly, I love how there is not a person within shouting distance. It just makes me laugh.

There were actually more pictures (most of them involved military things) and if you'd like to see them, just let me know.

Okay, so I took some time off from blogging. I didn't do it because I had writer's block or any of that shit. I've just been too busy at work. Some people would probably say "Well, you shouldn't be doing it at work anyway. Why don't you blog at home?"

Well, to those people I have the following answers:

1. I usually blog first thing in the morning when nothing is going on.
2. I usually blog when my brain isn't geared toward "doing work".
3. I try to have a little time every day with my wife, whom I only see at night, after work.
4. I'm lazy.

Yeah, that should cover it. Anyway, what's been going on with me you ask?

Oh, just a little of this and that. We went back "home" over Labor Day weekend. I spent most of Saturday with my buddies in Bowling Green watching football. I arrived in Owensboro just in time to catch the very end of a wedding shower. Then I watched some more football. Yes, I know I'm an asshole for not hanging out with everyone. However, I really wanted to watch Notre Dame play. My heart needed the stress! Anyway, I got to see everyone else all day on Sunday, so it worked out.

I'm continuing to be engulfed in my "project" at work. The work is starting to really come in and, hopefully, by the end of this week we'll be close to 80% finished. I say "hopefully" because we're supposed to be finished by next Friday with all of the leg work. Then I get to start the report writing part of the deal. That is actually the most fun. I get to use my stunning verbosity in the real world. It also gives me a chance to "show off" for my bosses and let them know why they are paying me (not to mention give them more reasons to give me larger than average raises every year).

Last weekend I invited a few friends over to watch some football (yes, it's that season). We watched the Mississippi State versus Auburn game, which wasn't much to watch. Then, the main event! Notre Dame versus Penn State. It was less of a game than I thought. I really did think that Penn State would put up a fight, but they were out of the game well before halftime, and that's kind of sad. I felt sorry for Joe Paterno. I didn't want him to beat the Irish, but I didn't want him to get humiliated either, and that's what happened. This week, however, I hope we put a severe ass-beatin' on Michigan. I just don't like Michigan!

One funny story from the ND/Penn State game and I'll close up shop for the day...

The three of us are sitting there, late in the 3rd quarter (or early 4th), when the camera is panning the sidelines. All of a sudden it browses by something and I stand up and shout "Holy Shit! Chewbacca!!" My friends both look at me and say "What?" Then they show it again, and it's Penn State's mascot. Needless to say, I had been drinking. It was funny at the time.

I don't have a new "Rule" today, but you can read some of the old ones, just to catch up. I'm going to try to write a little more often, but it may not be daily, until this "project" is all finished up. Then I'll have time to waste every morning, like I used to.